Mass Effect 3 review
Mass Effect 3 brings the Commander Shepard trilogy to a close, but the end of BioWare's epic tale continues to evolve the boundaries of story-telling and moral choice to maddening heights.
Squad up!
[This Mass Effect 3 review is based on the retail Xbox 360 version of the game, provided by publisher Electronic Arts.]
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Shacknews
replyGarnett Lee posted a new article, Mass Effect 3 review.
Mass Effect 3 brings the Commander Shepard trilogy to a close, but the end of BioWare's epic tale continues to evolve the boundaries of story-telling and moral choice to maddening heights.-
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For 1 vs 2, he mentioned on the Weekend Confirmed podcast "I loved Mass Effect 1, Mass Effect 2 I was a little cooler on. I'm pretty much on an island with that opinion."
http://www.shacknews.com/article/71063/weekend-confirmed-86-skyrim-modern-warfare-3-saints-row-the-
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I do answer this in the review but three > one > two
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Imagine a world where Halo 2 received bad reviews because the cut-scenes had terrible pop-in, and the xbox platform became irrelevant. Some-times a game just cannot fail.
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"Combat lives up to top-tier third-person-shooter standards every bit as well as the character and narrative systems reflect the best of RPGs. "
Said plainly, no it doesn't. It's a boring grind of corridor arenas with big hit point bags for enemies. This hyperbole is completely ridiculous.-
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It's a review by Garnett Lee, what did you expect?
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I disagree with you. There's not a better third person shooter out there. I've always felt gears didn't offer enough variability in the ways you could attack its horde mode. Having all the different classes and powers makes for a better experience here in ME3.
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i see you talking all about "MY" Shepard, how about new people, someone who never played MF 1 nor 2... I tried demo and i was totally lost of who i who and why i was doing what i was told to do...
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that's the problem, i don't find them fun... its very repetitive... i was hoping the 3rd one will get me in, but without story you cant play it...
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Other reviews I've read have said the game is very accessible to people who haven't played the first two. There are dialogue options for more backstory for events you missed out on, the option to make a lot of decisions up front that you would have made in previous games, or the option to just jump right in and play and let the game make those choices for you.
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You actually like that you're almost required to play the multiplayer to get the best ending?
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The most irritating feature about this game is the damn multi-player. You should be able to get the same content/endings with singplayer. If people don't want to play with anyone and keep their world their owns, they should be allowed to do so.
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That's what they said but it sounds like it's near impossible without the multiplayer
http://www.pcgamer.com/2012/03/06/mass-effect-3-war-assets-and-readiness-how-multiplayer-affects-your-ending/-
That just makes it seem like it you didn't do things "correctly" in past games then it makes it harder to get the good ending in 3. I'd be a lot more pissed at the co-op stuff if the co-op was
a. behind an online code
b. sucked
c. was traditional mutliplayer deathmatch
thankfully non of the above things are true so I look forward to playing the co-op with shackers, because co-op is fun and if it helps me in the SP then great.-
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Oh no, you have to support the developers, what a terrible thing.
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Sounds good to me. I am a completionist :)
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While that was everyone's reaction, I haven't read anything negative about it. It's supposed to be purely optional, no detriment to your campaign if you don't do it, and it's fun.
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It might just be me, but Mass Effect world has always been my own private story. It's one of the few games I can really get sucked into. I don't really want to share my choices with someone until I've beaten the game a few times on single player.
After that, I would be more than willing to share the experience of the game with another person.-
And it still is. Only now if you want you can make a new character to try abilities and builds that aren't your character. Fighting a different front. It makes sense and doesn't break the reality. Plus you can skip it and still 100% the game.
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It's achievable, just almost impossible unless you do almost everything.
http://www.pcgamer.com/2012/03/06/mass-effect-3-war-assets-and-readiness-how-multiplayer-affects-your-ending/-
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And there's no fun in making a game easy ;) Beating it on hard mode is one way to getting the best experience out of it!
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I have no complaints here for doing everything to get the best ending. That sounds reasonable -- my only complaint was (I thought) you had to do multi-player to get the best ending vs just playing it on single-player.
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"If you aren't interested in performing the optional tasks required to fill up the "Effective Military Strength" bar and get the game's best (or, at least, most prepared) ending, you can fill it up halfway and then raise your readiness rating via the game's multiplayer. By default, the rating starts at 50 percent, so for every bit of help you're getting by completing tasks, you're only getting half of its true value. Again, it's pretty trivial to get twice the amount you need and fill the bar completely before embarking on the game's final missions, so the multiplayer isn't a vital component to the campaign. But it still has some interesting ideas that almost make me wish it played a heavier role."
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Worse is that the multi-player doesn't scale by design. If you only have on friend online that wants to play it's the same difficulty as playing with three other people. They didn't want to put in a scaling difficulty system.
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All the settings assume 4 players.
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Same. It was like hitting yourself in the head with a bat repeatedly. I got the chance to ask the lead MP designer about it and he said they made it for 4 players. Not sure why they couldn't have done some dynamic balancing. I assume they ran out of time, he wouldn't say.
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It still looks like another Halo....more action, less story, easy to beat. *sigh* I have low expectations for this game, but I need an ending to the story.
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lol good point!
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If EA hasn't explained this, you can absolutely complete the game to its full extent without ever doing a thing online. It requires spending more time on the collection stuff but if you're like me and can't see that stuff without needing to go get it, that's a moot point.
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Free DLC:
You can get a free M-90 Indra Sniper Rifle DLC if you sign up on Alienware arena
www.alienwarearena.com/giveaway/mass-effect-3-giveaway
Reverse-engineered from the Cerberus Arc Projector, the Indra is a prototype sniper-rifle that fires a path of ionized air, then electrifies targets with a lightning bolt of electricity. By first piercing a target with a high-powered shot, the Indra weakens kinetic shields and maximizes damage to electrical systems.
**Please note this M-90 Indra Sniper Rifle key will only work on the PC version of the game.-
No one is interested?
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Some people have nothing better to do. Guess there's a campaign to try and give ME3 the lowest user score possible on metacritic.
http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/mass-effect-3
Then Jarret lee the marketing manager at bioware responded with this on their forums. "It's disturbing and probably will be quite damaging. "
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thats pretty fucked up
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I don't see how it hurts things. I thought everyone knows that user review section is just for retards to vent.
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No one listens to user reviews there (I hope). But they can always have their employees post positive reviews like they did with Dragon Age 2.
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what thread?
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Probably a bit of backlash on this as well:
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/108482-BioWare-Employee-Busted-in-Dragon-Age-2-Review-Scandal-UPDATED
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Look at the shack, the pre-release rage for ME3 has been insane and totally unjustified. It just seems to attract the ire of pointlessly angry nerds everywhere.
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Wow...that is really messed up. I can't believe people are doing this.
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LOL!!!
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wtf? Hamburger Helper? ... lol
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As sad as it is, it's hardly a new thing. Didn't we just go through this exact same dance last year with Portal 2?
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Given the disparity between the "critic's" reviews and the user reviews, I'm sure most people will just ignore the user reviews. That definitely looks and smells like protest to me.
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I got to play for a few hours last night and I like it. The new features of inv mgmt threw me off but they have a tutorial for this.
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You're going to borrow your brother's game?!? You just killed a Bioware employee's entire family
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Yep, going to have to pick this up. No sign of it on Steam, - guessing it's not hitting Valve's platform then.
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I had some major problems with the first two, but they grew on me over the years. When I started playing this one, I was excited to be back in that world though. I even started to enjoy the armor and weapon systems, which was something I've always held a grudge against the others for.
When I did the final mission though, my jaw hit the floor. Why did they have to end it that way?-
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Do you even know how the story of Jason ends? I'm gonna just put it loose in here cause its got zero to do with the ME3 ending. As a result of breaking his vow to love Medea forever, Jason lost his favor with Hera and died lonely and unhappy. He was asleep under the stern of the rotting Argo when it fell on him, killing him instantly. Of course that was after Medea killed their three children. Not exactly a happy ending, or full of adventure. Maybe the Greeks aren't where you should go to look for great endings...
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I didn't say he lived in that story, or or that shepard should either I said the way they did it made sure there would be no more adventures. "Not only did those things happend, but also ... etc."
I didn't say it needed to be any kind of ending, other than not one that ended all beginings too-
I think you are underestimating the strength of the simple premise of the Mass Effect Universe. Also
I'm nervous about this tag since I've never used it before....anyway I would think that if you pick what people are calling the "best" ending that it does nothing but open up the universe to even more diverse story avenues. It just won't involve anyone who was lost in the end of the game. Hope that was guarded enough in case I don't do these spoiler tags right./-
yay I did it.
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which one is ''the best'', and what exactly is the simple premise I am missing? I guess I'm assuming that the premise of the game is the mass effect relays, seeing as how they allow the different races to even get out of their respective systems, let alone reach each other.
The FLT drives only go a few times faster than light, if I remember right. Not nearly fast enough for any kind of commerce to happen. Also, quantum entanglement communication is extremely rare, I think, if it even was used more than once. (I'm not sure)-
no Mass Effect relays are Mcguffins. the premise of Mass Effect is that machine people and squishy people can't get along. The only Theme to run the course of all three plots. well scifi theme anyway. Plenty of your normal dramatic themes also in there.
I guess it's split on the best ending between the one where the singularity happens and everyone(or at least Joker though it's implied the whole of the Galalxy is changed this way) gets all glow eyes, or if you kill the reapers with max galactic readiness, it's implied that Shephard survives the destruction of the crucible. I prefer the singularity ending since it provides the idea that Caprica 6 and Oz from Buffy make techno-organic space babies.-
Well, okay. I would pin that as THIS story's theme. The premise, though, is that because the mass effect was discovered, humans have created (or recreated) faster than light travel, and have found massive more advanced FLT drives at the edge of the system linking other species. ADVENTURE! SCIENCEY ADVENTURE!
Take that new movie, or old book, John Carter of Mars. What the fuck does it matter if he's NOT ON MARS?!
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The ending is pretty classic scifi. It's got a mix of the matrix, wrath of khan, the Zahadoom episode of B5, the conclusion of the David Tenet run of Dr. who, and all the best classic scifi. They explain the mysteries and offer a real exploration of character while exploring the fragility of the human psyche when compared with immensity of history. I liked the ending. I don't know if you could tell a story like ME and have a more "happy" ending.
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Again, happy is not what I said should be. In fact, I explicitly said I thought it could be just as ''dark'' *rolls eyes*. It just didnt' HAVE to end that way. I even said that everyone should still die, even ALL current life be destroyed, just not the fucking mass relays. That ends that universe.
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They are machines. They can be rebuilt. Its just mean Mass Effect 4 or whatever takes place 10K years in the future future. That's the right. Now we are in God King of Dune Terrority of lore. Exciting.
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Please...it's a mcguffin. You just say a space wizard did it and get on with the story.
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I just read about the campaign to rewrite the ending to be more positive. That's just as stupid as the people who are saying it's good the way it is, because they were always ''dark'' stories. The stories were always about the hope that they would prevail, by my understanding.
Let me run this by you. here's a ''dark'' ending that is more in keeping with the overarching story. The crucible destoys (or controls) the reapers and kills all organic life, but leaves the mass relays intact. Slowly decend back to the surface of earth and do a time laps until a plant sprouts (or amino acids form a cell) and then cut to black. There, the cycle starts over, but without the looming threat of the reapers this time.
That took me five minutes. What they did was simply unintelligent.-
Well if we are going to start wildly speculating please let me take a crack at the sequel. the son of Shephard and Liara, the first male Asari, creates a suit of purified ezzo giving him the power to become a living Mass Effect Relay. He travels the galaxy in his living ship called Joker, the techno-organic son of EDI and Joker. Of course he's the villain of the story. The hero is some human, let's assume a slave of some kind, possibly a child prostitute. He's trained by the last of the space wizards to fight the evil son of the Shephard, whose name is probably something to with sheep or farming. The slave/child prostitute becomes the greatest of space wizards with the help of tiny friend a miniature Krogan who grew up funny because of Earth's gravity. Also Mordin is there because he rules. I'm a genius.
That's stolen from, God Emperor of Dune, Farscape, Sword of truth, Arthurian Legend, and a little B5 for flavor. The best scifi is the kind you rip off.-
Haha. I am not literally saying that should have, or should be an ending. Just that it took me five minutes to come up with that, and if it were the ending, would you have really picked that as five minute creation? Think about it, if it shipped with that ending, as stupid as it is?
If you were giving an honest answer, I don't think so.-
I'm just saying there are stupider endings. I know. I've read all the Dune prequels and Hunters of Dune which is like a son recounting his dying father's drug induced fever dream. We should feel blessed it didn't all turn into an episode of lost in space, or worse yet the movie version of Lost in Space.
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