If you look back in history; the reader will notice I absolutely loved Mass Effect 2. It was one of my favorite games of all time. I even went so far as to say that it might be the Greatest Game Ever Made. With this in mind, please realize that I had pretty high expectations for Mass Effect 3.
I started playing on launch day, and managed to play just about every day until I finished the game last night. It certainly is a good game in the sense that your all ways really interested in what you might find next and what kind of story elements and old friends might creep into your current story. Let me also say that I used my imported Mass Effect 2 save. Which means that I started with a pretty high level Shepard and lots of DLC history for the game to pull from. Including the Arrival, which really informs the beginning of the game. If the player hasn’t played Mass Effect, Mass Effect 2, and all the DLC. The player might not get the full experience. The lack of emotional investment may seriously impact the player’s experience in the game. Because no matter what any one says this game is all about concluding a Trilogy. Not building any kind of descent story or relationship with the player apart from that.
Let me get multiplayer out of the way right off the bat. The multiplayer is pretty good. Certainly not nearly as good or well polished as Dead Space 2 or Gears of War 3. But all right even with the not quite ready for 3rd person focused third person shooting. The lack of interesting starting character models really takes away from the overall desire to play it. If I’m going to play multiplayer, I should at least be able to play a Turian, Krogan, or Asari right off the bat. The terrible microtransaction based random drop purchasing also doesn’t do the game any favors. Finally, by having people level up and get access to new powers or stronger current powers; makes playing with low level players a non-starter for anyone playing for a long time. If you have 2 high level characters on the team; they certainly don’t want 2 level 3 folks that they have drag around for 10 waves. I did play quite a bit of the multiplayer overall. But as something to make me return to the game; or play long enough to uplift my character to the Galaxy at War. Mass Effect 3’s multiplayer just isn’t that compelling with SO MANY other fully fleshed out good wave based shooters. Mass Effect 3’s multiplayer had to be unique and it was anything but that. Arguing that the multiplayer maps are integrated from the single player making them better, actually just cheapened the total value of these maps overall. Rather than making either one of them better.
My main issue with Mass Effect 3 was what seemed to be the total lack of effort on the part of the developers to use the assets they all ready had from Mass Effect 2. While Tali, Liara, and Miranda were used pretty well throughout the game; I found the fact that Thane, Grunt, Jack, and Jacob were virtually ignored to make room for James, Ashley, Javik, Diana Allers, and EDI. This seemed like needless work. To think that the player would be more interested in getting to know new people when they spent the entire previous game getting to know so many characters; drops the emotional ball for the series in general. Not that I hated the new characters necessarily and Javik in particular is an excellent character(Javik is from the From the Ashes DLC and it is a necessity for anyone invested in the Mass Effect universe. Don’t miss this, if your buying the game). But my point is only that the game would have been better served by having the surviving team from Mass Effect 2 return. This is especially true given the scenes in latter portions of the game where the developers really try to shoehorn in some emotional weight that for the most part the rest of game has with stops and starts. Also, the long monotonous dream sequences were completely out of place in the third episode of a series where the player has been building their own story for over 80 hours.
At the beginning of the game the Earth is attacked by the Reapers and you must go around the galaxy collecting fleets to come to earth to destroy them. On paper this is an interesting concept but the idea of Commander Shepard wandering around the galaxy doing various things other than getting back to earth and kicking the Reapers butts. While they come close to trying to explain this away. It all falls apart when Shepard starts having to go off and find relics or some other little quest for some random NPC. While the system itself is flimsy; this one extra step just goes a little too far. Especially when most of the time Shepard isn’t ACTUALLY asked to look for these things; he just over hears a person’s conversation and then the player has a quest to go off and find this stuff. There is no indication when the quest’s needs have been fulfilled. So the player has to look for new names on the Citadel map to find these people again. This seems like a really unnecessary and ultimately unbelievable design for something that shouldn’t really have been in there to begin with.
While I did enjoy seeing all my old companions from previous games. It did stretch the suspension of disbelief a little. It was like, “Of all the gin joints in all the cities in all the world; you had to walk into mine.” Around seven to ten times. Then the characters can’t even help you on your little quest to save the earth. At least for the most part. My Shepard was involved with Miranda in Mass Effect 2 and even after her problems were over she still wasn’t able to join me in the final battle. Our last conversation was over vidcom. It just didn’t make any sense; given how incredibly ridiculous the rest of the coincidences were. I mean if I could run into 6 people I wasn’t looking for in my adventures. Why couldn’t I find the one person I WOULD have been looking for, for the final battle. Because for whatever reason, they didn’t want to do it that way. Which would have been fine if there was something just as dramatic in it’s place. Except that what was there kind of fell flat.
Mass Effect 2 began Mass Effect’s journey from RPG to third person shooter. While Mass Effect 3 doesn’t do anything major to change this move the needle one way or another. Most of the actual shooting is pretty boring and the requirement by the game to have you constantly moving from one cover spot to another would be fine except that the actual movement mechanics are terrible. Running, taking cover, and interaction are all on the A button on the XBOX 360 and the X button for the PS3. So when the player is running and they want to take cover they can easily do so. But if they don’t want to take cover there is virtually no way to prevent it.
At around halfway through the game the player will probably think they have this mastered. Until they are introduced to the Banshee. An enemy that for some reason the developers thought it would be cool if it could teleport around the map and on hit kill the player. Yes, if the Banshee gets too close to Shepard, no matter how much health, shields, etc.. The character has, the Banshee just reaches out and kills them. Add to this that they take an incredible amount of damage even from the best weapons and it doesn’t seem to matter that they, along with all the other A.I. in the game is only slightly more intelligent than the average kindergartener. Which might be giving them too much credit, but it’s at least that way by the end of the game. Also, throwing 5 heavily armored units at the player in a very narrow hallway and expecting them to deal with it, is not fun, no matter what your definition of fun is. I’m not saying that the game is hard, at least not on the Normal difficulty setting; just that it is trying WAY TOO HARD to be challenging by playing on the all ready too limited mechanics. Put me the same situation in Gears of War and I’d be done in half the time with none of the frustration.
I was perfectly happy with Mass Effect 3 in the first 3 quarters but the final quarter was terrible. Seems like all the problems the game has in the first 3 quarters are magnified in the last part. Hard to imagine what could have happened. Although I will say this is probably the shortest Mass Effect game I’ve ever played at only around 30 hours maximum. I would usually use the time stamp on the last save; but this game’s final save state is set far back from the end of the game for reasons that become apparent when playing. Also, not being able to hard save at all in the last two hours of the game is a little more than a little annoying. Coincidentally this is also the part of the game where things begin to truly go off the rails. In hindsight, I can certainly understand and appreciate the way that Mass Effect 3 ended. But for the end of a series that has a around a 120 hours of gameplay wrapped in it; the end seemed a little unsatisfying at best. Also, the reason they messed with the end of the game save states so much is because they wanted to have DLC. But with the way the game ended(even with the 100% war assets ending) ; it’s hard to imagine anyone caring enough to play any downloadable content, of any kind. Mainly because they know that everything they have done up to this point hasn’t really effected much and unless with future DLC they plan on changing the ending(again). I don’t really see the point. This game definitely makes a strong case for a new series within the Mass Effect Universe; that probably doesn’t involve the same characters that have been in it up to this point. Although if the player gets the perfect/best ending I guess it’s conceivable that there could be a continuing story with those characters. But again, probably not.
Mass Effect 3 should have been the epic conclusion to an epic trilogy. Probably one of the greatest video game series in all of history. Instead it was just another case of a strong middle chapter that cannot be carried through with by the concluding work. Mass Effect 3 was one of my most anticipated games of 2012, it’s too bad it turned out to be one my biggest disappointments of 2012 instead. 8/10…
No comments:
Post a Comment