Mass Effect 3 - SPOILER FREE Final Thoughts

What follows is a quick breakdown, of the first things that come to mind, of what I loved followed by some gripes and then a talk about the ending.

Loved -

- Combat - The game feels like it really hit it's stride with this 3rd installment and actually felt like a modern, competent 3rd person action shooter that had a pretty great RPG element to it.

- Action - There's a ton of it! Combat is fast and tense, but can get only slightly repetitive.

- Set Pieces - While not all were mind blowing I do remember saying "holy shit" more than once. Especially on one of the moons of Palaven. Watching a Reaper ground battle is pretty damned cool and terrifying.

- The Stakes - The game has the pressure set to 11 with pretty much, yet again, the entire universe depending on you. The game does a good job of never really letting you forget what you're up against and how dire the situation is.

- Cut Scenes - While I'm normally not a huge fan of these there were many more in ME 3. They weren't overly long, but generally every mission had a small intro explaining what's coming up.

- Consequences - I've always tried to play out the best/happiest possible ends in these games, but I inadvertently played critical missions out of order and what happened absolutely blew me away. I watched as 2 groups of people I was fighting for fought and the the one I sided with absolutely destroyed the other. My actions had cause the death of literally an entire race of people. I couldn't believe what I'd just witnessed.

Along with consequences there are several moments where I had crew members try and off themselves for various justifiable reasons, but was able to stop them by interrupting the scene with a Paragon Action. I missed one of these with one member and they died. Again, the stakes are high.

- The "I Actually Had Tears Well Up and Almost Cried Moment" - There's a scene where one of my favorite characters from ME 2 goes to right a wrong and this character does so knowing it's going to its death. The final moment is an extremely bittersweet throwback to a very funny dialogue from ME 2 that you'd only connect if you actually spent the time getting to know this character from the previous game.

I was shocked, stunned and actually blown away at my response. The only other time I've had a reaction to a game this strongly was actually in ME 2 DLC "Overlord". When you find that the person behind the machines going crazy was a handicapped savant that had been forcibly hooked into a machine by his brother. The savant in the machine is found in horrible conditions reciting numbers to a game that he and his monster of a brother used to play as kids. It was a beautifully sad moment that still musters up emotions to this day.

- Shepard - He's still awesome. I know that everyone's Shepard is different, but I've always loved how I've played mine. He is a nice guy that cares about others, but calls bullshit when he sees it. He never backs down from a fight. He's astoundingly deadly, but also compassionate.

- Multiplayer? - The multiplayer is actually a lot of fun. It's basically Gears of War's Horde Mode, but in the ME universe with better characters and powers. Winning in multiplayer actually helps your single player game. It was an additive I truly didn't expect to enjoy and I plan on dumping a bunch more time into it.

Gripes -

- Ammo Types - While they still exist there doesn't appear to be a huge difference in them like in ME 2. All are powerful. In ME 2 I constantly switched to get the best results, but in ME 3 I basically just used Inferno Ammo at all times. I only needed to switch on harder enemies that are more like mini-bosses thrown into fire-fights.

- Squad - I'm a little let down by the squad, but not in the way you might expect. This is honestly the best squad in the whole series because nobody sucks. In both previous games there was always one person that made my eyes roll or that was a snooze fest. Everyone in this game is actually pretty awesome. Great personalities and voice acting and they're all truly badasses. My problem is that I didn't get to spend a lot of time with them.

I feel like in the previous 2 games, especially 2, I spent a shit ton of time learning about them and becoming quite attached to their plight and story. Here you spend time around them and not so much with them.

So it's a positive and a negative I guess. So long as I wasn't forced to talk to Jacob from 2 ever again I was happy.

- Errand Boy - While I guess just about every game has you playing some version or variation of an errand boy it was a little more apparent here because of the very nature of your mission.

- Side Quests - All RPGs have main and side quests. While this game featured tons of action packed missions they were mostly all main quest related with only a handful of smaller ones that were side quests. However, there were a ton of side quests that were very weak fetch quests that seemed little more than filler.

- War Assets - It ties into some frustration with the end of the game, but the main crux of the game is building up as many allies as you can to take to war with you. Ultimately, it felt like I was just running up my War Asset number and it wasn't really doing anything.

You'd understand more fully if you've beaten the game.

- Unreal Engine 3 - The engine works better here than in the previous games so that's great, but the problem comes from a spot later in the game where you are fighting on the ground of a destroyed London. I shit you not you could almost interchange the set pieces and looks of ME 3 and Gears. The gameplay styles being so similar certainly doesn't help, but the identical engines really were distracting at moments at how similar the games not only played, but looked when not in space.

- Zaeed Massani - He's a DLC character in ME 2 and is briefly in ME 3. He made my gripe list because he's not in the game enough. He's a merciless bounty hunter that actually comes off as the deadliest man in the galaxy. His brutality and lack of non-sense has consistently made him a favorite of mine to be around, but he's never given any attention. He deserves an offshoot with his own game. You heard it here first.

- Day 1 DLC - Oh yeah baby! You know you love it. Buying a game and there being an additional pack for purchase as soon as you boot it up. Sadly, they marketed that son-of-a-bitch perfectly because it's not just another mission they added, but another squad mate....that's a fucking Prothean! Seriously, the alien race you've spent 100 hours learning about is usable in the game. As a ME junkie I couldn't help myself, but get Javik and use him in absolutely every mission.

The Ending - I'll try and keep this brief

Overall, the ending is bad. The backlash or anger you could feel towards Bioware is, in my opinion, justifiable, but isn't overwhelmingly surprising to this reviewer.

Now that that's out of the way I'll move slightly more into dissection without ruining it for those that haven't beaten it yet.

I beat the game right at 30 hours and for 29.9 of those hours the game was absolutely brilliant. It's literally the last 5 minutes that it falls apart.

The final 30 minutes is the actual end of the game and the first 25 minutes are awesome. You see Shepard get taken to the breaking point and I actually found myself astonished at his resolve and ability to....just....keep....going. It wasn't cheesey either. The bastard just wants to win!

The final 5 minutes and ending cutscene are, from a quick glance, actually pretty awesome. I found it to be emotionally moving, exhilirating and captivating all at once.

It's not until about 2 minutes after the credits started rolling that I began to dissect what I just watched. It's full of holes. And I mean it's riddled with them.

I could have gotten past the holes, but they also did a shit job letting you know about your squad. Who lived? Who died? As they seem to just show them at random in a cutscene. Also, during the final fight I saw a Krogan that I was 60% sure was Wrex get zapped by a Reaper, but I don't know if it was actually him! Did he live? Was that even him?

I went to youtube to look at other endings and basically they are all the same. No matter what you do or don't do or who lives or dies doesn't matter. What happens is a small (but, I guess, arguably large) variation in the cutscene. It's a pretty huge bummer that they're all so similar. To be able to so fully customize your game up until the very end and then be forced to choose door A, B or C was a downer.

I actually kind of dug the ending, but would have preferred another option or two that my Shepard would have chosen. To say, "Fuck these! We're doing option Go Fuck Yourself instead!"

I guess I just don't know where the disconnect happened for Bioware. Maybe being part of EA forced them into a time table that they had to make or maybe that's actually what they wanted, but with a game so full of history and careful plotting and writing the plot holes are glaringly huge.

I found a really good video on youtube that does an excellent job hashing out the big problems with the ending. Obviously, this video is major spoiler territory so only watch it once you've finished the game, but I'll just put it here for easy reference:



Overall -

ME 3 is an amazing game that falls apart at the very last moment. Does it ruin the game? Not at all, but the overall experience of my over 200 hours spent in this universe is definitely marred.

At the start of ME 3 I said that it's shaping up to be the best of the series and I don't really know if I can say that now. Not because of the ending, but seeing all of the differences between all 3 games gives me a much larger appreciation for what each offers.

ME 2 was my least favorite of the 3, but after finishing this game I might actually prefer 2 to the rest.

They seem to each have a different overall focus and, looking back, it's really pretty amazing what Bioware did. ME 1 laid the ground work and ME 2 built on it with am amazing story and unforgettable characters and ME 3 was all about bringing it all together effectively.

I don't think I could pick a favorite and in my opinion that's very high praise.

Bottom Line -

Why the shit haven't you played this yet?