Reviews VideoGame / Mass Effect 3

Huh, review didn't quite come out how I liked. I guess that's my fault for trying to fit so much into 400 words.

Just a note: I consider multiplayer to be its own separate game and will write a separate review for all the DLC when it comes out. If the limit left my review too vague, I'll elaborate on any points people have questions about here.

I disagree with the storyline in Mass Effect 3. Like most of Bio Ware's games, I thought the quality of the story is top-notch (with the exception of the endgame prior to the release of the Extended Cut). But I digress.

Yes, you didn't focus on the endgame like most reviews here!

"the game never feels cheap"

Three words: Thessia, Kai Leng.

I think this game is great fun, mechanically. I enjoy the multiplayer because it showcases the gameplay. I still can't figure out how I feel about this game. I have a love/hate relationship with it.

Originally it was going to say "cheaply difficult", but I had a specific word limit. To clarify, I was talking about single player's gameplay.

Yeah, I know what you mean. For the most part it wasn't cheap. That one part though...that made me so made. It wasn't cheaply difficult, it was cheaply impossible.

That should say "made me so mad."

Pretty much. Great gameplay, some amazing moments, but the story is overall weak and flawed. Auto-dialogue aside, the dialogue itself is the best in the series.

I believe I should mention some things I didn't like that weren't in the review: the war assets are an incredibly lame mechanic because it's just numbers on a meter. You will never see the rachni fighting; you will never see krogan riding dinosaurs into battle; you will never see elcor artillery, or that heavy frigate you salvaged. The numbers are also ridiculously arbitrary; rive asari commandos are equivalent to a frigate, an N7 team is equivalent to an infantry division, one krogan company is equivalent to an infantry division, et cetera. Not to mention the massive amounts of fridge logic that kick in when you actually count your assets and realize that they wouldn't even be able to make a dent in taking a single city, yet alone the entire goddamned planet.

In the end, all it amounts to is the choices Starbrat feels like giving you, and whether or not the Normandy gets stranded for... some reason.

There's a very good chance that Retaliation is the last MP DLC we're getting, so you might want to start thinking how you'll review it now.

By "all the DLC" I meant ALL the DLC, for both single and multi player. I mean I could write three reviews, one for single player DLC and one for multiplayer, but that'd probably get taken down as one of those "two part" reviews.

Though maybe I'll review it all after Omega comes out and just edit in the last few DL Cs when they come out. Wait, what happened to the edit button in the comments? I could've sworn there used to be one.

It was removed quite a long time ago now. Other people were editing/vandalising other people's comments I guess.

I feel like your review most aptly reflects my opinion everything about the gameplay was pitch perfect but the plot and choices completely screwball under the slightest analysis, yet the emotional points are good enough that it ends up not being so important.

The only thing missing is a negative on how bad so much of the environments look. You spend the majority of the game on Tuchanka, Rannoch, Earth and the moon of Palaven all of which are doing various takes on apocalyptic barren wasteland and not particularly lovely examples of that. It's actually my main problem with the game, because I can forget about the plot and instead remember the characters and emotions, but the ugliness of so much is the one really sour emotional note

This is kind of a nit-pick on the War Assets, but the way multiplayer ties in is kind of insane. If you "promote" your level 20 characters in MP, you get permanent assets (that is, they apply to current and future new games alike). Right now, I think I've promoted something like 50 MP characters, and they're good for around 50 War Assets apiece...which lands me a permanent 2500 War Assets. That is enough to get fullest endings with literally no effort outside of plot missions in the SP campaign (even before the EC that was a sizable chunk of the necessary assets). I'm not sure why they designed it like this.

@Spirit: Tuchanka and Earth were ugly, but I really liked the looks of Thessia, Rannoch, and Tuchanka.

"Tuchanka and Earth were ugly, but I really liked the looks of Thessia, Rannoch, and Tuchanka."

Huh?

? Spirit

I forgot Thessia. There were cool bits there, but the actual ground you walked on still ended up looking like Tuchanka. I need to clarify a little bit though, all of them (except Tuchanka) had very pretty skyboxes. But the actual landscape and what you ended up looking at for the most of the game was complete dross and utterly identical between almost every non-city location. It wasn't even good dross.

Okay the wasteland was necessary, but it looks ugly even compared to other wastelands. I've tested it out on people and Korriban in Koto R legitimately looks more interesting that Tuchanka. There's no colour or contrast at all and they'e all got this ugly brown filter thing going on

@Jack: I meant to type Palaven the first time.

@Tom: I meant to type tom.

I usually make mistakes the first time I type something due to usually being in a hurry when I write these comments. This is why I miss that goddamned edit button.

@Joban: I don't see much wrong with it considering the obscene amount of grinding it takes to promote 50 squads. I've only promoted like 8 and I've been playing since March.

I guess the thing that seems weird to me is that MP removes incentive to fully explore the SP environment. It does take a lot to get to where I've gotten, yes, but I don't like that my MP progress sort of erases the need for any future SP effort. It's not exactly bad that the game rewards this way, but it's unusual. I never got to experience the "bad" endings to the game, and now even my failiest of fail runs will result in complete success. Sometimes it's fun to play the game and do everything wrong, but now because I've put in time and effort in MP I'm sort of railroaded into seeing the fruits of my labors, even if I don't want to. If that makes any sort of sense at all.

Sorry I was being harsh and only meant it in fun, no-one who types as atrociously and incoherently as me can point out other peopel's typos =D

@Joban is there an option to disconnect from the EA servers? If they aren't online at any point you're playing they won't count MP progress. I'm not sure they give you the option though

@Joban: I have a bigger problem with war assets as a whole. "Fully explore the SP environment" seems to translate to "do a bunch of fetch quests". Previous choices matter for very little (outside of Tuchanka and Rannoch) when you can just do boring fetch quests to get hundreds of assets.

Also, some of the results of the choices are pretty illogical, further damaging the credibility of the whole war assets mechanic. This results in the game missing several opportunities for some great moral choices. As for the MP thing: I don't really know what it's like to enjoy getting the worse ending, so I can't comment on that.

Well it seems pretty natural to try it. One nice run, one renegade run and one make everything as awful as possible run.

@CPF Mfan Well yeah, to be completely fair the War Assets mechanic on the whole isn't too great. I guess I'm just trying to be nice about it, but there isn't exactly a lot to "explore" in the traditional sense of the word.

@Tomwithnonumbers Somehow, that never occurred to me. It may be possible, and it's at least worth a try. When I import my fail run from ME 2 I'll try doing it while disconnected from the servers and see if that cuts out those MP assets.

Playing offline does remove your MP assets.

The war assets make some sense you think of each asset having points related to useful they are in relative terms. The problem comes in when they all are just dumped in one large pile, leaving with a margin for error in the thousands when the worth of many assets are in the double digits. If they were divided up between, say, Sword and Shield and Hammer forces then every one of the asset's value would increase.

Even in relative terms most of these would be completely useless. Single people or ships should not even qualify as a single point in a galactic war like this. Sci Fi Writers Have No Sense Of Scale.

Plus, the war assets don't actually have a logical effect. It just determines what choices Starbrat feels like giving you. Which is a shame, since with more work they could've made this mechanic decent.