Game review: Mass Effect 3

It's hard to speak about Mass Effect 3 without spoiling the story, and at the same time, it's hard to speak about it without getting too personal. Ever since Mass Effect 1, every Shepard has been a very, very unique character and very player-specific. No two Shepards have been the same, and nor have two playthroughs been exactly the same. Well, at least it's rare for two playthroughs to be the same. Odds are you're aware of the buzz about the trilogy's end, but let's just skip the whole ending controversy for now. 


There's a few key things we'll need to address for non-fans before continuing. This is a rough summary of the story, and events may vary upon playthrough and player choice, but still, this is the rough version that Mass Effect 3 assumes happened by default unless you import your previous game character. 


"In the year 2148, explorers on Mars discovered the remains of an ancient spacefaring civilization. In the decades that followed, these artifacts revealed startling new technologies, enabling travel to the furthest stars. The basis for this incredible technology was a force that controlled the very fabric of space and time.

They called it the greatest discovery in human history.

The civilizations of the galaxy called it...Mass Effect"

Much like humans, other species made similar breakthroughts: the turians, the krogan, the asari, the quarians, salarians, batarians, volus, hanaar, elcor to name the major ones. This lead to initial warring between them (like the First Contact war between humans and turians or the Krogan rebellions that left the Krogan sterile when the turians/salarians employed bio-warfare and infected them with the genophage). There is a government of sorts, the Council, based on the Citadel, a relic of the past, much like the aforementioned artifacts, thought to have been left behind by the Protheans, that spacefaring race we mentioned. Last but not least, the Council's special agents are called "Spectres", having the authority to cut through red tape and get things done.

In Mass Effect 1, Shepard is an Alliance N7 soldier aboard the Normandy, the most advanced ship in the galaxy, made from a human-turian design, playing host to Nihilus, a turian Spectre. Checking up on the human colony of Eden Prime, Nihilus gets executed by another Spectre, Saren, and Shepard gets exposed to a Prothean beacon that implants vivid images of destruction in his head. 

From then on, Shepard begins an epic journey to find and stop Saren and whatever his plans are as well as bring him to justice, as well as to battle the Geth, a race of AI synthetics created by the Quarians that drove the creators away from their homeworld centuries ago and are now following Saren. To accomplish this he gets command of the Normandy, a skilled crew consisting of colourful characters and Spectre status. 

The end of Mass Effect saw Shepard stopping Saren and his ship, Sovereign, which turns out not to be a ship at all, but rather a sentient gigantic machine, called a Reaper. 
Shepard warns the Council that the Reaper fleet is still out there and they're hellbent in destroying all galactic civilization so the cycle can begin anew, as they did with the Protheans before and the ones before them.






Mass Effect 2's introduction saw the Normandy destroyed by an unknown spaceship, the crew scattered and Shepard left for dead. Well, to be perfectly precise, Shepard was dead, for two long years. Until Cerberus, a pro-human amoral organization lead by the enigmatic and...erm...illusive Illusive Man recovered his body and slowly, miraculously, resurrected him. They set him up with a re-built Normandy, his old pilot Joker and dossiers on some of the finest scientific and military people in the galaxy in order to stop the Collectors, a mysterious race operating out of the Omega relay, from attacking and abducting more human colonies. But how are the Collectors linked to the Reapers, the Protheans and the whole story of the previous game? You'll have to play to see, I'm afraid. Mass Effect 2 ends with a suicide mission on the Collector base that may see all or none of your team permanently dead, depending on your actions and choices.


Mass Effect 3 sees the Reaper fleet emerge from dark space and attack several core planets.

Earth among the first. Shepard is ordered to escape and gather support. Over the years, he's done a lot of favours for the other races of the galaxy, and now it's time to collect. From then on out, Shepard tries to bring unity to the other races, so their combined fleets can distract the invincible Reaper fleet long enough for the Crucible to be activated, the Crucible being a joint effort at a super weapon made from Prothean blueprints... Old friends and foes will want a last word in before that, though.

Story wise, this is the explosive finale we were expecting...right till the very end. But more on that later. A lot of the loose threads we've had will get tied up, questions will be answered, characters will get closure, redemption or comeuppance. 

While ME1 was an RPG with a hearty shooter element and ME2 was an RPG with a more complex and tactical shooter heart, ME3 is a very good shooter game with a robust RPG heart. Some of the most important choices in ME3 you've already made in the previous games, but that doesn't mean you have no control. After all, this is a series that always prided itself in just how much control the player had over the story. Make no mistake, though: ME3 puts heavy emphasis on the shooting part. Considering the third part of the trilogy deals with war and invasion, that makes sense. It's a good thing Shepard can now commando-roll in and out of cover and powerfully melee opponents. Different types of ammo and powers, tech or biotic, complement the tactical side of combat, elevating it above the "pull trigger till it's dead" variety. 


Which makes it jolly good fun in the new multiplayer mode. Four players from any game class take on 10 waves of increasingly difficult enemies, with an 11th wave being just the bonus "survive long enough for extraction" wave. These waves are peppered with objectives, such as deactivating hostile terminals, taking down specific targets of importance within the time limit or hacking a terminal. Combined with levelling of your class or classes, purchasable boxes of random items or race/class combinations (such as turian, krogan, asari, quarian or drell) and the tactical nature of the shooting itself, the multiplayer aspect is much more fun than it has any right to be. A tad annoying that it factors into the ending of the single player game by boosting your galactic readiness, effectively multiplying your war assets, especially for X-box players who, unlike PC or PS3 players have to pay to be able to play multiplayer, but still. Worth it.


With more beautiful graphics and the high-level of voice acting we were used to, ME3 looks and sounds better than ever too, although the technical stuff is not what ME3 is betting on. Which brings me to the bad part...

Most fans are complaining that the toned-down ending of ME3 doesn't take your previous choices into consideration, and that's sadly, true. While your choices in ME1, 2 and 3 will influence everything till the very end, the actual last 5 minutes or so of the game are distinctly separate from that philosophy. You're presented with a difficult choice and no options, which is in many ways cancelling out the whole spirit of the series: choice. No matter what you choose, the ending seems almost identical any way, and the only control you seem to have has to do with whether you've done most side-missions and/or played enough multiplayer, and only has to do with Shepard himself. But, in a game dealing on a galactic level, that just doesn't seem enough. Now, don't get me wrong: I felt disappointed by the ending, but I'm against Bioware changing it, as they seem to intend doing to please the most vocal of fans. I've watched tons of films that disappointed me in the end, watched several sequels of films I loved that just seemed to make fun of me at the end (Matrix Revolutions, anyone?), read tons of books that disappointed me in the last chapter, TV shows that disappointed me in the last episode. People nerdraging on the internet isn't reason enough to not stick to your guns, Bioware. It's not like HBO changed the ending of the Sopranos, did they? OK, so you made a mistake. Learn from it. Don't try to change it to please some people, it's not like you'll gain back their respect or love. Not to mention that if you cave in and do, you'll lose the respect of the rest. That's in short stock at the moment, what with you releasing DLC on the first day of release.


All in all, while not the perfect end to the trilogy, it is a very decent end. Whether you're a newcomer or a veteran of the Mass Effect universe, this game will not leave you wanting. Apart from the ending. Bleh. If I gave games scores, ME3 would get a perfect 10 till the end, then a 7,5, maaaaaybe 8 with it. That's how much it matters. Be warned. And stay tuned, because this is not the last game in the Mass Effect universe, just the last game about "the Shepard". Whispers of the Mass Shift are well underway...