Mass Effect 3

There's a lot to cover on this one, so I'm just going to get straight into it. I just want to say, however, if you're looking at playing this game, don't listen to any particularly negative comments about one particular part of the game. While a lot of the arguments surrounding the ending are valid, they don't "ruin" the game, or the series.

STORY
Mass Effect 3 continues the story of Commander Shepard as he/she fights across the known universe in an attempt to avert the inevitable galactic extermination by the cold, synthetic hands (or tentacle things)of the Reapers, a race of sentient warships programmed to eradicate all highly evolved races every 10 millenia.
To save everyone, Shepard must recruit as many allies as he can, in the form of singular squad members, and the war assets of every alien nation that he/she can possibly get.

The story of Mass Effect 3 has been set up for two full games and the execution is near perfect. The hopelessness of the galaxy's situation is well established, even in the first scenes, as we see Skyscraper tall Reapers bare down on Earth, killing soldiers and civilians alike.
The characters have always been a high point of any Bioware game, and Mass Effect 3 is no different. Recurring faces, such as Tali and Garrus are as lovable as usual, while new characters like James Vega and Steve Cortez are certainly easy to warm up to, despite the muscle-bound jock look of Vega. And the characters who are meant to be the antagonists are the the sort of characters that we love to hate.

PRESENTATION
Mass Effect 2 already looked fantastic, so to say that the 3rd installment looks even better is certainly something. The engine change makes animations seem so much more lively, and everything has a nice crisp look. The colours are almost always bright and vibrant. One complaint I do have, is that there always seems to be a lens flare on screen.

The soundtrack is a mix between high bass techno (often found in the clubs) and some orchestral tracks, which create a nice contrast, as well as set the tone of each environment quite well. For instance, the music whilst on the galaxy map has a very mellow, spacey quality to it.

Last, but certainly not least, the voice acting is amazing. Big name actors like Martin Sheen and Freddy Prinze Jr provide their talents to the game, as well as IGN's Jessica Chobot and video game mainstay Jennifer Hale. I can't think of any main or recurring characters that had sub par voice acting.

I must say, one of my only concerns with the presentation is the recurring problem of the Bioware face. That blank expression that characters hold in between lines. But this has been going on since before I can remember, so no amount of nitpicking will fix it.

GAMEPLAY
At it's core, Mass Effect 3 is two things: A third person shooter, and a Role-Playing game. And alone, these two aspects are really quite enjoyable. Together, they make one of the most compelling experiences in gaming today.

The cover based shooting works as well as any other game involving the basic mechanics, though doesn't excel at anything in particular. I like how easy movement between cover is, and the shooting feels different depending on your current loadout, adding variety to the way you can play. The basic squad movement commands you can perform work well enough, though are entirely unnecessary, but being able to control when they switch weapons or use special abilities adds another layer to the barebones cover based shooting.

Also spicing up the cover-hidey, shootey fun are the RPG elements. These usually manifest as upgrades and special tech or biotic abilities, adding to the strategy behind most gun-fights. The RPG side to it also provides the player with a lot of story decisions, normally giving Shepard a good (Paragon) or bad (renegade) way of dealing with situations. These can deviate the story along different paths, adding to the variety of each playthrough.

A new addition to the Mass Effect 3 is the Galactic Readiness mechanic, which gauges how ready your allies are, and the percentage directly affects your usable war assets. War assets are acquired through story missions, and are key to winning the reaper war.

While the gameplay of Mass Effect 3 is pretty awesome, as I said earlier, the core mechanics (3rd person shooting) don't match up to the best in the field (Gears of War/Uncharted). They are solid, however, and combined with the stellar storytelling and RPG additions, it makes for a unique experience.

REPLAYABILITY
As with the other Mass Effect games, it's entirely possible to play the game twice and not do any missions the same way twice. It's somewhat gratifying to do a paragon run and save as many people as possible, and then play again as a total selfish dick. Plus it lets you play around with different powers.
Aside from that, there's a new multiplayer addition, where players cooperate with each other to survive a horde-mode style game. It works well and ties in with the galactic readiness meter, which directly affects the outcome of the Reaper war. It's surprisingly fun, considering you miss out on all the story aspects.

OVERVIEW
Mass Effect 3 is a game that takes fantastic storytelling, characters we care about, and a believable world, and add in solid gunplay and intriguing RPG elements, and come out with a huge success. If you've played the previous games, Mass Effect 3 will please you until the dying moments of the game. To sum it up, ME3 is a huge fan service on Bioware's part; with it being improved upon in almost every way you can think of. There are massive highs and lows, and the game is genuinely epic.

And then it ends. But I'm not here to comment on that. Just know that 99.9% of the game is brilliant.

So next week, definitely Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning. I promise. See you next week!