Chanzlyn

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Score: 7.5/10

I’ll be the first to admit that I did have a hard time getting into the first Mass Effect game.  The gameplay wasn’t that wonderful to me, the dialogue was a bit lacking and overall, it just didn’t grab me.  But my friends kept pushing me to play and so I kept playing my game, little bit at a time till I was finally hooked into something that I knew, I’d never get out of.

Mass Effect was a wonderful series, the dialogue improved, the story was just great and the overall plan of how they laid out the story was fantastic (Mass Effect was the essential introduction to the main character, Mass Effect 2 was the build-up to the climax of this epic story, and Mass Effect 3, as I knew, it would be the resolution to Commander Shepard).  I traveled from planet to planet, met new alien species, discovered fantastic weapons, gained amazing allies and overall, it was just another world that I could call my own because my choices affected how my story would play out.

This game series was one of the best I’ve ever played and at this point, I’d like you stop reading if you don’t want any spoilers about Mass Effect 3.

SPOILERS. SPOILERS. SPOILERS.

Gameplay

The gameplay this time around was simply gorgeous, one aspect that had been removed for me is the auto-lock feature that the second game had.  Where if I was aiming at someone and I got out of cover, it would lock right onto said target for a few seconds so that way no ammo is wasted shooting at the wall. However, I would aim at a foe and the moment I got out of cover to shoot, my cross hairs would decide to line up just a couple of inches away from the target and the target didn’t move, either. That is my only beef with the gameplay.

Otherwise, the gameplay as a whole was executed rather well. I enjoyed it, it was easy to pick weapons and choose my special abilities (it is nice to be able to map the powers to buttons so that way I can get an easier and quicker access to the powers).  The added barrel roll affect was a great move to have because it really did come in handy when it came to facing one of the Reaper’s and their laser beams. Might I also add the ability to modify weapons by adding attachments to either improve accuracy, damage, increase capacity and more was such a wonderful addition!

The gameplay was well done aside from my minor beef with it (others might not have had that problem).

Characters

As per usual, the characters are my favorite part of the game.  With all the characters that you can have as allies to the characters that you can just have a conversation with, there is never a dull moment throughout the entire game.  The personalities that each character were given made them truly unique and care for every single one of them, even just a little bit. Some characters we hated, others we loved, others we just didn’t care for either way, but the fact that they were able to give off that unique personality made them worthwhile and truly great.

Storyline

Okay, this is where it can get touchy.

At first, I loved the story, it was beautiful played out. Absolutely stunning and just gorgeous. Starting off, you get to work with Admiral Anderson to escape the shattered Earth against the Reaper forces was great.  It was awesome to work with the Admiral and start to understand what is happening.  To feel what the characters are feeling.  Here is Earth, our home in both the game and in the real world and all of a sudden these synthetic life forms that look like colossal squids, come down and start ripping apart our home by pieces, destroying organic life and crushing buildings.

As you play through the game, you get to bump into old friends, lovers and of course, the enemies.  You have so many options as to how different parts of the stories and missions play out that it is highly recommended that you play the two previous games before diving into this third installment.

But, unfortunately, despite the fact that there are so many ways one mission can turn out, that is not how the end of the game plays. Despite your decisions throughout the game, the ultimate ending is based on three options given to you by this child like entity. Three decisions, that you may or may not get access to all of, give you a varying result of sixteen different endings STILL ending the same way.  Granted, I’ve read that there is the “ultimate-perfect” ending, where Shepard lives but it is somewhat hard to obtain if you don’t have a perfect game.

Your three options are to control the Reaper’s, destroy the Reaper’s and all tech (including Mass Relays), or combining both organic and synthetic life.  Sound familiar…*cough* Deus Ex *cough*?

But despite what you choose, the ending cut scene is the Normandy getting eaten up by an exploding Mass Relay (Why is Joker in a Mass Relay in the first place when earlier he was battling on Earth?) and then crash landing on some undiscovered, Earth like planet with Joker and two other randomly chosen members (I say randomly because it could be Joker, EDI and Garrus or Joker, Tali, and Garrus, etc ) that don’t explain how they got there in the first place (I had Liara and Garrus with me, fighting on Earth and SOME HOW Garrus ended up on the ship?) and absolutely NO Explanation of what happened to everyone else (did they survive? Did they all die? Was this all indoctrination? What the flippin’ A is going on, here?).

I mean, I will give some credit that it seemed like they were trying to give a well thought out ending, at first.  The Control option is given a blue aura to represent the paragon choice, however, it has the Illusive Man portraying that option, the Destroy option is represented with a red aura for Renegade but given Anderson to represent the option, and the third option is represented in green.  They also give you a new camera angle as you approach the blue beam to the ship (no one knows where you’re beamed to and they don’t explain that either), a magical pistol that doesn’t need to be reloaded, a slow-mo time frame and just so much more unexplainable things that the end, as a whole doesn’t make sense.

And no, this isn’t just my opinion; it is a high percentage of the Mass Effect fan base that agrees this ending was just terrible. I think it is a terribly written ending and a piss-poor job for the fact that if your audience can NOT figure out exactly what was supposed to be portrayed, then, it is just bad and there have been posts in the Bioware forums that someone is going to “interpret” the endings at the end of this month, March.  That is like a bad joke, where at first, it seems like it is going to be funny, you have hopes it’ll be good, then they tell you the punch line and you just stare blank faced.  Then they preceed to tell you why it was funny and you’ll go “Ohhh…” but you won’t laugh because it isn’t great if someone has to explain to me.

Multiplayer

I have not had the time to try the multiplayer yet but I watched Tony play and it looks a lot of fun.  As many other gamers described to me, it is similar to Hoard Mode on Gears of War so I’m sure I’ll like it.  I’ll update this part when I get around to playing the multiplayer. (Because of this, the score might change)

I am disappointed in the fact that Bioware is basically forcing you to play the multiplayer so you can get the perfect ending. Despite what some people have said, it has only been shown to be that in order to get the “perfect” ending, you need to play it and that is most unfortunate.  Especially since the score degrades whenever you’re not playing it (I’m sorry, I don’t have time every single day to keep playing a game).

General Thoughts

I don’t understand how all these gaming companies can rave on and on about how wonderful Mass Effect 3 is to the end when, in reality, it isn’t. Up to the end, yes, absolutely amazing but the ending, not that great at all, just disappointing. The fact that my choices through the pass games don’t matter, either, break my heart because it is like I put all this time and effort to only have a few choices that have nothing to do with my previous choices. (Also, what is up with that lazy Tali photoshop job? The lack of the Rachni? The lousy advertisement poster with Shepard running as a house gets torn by a Reaper (see: Walking Dead advert) and the ending?)

I wouldn’t be this harsh about how disappointing the ending had been, had they not made the rest of the game as amazing as they did, had this not been a Triple A game title.  I’m upset.

How I justify my score:

The ending was just terrible. As I stated before, if most of your fanbase can’t figure out what exactly or make a decent interpretation of what is going on, then it isn’t a good ending. Simple as that. (-1.5)

The fact that our choices don’t really impact the entirety of the game where, yes, there are 16 different endings (from what I’ve heard) but all-in-all they are all the same. (-.5)

The laziness that has shown up through various parts of the game (e.g. Tali’s sad photoshop) along with the sadness of how some things are just left lacking when it was a big decision to do (e.g. The Rachni’s). Plus the minor annoyance of the glitches that I’ve had to deal with (e.g. they stop speaking half way through their sentence in cut scenes but their mouths keep moving so I would have no idea what was going on had I not had subtitles). (-.5)