Nothing has got me so excited for a game like Bioware’s finale to the Mass Effect series, Mass Effect 3.  I haven’t gone to a midnight launch since Halo 2 came out in 2004, nor have I pulled an all-nighter in quite awhile.  Mass Effect launched a brand new space opus with a universe that contains a robust history.  Bioware hit gold with this series, and now they’ve released the last of the trilogy backed by an incredible amount of hype.  Sales may not reach the massive record numbers of Modern Warfare 3, but does ME3 live up to the hype? 

It most certainly does on a majority of fronts.  If you haven’t been following the series, you need to play the first two games.  Honestly, you’re shooting yourself in the foot if you don’t play them.  Otherwise, the short story is that Commander Shepard had a premonition after touching a prothean artifact that warned him of an imminent annihilation from an alien race known as the Reapers who purge every life form in the universe every 50,000 years.  The second game has Commander Shepard collecting information on entire human colonies disappearing all over the universe.  After finding out that the Collectors were behind the colony abductions and helping the Reapers build an army to attack the universe, Shepard has to prevent this from happening.

Now, the Reaper invasion has begun, thus the “Take Earth Back” phrase seen in all of the trailers.  The first two games were the set-up for this grand finale and the “epic”-ness of it all is exhilarating.  The Reapers have started invading all over the galaxy, but your central focus is taking Earth back and rallying up allies to come together and fight back against the reapers.  The history in the Mass Effect universe is incredibly detailed, and you must persuade races that have been waging war on each other for years to put aside their differences and band together to resist the Reapers before they wipe them out.  This is done through certain choices you make with dialogue, as well as taking care of various tasks so that the races will believe that you mean what you say.  To make things more complicated, Cerberus is also up to something and so while you prepare to fight back against the Reapers you have to take care of their shenanigans as well.

Bioware has created one hell of a story, and the way your decisions of dialogue and actions during missions affect the game is what has made the Mass Effect series such a huge success.  You can start from scratch with decisions made in previous games automatically selected, or you can import your character saves from the first two games in order to have decisions from both ME and ME2 affect how your game plays out in this final installment (unless you’re playing on PS3, which only ME2 and ME3 are playable on, Microsoft still owns the rights to the first game).  A lot of characters from ME2 certainly return, however most of them only make cameo appearances during side missions.  This time around Bioware has acknowledged the various ways that gamers play through Mass Effect, and so they have created three different difficulty levels.  If you’re more into the story, then there’s a difficulty that scales down the fights and allows you to get to the cut-scenes.  If you’re more into the combat, the difficulty is scaled accordingly allowing you to fight more and engage in the story less.  I played on the middle setting that’s a mixture of both elements that has become the standard way to play Mass Effect. 

Combat has been slightly improved, especially with the heightened sense of urgency in the Reaper invasion.  Shepard is now much more maneuverable.  The sprint feature has been improved and plays a much more important role, as well as Shepard’s ability to roll in different directions to avoid fire.  Getting to cover can be a pain sometimes, but ME3 relies on the sprint and cover mechanic pretty heavily.  This could potentially turn a bunch of people off, but I think that it’s fun and helps aid the tension that’s building in the story.  The power wheel returns as you hold down either L2 or R2 to bring up your abilities and weapons.  The abilities are pretty much the same with a few new ones, but leveling them up gives you better customization with your characters.  Now after a certain level, each ability tree splits into two paths that allow you to choose which upgrade suits your play style better.  I’m not a big fan of the melee, so when one of my ability decisions was increased melee or something like more health I chose more health.  Speaking of melee, it’s better than the first Uncharted, but it’s still clumsy and overall ineffective.  The only cool thing is the new omni-blade, which you can charge up in front of enemies to wipe them out.  It’s much easier said than done though.  The charge attack takes a few seconds to charge, leaving you immobilized and open to attack for about 3 seconds.  It wouldn’t be that big of a deal if enemies stood in place as well.  Half of the time, during the moment that the blade attack is charging, the enemy that you are aiming for has already moved around you as you swipe at the air.  This can get frustrating, and after the first 10 hours or so of playing around with it I eventually just didn’t use it that much at all unless I had camouflage activated. 

The experience system has also changed.  I wasn’t a fan of the bulk experience with a “Mission Complete” screen like in ME2 and apparently Bioware felt that it needed to change as well.  Experience is earned as you play for completing various checkpoints, reading data pads strewn around the environments, etc.  There seems to be many more weapons to choose from this time around, including the pre-order bonus rifle and the super cool particle beam rifle obtained after completing the “From Ashes” downloadable content (which I am NOT p*ssed about being available day one).  The weapon selection is handled differently this time around, and they’ve become much more customizable with modifications that you can mix and match to pretty much whatever combat style you prefer to go with.  One of my favorite new weapons is the Krogan shotgun.  It packs a hell of a punch to begin with, but combined with its ability to charge up and shoot out a super charged blast is very satisfying. 

One of the new things in Mass Effect 3 is the galactic readiness, along with an addicting cooperative multiplayer.  Galactic readiness is a measurement of how prepared you are to face the Reapers.  Depending on your galactic readiness, you’ll unlock various endings with different outcomes.  Completing N7 side missions, as well as competing in the brand new multiplayer can increase your readiness.  I’m sure hardcore Mass Effect players had heavy doubts that Mass Effect wouldn’t translate well to multiplayer.  Bioware is able to achieve not only a fun wave style cooperative game, but tied it to the single player game by increasing the galactic readiness after a successful mission.  Multiplayer is fun, but even the Bronze challenges can get tough, so finding a good set of three other players is crucial.  There are three types of challenge levels broken down by Bronze, Silver, and Gold.  The better the metal, the harder the missions are.  The multiplayer maps are created and modified from locations available in the single player N7 missions, and your goal is to survive multiple waves of enemies in order to gain experience and level up your character’s abilities.  As you gain more experience, more characters open up, which allows you to experiment with different ability sets.  Unfortunately you cannot modify what abilities your character can learn, but I like the character differences better than being able to mix and match anything I want.  The multiplayer wasn’t necessary, but it’s a cool addition that does nothing but give Mass Effect fans more to do.

Now for the things that I didn’t really like that much, including planet scanning that makes its return from ME2, however it’s modified to just sending out waves to bounce off materials that can be recovered.  Every time you do this though will alert the Reapers to your location, which I think was a cool addition.  Your journal and codex has been cleaned up and made a little simpler this time around.  Priority missions still appear as you reach certain points in the game and the N7 missions are a nice way to improve your combat skill and level up.  The side missions are what really irritate me.  Instead of receiving these missions after talking to different non-playable characters, you have to over hear conversation that will add “fetch” quests to your mission log.  I don’t like how vague these missions are, and the fact that you really can’t tell whether you have an item that is needed, or know who the hell you’re suppose to go and give it to.

I haven’t played the Xbox 360 version, but the PS3 version can get very choppy and glitchy.  I powered through ME2 on PS3 without letting the buggy system get to me, but I expected Bioware to do a better job with Mass Effect 3 considering how big of a deal it was across multiple platforms (X360, PS3, PC).  My game froze three times, and I waited for it to do it several more times throughout my play through that affected my overall enjoyment.  I wanted to play it without expecting something to happen, which sadly didn’t happen.  There are also several instances where textures phase in and out, cut-scenes seem to skip ahead, and dialogue gets cut short.  I’d probably say that I’d prefer having to disc swap playing the X360 version, rather than chug along with the PS3 version. 

Graphics and Sound
As glitchy as Mass Effect 3 got though, it’s still a good-looking game.  Surfaces are even shinier than they were in ME2, and the scale of the universe as you looked at moons, suns, and star systems in the background.  The trailers don’t really do justice to the actual game.  The worlds are far more detailed than before.  Even the dark underground ruins of Tuchanka that you use a flashlight to explore looks amazing.  There is a lot more happening in ME3 than the first two games, and the cut-scenes help portray the sense of chaos, unity, and survival with some action packed scenes.  The introduction is pretty epic, and there are some exciting ones throughout the game.  It’s just a shame that the PS3 struggles at times to keep up with the action.  There are times that the frame rate drops significantly, especially during the more intense sequences, but the effect of the cut-scenes is still felt.

The excellent voice work continues, which further pulls you into Bioware’s creative story telling.  The simple background music returns to set the mood by creeping about in the background with soft strings and horns during calm times, and frenetic and fast tempo when the action heats up.  One of the simpler touches that I like is when your shields are down and you’re about to die, sound is drowned out, giving you the effect that you’re about to go down. 

Overall
While the PS3 version of Mass Effect 3 certainly has its issues, it is still a must have game.  I’ll probably play the game again on the X360 for comparison and to start with a fresh save to see the choices made and outcome.  Bioware has done a good job with the Mass Effect series, creating a universe with characters that people care about and interesting story telling that thrives off the different choices you make throughout the game.  Definitely check this out, and with the PS3 version hope that your game doesn’t crash.

Recommended: Yes