Mass Effect 3

O lordeh people, this one will be a very long post and may contain some spoilers. I'll try to avoid as many spoilers as possible and mark them before hand. Please note this is only one play of experiences (18 hours).

It has been many a year since I have put down everything to beat a game. The last game I ditched school, homework and social life for was probably KotOR back when it first came out (2003). Overall this game is amazing, and if I could marry it I would. My only complaint is to get the most out of your play through you needed to play both ME1 & ME2. Just know

This is how you end a series.

This game starts a few months after the events of ME2, Shepard has surrendered to Alliance forces. However, just before he is to face a trial for his actions, unknown forces begin to strike the Sol Sector. The unknown forces are in fact the Reapers, Shepard finds himself hurled into action, yet again. Shepard finds himself escaping Earth and gathering allies to begin a counter-offensive against the Reapers and save the galaxy.



As you begin actually playing the game you will notice it feels a lot like Mass Effect 2, and you would be correct with that feeling. Luckily, Bioware has added some new features to mix it up. you can now easily traverse from cover-to-cover dramatically improving the pacing of each firefight. This alone allows pushing forward or running away much easier. Also the addition of ladders and jumps... I have never liked ladders in games and this game didn't change that.



To make things even better, classes no longer limit your gun selection. Meaning every class can use an Assault Rifle, Sniper Rifle, Pistol, SMG, and Shotgun. But that would cause massive balance issues, so to compensate the more weapons you carry the more weight. If you the weight of your guns is above or below you threshold you will have an increased or decreased power cool-down. Each gun is collected along your journey along with upgrades to improve damage, accuracy, capacity, piercing power, and a gun specific improvement. After that newer models of the gun can be bought to continue its improvement.



Also coming to help are your powers, with some new evolutions to really change things up. Each power now has six levels and the last three have you choose between two varieties (example: Damage vs AOE). On top that, if you import an ME2 character you will also be at that level with the same powers. So in my case I started the game out with a level 30 soldier. For those of you wondering, I hit the level cap (60), very easily I might add.



To avoid spoilers I'll throw a warning out about this paragraph, but I will try to keep it vague. This game like the previous ones, continues the tradition of an amazing storyline. The characters are mostly returning ones with the exception of one, and everyone you have met will make an appearance. While very little has changed with each of them, it will still be fun to talk with them. If asked I can reveal more about the story through PMs.



After sprinting through this amazing game, I will highly recommend this game. Even now I'm debating starting again... But that is after I get some sleep. Staff feel free to go grammar-nazi on this, its 2 am and I be too tired to catch any more mistakes.

This is NOT how you end a series. I'm glad you liked it. I didn't. I considered the game to be a personal insult to every single ME1/2 player in existence. I thought it was the computer game equivalent of a crappy Hollywood sequel.

The story was a complete retread of elements already covered in ME1/2. Entire story arcs are lifted wholesale from ME1. Resolutions achieved in ME2 were ignored. Promises and implications made by the story and characters in ME1/2 were ignored or repudiated in ME3.

The ending(s) could be seen about five miles away, the Crucible was the worse case of Deus Ex Machina I've ever seen. It seemed cribbed from old movies like AI, or TV shows like Babylon 5 or (gods help us) old STNG episodes.

The guns were nice. The gun selection is the only thing I like in this game. But they weren't even creative about it, they used the "dropped guns" gimmick from Borderlands.

The combat maps were way, way, way too linear. It's like we were back in the DOS days of early gaming, when the only path in the fight was straight ahead. That sort of map went out of style back around Max Payne.

Bioware's advertising stated that the NPC enemies were more "adaptive, more challenging." Ha! If by that they meant that the NPCs could do the old repcom/UT sideways hop, they're right. Hype. The bad guys in ME3 are standard gaming NPCs. The bad guys in Jedi Academy and Max Payne 2 were more challenging.

But to come back to my original gripe, the story. It repeats EVERYTHING from ME1/2. Everything! And to add insult to injury, they stuck in a Black Hat killer just to piss me off. I've been bored and insulted by Black Hat killers since the first one I saw, sitting on my dad's knee watching a Saturday-afternoon Western on TV. It's a crutch for lazy writers. Where are the subtleties, the cool ideas of ME1/2? I've heard Bioware has been sucking up to Hollywood lately. Is this the result?

I feel I need to warn several members, who, like me, sometimes feel a little down about things. So much of ME3 is unremittingly negative (personal loss, death of loved ones, pain, suffering) it might not be the best game to play. The humor and fun of ME1/2, which balanced those games emotionally, is largely missing in ME3.

I will not supply specific spoilers to bolster my arguments. I'd rather not. I don't like to give spoilers for brand new games, even when I'm trashing them. Someone might want to see what the fuss is about, and for those who haven't played ME1/2, the game might not be that bad. Bad, but not horribly bad, the feelings of complete betrayal will be missing. If you want spoilers to bolster my arguments, go over to the review forums at Bioware's social network. Plenty of proof there.

http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/355/index/9658945/9
Registration required. You might not be allowed to post if you don't own a Bioware game.

The bad guys always wore black hats in old cowboy movies. It became an old pop culture term for menacing superassassins in action movies.

I've played some grim games, but ME3 takes the cake as far as disturbing imagery taken from real life: funerals, suicides, and the like. Remember, I WAS a hardcore ME fan. I've played all the games, multiple play-throughs of ME1/2. Got all the dlcs, even the hard-to-find ME1 dlcs. There's got to be something seriously wrong with the game if I don't like it. You see people getting shot in the back of the head execution-style in ME1/2. That didn't bother me much. But the crap they lay out in ME3, yeah, disturbing. Too close to home for those who have experienced it. I suppose I could have tried to ignore it if the rest of the game weren't broken and worthless.

I'll let Hitler speak for me about the ending. Warning! Massive spoilers and profanity! That's why I didn't embed it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qYm738hq1o
Hitler Discovers Mass Effect 3 Ending Ruins 1 & 2 and Makes No Sense - !!!SPOILERS!!!

lol.

At the rate of fail in the game franchises I follow, I may have to take up Skyrim.

frang wrote:At the rate of fail in the game franchises I follow, I may have to take up Skyrim.

Hey Frang I have to ask did you follow Bioware's press releases/updates closely?

In the last couple days, no. I've been spending all my spare time at the social forums at Bioware, on Metacritic, other gamer sites, and on a couple ME3 discussions over at youtube. Fascinating stuff. I've said this in posts elsewhere, I don't spite anyone who's gotten some fun out of ME3. A lot of people did enjoy the game. Good. I'm glad they got their money's worth out of it. I didn't. In entertainment, all things are fundamentally subjective. I've loved some movies that the great Ebert called trash. America loved Independence Day, I thought it was trash. I've been in the minority in my opinions for so long, I'm used to it.

Forgive me if I always seem overly assertive in arguments. I grew up in a household that loved to argue and contend (in a good-natured way), so I come by it naturally.

Just in case.....

https://www.facebook.com/DemandABetterEndingToMassEffect3

Yep.

If you are suffering from Mass Effect 3 Induced Depression (ME3ID), I suggest a dose of:

https://www.facebook.com/DemandABetterEndingToMassEffect3

lolz!