Game Review | March 13, 2012 10:14 am

By AJ

Not being a fan of the first game AT ALL, I was very surprised I even decided to give this trilogy a shot after hating the first one so much. The first game, for me, was almost unplayable. Any game that throws you into a large world with tons of different places to explore and has little to no mission markers or navigation system is a complete turn off in my book, both gaming-wise and sexually. But after giving Mass Effect 2 a shot and ALMOST crying at the ending (not actually crying, I'm looking at you Detroit) I knew I had to play 3. Mass Effect 3 follows Mass Effect 2's play style, and is very easy to navigate (if you're familiar with the Normandy and Galaxy Map). Even if you're not a returning fan of the Mass Effect games, this game is very user friendly and takes almost no time at all to get the hang of.

Gameplay

If you're familiar with the Gears of War series and favor their 3rd person play style and cover system, then you'll definitely be a fan of how this game handles. The A button controls pretty much everything in the game from running, to cover, to jumping/diving and all the interact/dialogue menus. A simple tap of the A button will send the player into a diving front flip; best used to evade attacks, enemies and projectiles. Holding the A button will make the player sprint. However, if you turn the left stick too far to the right or left the player will stop running to try and get a better heading before being able to run again. One thing I'm not a fan of is the cover system: If you're too close to cover and try to run, you will almost without fail, take cover. In a firefight this scenario can be deadly. Once in cover, if you did not intend to be in cover it can be very awkward and almost nerve-racking to get out of it. Once you're used to how the game handles, situations like this happen less frequently, but they still happen.


Weapons/Upgrades

The gunplay is an improvement from ME2. Very smooth and fluid aiming/shooting makes the combat excellent. I haven't noticed a snap aim, but I didn't go through all the options the game has to offer. Shooting from cover is probably the most common way players will be engaging enemies, and with no blind-fire option, the player will have to hold LT to pop up from cover and shoot. Finding cover to stand next to instead of crouch behind seems to be a little easier to keep from dying than simply crouch running back and forth behind a barrier. Sniping is something that I did not really care for in ME2 and I can't even remember in ME1. But in ME3, sniping is excellent. It seems to take a more nooby approach, absolutely no reticle movement when scoped in sniping is a breeze (if you pick the infiltrator class when scoping-in time slows down making it even easier). Overall, the gunplay is much like Gears of War as well, however it does seem smoother and more forgiving.

The choices of weapons in the game resembles a Call of Duty layout: Pistols, SMGs, shotguns, assault rifles and sniper rifles. Each category has many different types/makes so if one assault rifle isn't working for you, don't give up on all assault rifles, just try a different one. Most of the weapons have a lot of recoil when firing in automatic. If you want to hit an enemy without wasting too much ammo, pumping the trigger is going to be your best option; if you simply hold down RT to fire the gun will bounce around while making its way towards the sky, making it much harder to control. Players can also take one of each weapon every time they leave the ship for a mission; the heavier the weapon the more time the player will be penalized when trying to recover their ability/powers (we'll get into those in the next section).

Throughout the game you will either find, be rewarded or be able to purchase different and better weapon upgrades. Every weapon has a number of upgrades, from bigger clips to scopes and even damage modifiers. Sadly, you can only equip two upgrades to each weapon, so make sure you choose wisely because you won't be able to change the upgrades until you find a weapon bench or start a new mission.


Abilities/Classes

I'm not going to go into classes and their separate details because that would simply take up way too much space. But there are a number of different classes to choose from when making your character at the start of the game. Each class is assigned certain abilities which are similar to BioShock's plasmid setup and are similar in nature as well. You will be able to use/assign three powers as soon as you use the skill points from leveling up to unlock and then upgrade them. My personal favorite quickly became Singularity. A little orb placed anywhere on the battlefield and nearby enemies will be picked up and forced to simply float helplessly while you mow them down any way you see fit. A couple of my other personal favorites would be: Incinerate, a fireball shot at enemies causing them to catch fire. Warp, almost like hitting an enemy with a mini bomb, this power will do a number of different things to enemies. And last, a combat drone. A basketball sized orb that fires upon and distracts enemies letting you kill them with almost no danger to yourself.


Campaign/A.I.

Now before I start this section, let me first say that I still have a few main missions before the ending, which I heard can really piss people off. That being said, the campaign seems much shorter than ME2; I only have 19 hours invested and I've done about 80% of the side missions and about 90% of the story. This might be due to the fact that multiplayer is now included, but don't expect to spend anywhere near the amount of time you did in ME2 since you cannot land on planets in the galaxy map unless you have a side mission or main mission there. Sadly, you can't even mine for resources on planets anymore (I did really enjoy doing that in ME2). Most of the planets in the game don't even have anything on them at all so when you select them in the galaxy map the only option you have is to read the planet's overview.

The campaign is very linear for the most part, but the combinations of squad-mates and Paragon/Renegade choices are almost endless. If you import a character, like ME2 all your decisions follow you so don't expect any surprises if you were a jackass in ME1 & 2. Your squad-mates are familiar to the most part if you've played the other games, there is one new character that you couldn't take with you on missions before and she's one of my favorite to take with when I go on missions. I won't give anything away, but she's pretty funny.

Just like the player has the option to customize weapons and abilities, the player can also upgrade squad-mates weapons and abilities to better help in combat situations. If a squad-mate has singularity, you might not want or need to equip it; you may want to equip something that will hurt the enemy while your team is using singularity. You can also choose how your squad-mates weapons are set up: Focusing on either range, more damage, or a high capacity. I haven't used the order option in the campaign to tell the A.I. to do anything or cover a certain area, so I can't write anything about that. Feel free to discuss that in the comments, I've never felt the need to use it because my A.I. hardly ever get downed, but after talking with other players and friends they seem to be having the opposite experience.


Multiplayer

Having not played the demo or been following the game's detailed information before release, I thought it was competitive, not a horde clone as has been described. Not knowing that before purchasing the game I figured I would never play it as a few members of the site had said. But after being persuaded to play by a few friends, I don't regret a single moment of it. The four player co-op is addictive and can be paced from the casual gamer to the hardcore gamer. With three different difficulties: bronze, silver and gold (gold being the hardest) players can choose what level they want to play. They can also choose between three different enemies: reapers, cerberus or geth (none of them are particularly harder than the others but some might be a bit more of challenge depending on what character you're playing as).

The leveling system in this mode is similar to the campaign but level 20 is the cap with one character. It rakes roughly 5-7 hours to get a single character to level 20 and each match takes between 20-30 minutes to complete all the waves and objectives. Once you hit 20 with a character you can continue using that character (with full upgrades) or start another character. This is where your N7 rank comes into play. Your N7 rank is the combined rank of every level you've progressed through with every character in multiplayer games. If you played an Engineer to level 10 and a Soldier to level 18, your N7 rank would be 28. Not sure what the highest rank possible is, but that would take a while because some characters must be purchased (the purchase is random though, I've bought the same character about 8 times, not intentionally since they come in different packs available to purchase with credits earned from matches).


Achievements

The achievements for ME3 are fairly straightforward and most can be obtained by simply progressing through the story and playing a bit of multiplayer. There are a few missables, so if you miss them and your gamertag is Minioger plan on playing through the game again. I would suggest looking up a strategy guide that spoils as little as possible if you want to get everything in one playthrough (except the insane achievement, unless you plan on completing all 6 multiplayer maps on gold difficulty). I'd say somewhere between 500-800 is easily possible with minimum effort and little to no side missions; this will probably take you anywhere between 25-30 hours and however long you want to play multiplayer. The completion, on the other hand, would probably take an estimated 45-60 hours (counting a second playthrough or all the attempts trying to complete maps on gold). The 5,000 kills achievement may seem like a daunting task, but I have well over 2,000 kills just from playing 7-8 hours of multiplayer and the 19 from the campaign. The good thing about the multiplayer is that if you miss a certain kill related achievement in the campaign you can simply load up a custom multiplayer game and get the achievement there.


Overall

Overall I'd give this game a 9/10 even though I haven't finished it. My philosophy on that would be, the end can't ruin the last 20 or so hours you've been having a blast while playing, so stop being a whiny bitch about the end and deal with it.

The only semi-negative thing I've noticed with the game is what I mentioned with the cover system and how it can be erratic at times. If I've missed anything or there's something you'd like to know about, ask in the comments or check this thread.


Thanks for reading!

Reviewed: Mass Effect 3

Keywords: Mass Effect 3, Review, ME3; review