Continuing with the celebration of all things Mass Effect we take a look at Mass Effect 3, released in March of 2012. Mass Effect 3 is the culmination of the original trilogy and the climax of Commander Shepard’s campaign against the Reapers. It was touted as being driven by the decisions you made before and boasted a four player multi-player mode that tied directly into your success in the single player campaign.
The multi-player aspect took a lot of criticism because the game more or less forced you to play multi whether you wanted to or not in order to succeed properly against the Reapers. You literally could not “win” the game without playing several hours of multi-player either during or right before you started the final mission of the game. While not a huge fan of multi-player shooter games (honestly because I suck at them) I found it enjoyable enough to play and didn’t feel obligated at all.
The story of ME3 begins on Earth where Shepard is detained by Alliance command while they investigate his ties to Cerberus (from ME2). In short order everything goes to hell when the Reapers attack and Shepard is reinstated to lead the resistance and gather the multiple Citadel species to fight back. Early on, Shepard reunites with Dr. Liara T’Soni who has found a weapon that can stop the Reapers but it has to be built. Military readiness and the completion of this weapon becomes the focus of the game as Shepard struggles to unite the Milky Way by of course, doing everyone huge favors and saving them before anyone will agree to help save Earth.
The ending of the Mass Effect trilogy is the constant subject of scorn. Many people feel that the decisions and actions made in the previous games had no bearing on the third. Which they do; especially as to how you treat your crew effects who survives what disaster. How the Geth and the Quarians are treated in ME2 DIRECTLY influences events in ME3, for instance. The very outcome of the game depends on your diplomacy or aggression in the first two games.
Another criticism is the ending. A lot of folks don’t believe that Shepard would have made any of those choices. I would like to point out again what I said in the review for the original game. If you didn’t know this wasn’t going to have a Hollywood Happy Ending in the first five minutes of Mass Effect you weren’t paying proper attention. There was never going to be a happily ever after and I applaud the game and the developers for sticking to that. Sure, everyone wants to see Shepard run of with his/her mate and get rewarded, but that just isn’t in the cards and it wouldn’t have been appropriate to the tone of the story. Go read Shakespeare and some Homer and you’ll see the tradition that the Mass Effect Trilogy universe is based on.
The ME3 story is a natural progression for Shepard into becoming more than just a soldier, more than just a hero for hire, more than that lone voice calling for sanity. He becomes a true leader and brings out those qualities in his companions as well either for good or bad. The free DLC wrapping the story up in a bow is nice, but in my mind was unnecessary. Yes, I realize I’m in the minority.
The graphics for ME3 have undergone a few upgrades. It is overall brighter feeling (even with the dark tone of the story). The sound maintains BioWare’s commitment to fully voiced games. Everyone returns to their roles one last time. It feels more than a bit like homecoming.
The control aspect of ME3 has a couple of improvements; most notably that the cover function seems to have finally gotten a good streamlining. The remainder of the basic controls stays on par. The exploration system took the biggest change here. The flight and general star system exploration remains the same as ME2 but the annoying scan for minerals is now gone. The only difficulty in the exploration system is alerting Reapers to your presence and having a limited amount of time to search for hidden items before getting jumped and auto-losing the game. I can deal with the getting jumped, but auto-losing if engaged by a Reaper is a bit much.
Summing Up:
Story: 5/5: I am very proud of BioWare sticking to their guns and not caving into pressure to Hollywoodize the ending of the Mass Effect Trilogy. It isn’t a happy ending, but it is a fitting one.
Graphics: 5/5: Subtle improvements over ME2 make the game continue to be superior. Honestly, the graphics in ME3 are better than ME Andromeda in my opinion.
Sound: 5/5: Staying on top in this category seems to be BioWare’s thing.
Control: 4/5: It is a very smooth and polished game to play. The multi-player and single player fighting isn’t frustrating nor is it a frag-fest for twitch players like the CoD games. As far as shooters go, the ME series is one of the best. Does suffer from a mildly lackluster exploration system with a frustrating penalty.
Playability: 4.75/5: To give you a idea of what I think of this game, I was in the middle of playing it for the third time through when Andromeda came out.