"Mass Effect 3" Review

Publisher:  EA/Bioware

Genre:  RPG

Summary:  As the Reapers attack, Shepherd must unite the galaxy to defeat them.

Gameplay:  Combat is similar to Mass Effect 2.  The abilities are the same, but there are higher-powered options.  Locations are generally bigger and more wide-open.  Somehow, this usually makes them less interesting.  Enemies are all either Reapers, Cerberus, or (rarely) Geth.

Weapons can now be equipped by any class, but with cooldown times penalties.  Weapons mods also return.  Armor is much the same as the last game, with parts or whole sets that add various bonuses available for purchase, but helmets don't appear in cutscenes, finally.  Also, Shepherd is in casual clothes on the Citadel, which helps a lot (and I like the choices of casual clothes better, too.)

The only minigame is scanning solar systems to find useful items or minor quest solutions, which runs the risk of summoning the Reapers.  This is more interesting than scanning planets from the last game, but I wish some of these quests had actual missions attached.

The smaller non-necessary quests that are in the game are so brief that they seem to be nothing more than introductions to the multiplayer maps they take place in (and they don't even always do a great job of that, as not all maps are seen and the missions are often too brief to get a good sense of place.)  Fleshing these out would have lent a lot more feeling to the game.

As for multiplayer, I enjoyed it a bit, but single-player is my primary interest, and multiplayer was originally far too tied into a successful game ending.  Bonuses are fine, but required multiplayer is not a good idea.

Style:  I really like the graphics of the game, but everything is too dang dark, literally.  I turned up the brightness as far as possible, and I still can't see everything sometimes.  Nevertheless, there are atmospheric locations and excellent music.

Story:  Mass Effect 3 sometimes runs into the problem of a million being a statistic.  For all it tries to drive home the horror of the Reapers, personal stories work better (and sometimes there it succeeds.)  And still sometimes when the characters seem horrified by the war it feels more like the game's trying to hammer in the doom rather than evoke genuine emotion.

Also, the game compounds the problem from Mass Effect 2 of not being able to call out the Illusive Man enough.  While Cerberus's crimes are acknowledged, Shepherd never really gets to confront the Illusive Man about them in a satisfying enough manner for my taste.

Familiar characters return from both games, and there are a few new faces that manage to establish themselves as memorable characters in their own right.  There are still a few minor characters I wish had made an appearance (whatever happened to Gianna Parasini?) given it's the last game of the trilogy.

Also for that reason, I wish we'd gotten to see more of the galaxy and see these worlds before Reaper attack.  But I appreciate several core missions that tie up major plot threads from all the games, and vary greatly depending on Shepherd's decisions throughout.  These feature epic and memorable locations and moments.

It's a pity these lesson as the game comes to a close and its infamously bad ending.  I think I'll detail all the issues there in a separate post, but suffice to say that the ending is a disappointment and a let down.

Conclusion:  Mass Effect 3 contains fun combat and satisfyingly wraps up several of the Mass Effect trilogy's story arcs.  Yet it has several story flaws and a horrible ending.  I've found it thankfully salvageable with mods, but it's a shame it had to be.