We had low expectations prior to the game's release due to a lot of negative feedback about the gameplay and especially the graphics from the demo. The first glimpse from the demo indicated that it was hardly better than the second game. There was also a leak about the ending, which we didn't read, but got a lot of extremely negative feedback. All of this feedback was so unanimously negative, which resulted in our lowered expectations. After the year long delay, we were pleased to see that Bioware had in fact learnt from a lot of the problems from the first two games to improve substantially on the third. But, that being said, mass effect 3 is far from perfect.

Let's start with the gameplay. The past two games have had frankly bad gameplay, especially the first, which was broken, buggy, and unbalanced, then the second, which can be summarised into, 'get behind the wall and shoot everything in front of you', aka the poor man's gears of war (unless you were a vanguard). Mass Effect 3 was using essentially the same engine as 2. Although, they improved on the 2nd games combat which was a vast improvement. One of the problems with 2 is that the gameplay hardly incorporated any RPG elements, such as customising armour and weapons. You got to choose different types of weapons (4 per weapon type usually WITH all DLC purchased), and mix and match armour pieces. Mass Effect 3 gives you twice the weapons, and lets you customise them, with scopes, armor piercing, and a few other mods that both alter the appearance and performance of said weapon. Armor is essentially the same, except the armor pieces looked more significantly different, had more colours, and slightly more stat differences. The levelling up system was better too, an additional 30 levels, and every power had 6 ranks, with the 4th, 5th and 6th being a choice between 2 different variations of that power. Each class felt more useful and unique and combat felt more involved. The AI was more intelligent; you would be flanked more often, melee enemies running towards you would be covered with suppressing fire, there was more enemy/monster types and rolls. Sprint, stealth melee kills, and heavy melee were added to compensate. The AI of your squad mates unfortunately, is still pretty much just as dumb, and will often get stuck far back behind couches and as such sometimes get you killed.

The morality system in mass effect 3 gives the player a lot more freedom in their choices then the second game did. The second game penalised you to a certain extent if a particular side wasn't taken. If you are unfamiliar with the morality system everything you do is either paragon which is being good despite what happens or renegade which is getting the job done no matter the cost. The more you fill these, the more speech options you get, which in certain situations can greatly benefit you with saving (or killing….) who you want. Now in Mass effect 3, the morality system is not binary which means you can be half and half and still get the extra dialogue options you need, this is called reputation which means the more side missions you do, the higher your reputation you will get. This is a tremendous improvement over the previous two games, as it now has complete freedom of choice. The whole point of Mass Effect 3 is building an army to save the galaxy, combining all races you possibly can to work together so Bioware put in a war asset system to judge how much support to help fight off the reaper invasion you get, the more you manage to get, the better the chance you have, and to an extent, what type of ending you get. You get these by doing side missions, main missions, importing decisions from previous games and multiplayer, which feels more like they are poking you with a stick trying to get people to play multiplayer. Despite the multiplayer being forced on people, it was still an entertaining feature to the game which we spent many hours on, until we realised how repetitive it gets. You get in groups of four to work together and hold out against waves of enemies, while trying to complete objectives. There is 3 difficulties, and the higher the difficulty and more successful you are, you get more money to buy packs with weapons and characters, some rarer than others.

Now for what Bioware is most famous for, and what has caused the most controversy, the story. The game has a solid opening. Earth is being invaded by a race of hyper-advanced machines called reapers, who are hell bent on harvesting the entire galaxy for unknown purposes. The overall narrative is great, besides some weaknesses, such as the fact that on the very second mission in the game, you find a big "kill all reapers" weapon schematics that was never previously alluded to or mentioned in any previous games, which they try to explain by saying that it was simply overlooked, even though it is right on their doorstep. There was another problem regarding choices from previous games, a lot of them didn't amount to much or make any difference. (Spoilers Ahead) One of the biggest and best examples would be first, an entire species you save in the first game called the Rachni. They are constantly being mentioned throughout the games, and alluded to being a massive asset or threat when it comes to fighting the reapers. Instead, you encounter them in a (albeit very cool) side mission, where the only difference saving or destroying them is about 400 hundred war assets, which is quite good, but they don't actually play a significant role in the finale which is what was expected. Originally it was intended that the people who destroyed them wouldn't get the side mission, but this was scrapped with fear of player outrage (because that ended well...). These things were very disappointing, and was a major reason the game wasn't all it could be. We really enjoyed the story, the characters were all great, and we got to see more of their personality since the galaxy was at war, and how it affected them etc but we wanted our previous decisions in the first two games to actually matter. There were a couple of twists here and there, especially regarding certain companions. The galaxy actually felt like it was in a state of war and it all built up quite well to the conclusion, which had extreme negative comments on official forums, but in all honesty wasn't too bad. It was average and we have a feeling that with the new promised free extended cut, it will be a satisfying conclusion to the series.

Despite Bioware’s track record of bugs, which could almost rival Bethesda, we were pleased with how little there was of it. Most of them were little things, like in cut scenes people not using the correct weapons or even companions being where they shouldn’t in a couple of cases . Not a big deal I know, but still, it made us go “wait…….something feels ever so slightly wrong with this picture”. The melee combat and general powers can have no effect when used, despite seeing the animation. This can especially happen in multiplayer which can cause a lot of frustrating deaths. As mentioned before, and in true Bioware fashion, the AI can be completely useless. Your companions seem more interested in having a staring contest with the wall rather than help you kill the big angry fucked up looking monsters that are trying to rip your head off to use your neck as a toilet. But as I mentioned earlier, Bioware did a great job keeping the bugs to a minimum.

One of the best parts about this game was the amazing visuals, the scenery was spectacular. Fighting through ruined streets with giant reapers wrecking shit up in the distance, giant waterfalls, massive oncoming storms on Mars were all awesome. A lot of views like this everywhere you went. The graphics, though, weren't a polished as they should have been. The textures weren't as bad as in the other two games, but still not as clear as we hoped. Most of these problems were on armor/clothing. Bioware should really release a high resolution textures pack. Other than that, the graphics were good, noticeable improvement over the second. The voice acting was superb as usual, the male and female voices (Mark Meer, Jennifer Hale) were a lot better than in previous games, although we personally felt Hale could have had more aggression in her voice and certain parts. The standouts though were really Martin Sheen, and Keith David, who did amazing jobs as the Illusive man and David Anderson. Then we have the soundtrack, composed by Clint Mansell, Christopher Lennertz, Sam Huilick, Cris Velasco, and Sascha Dikiciyan, which was great. It combined the best elements of the first and second games soundtracks to make a fitting score for the conclusion of the series. Gameplay - 7.5/10 Story - 8.5/10 Visuals - 9/10 Audio - 9.5/10 In conclusion this was a superb game, and a fitting end to the trilogy, great story, solid gameplay, amazing visuals and audio. Final Verdict - 8.5/10

Written by Connor McKenna & Jamie Watt