Having now weighed in on the shortcomings of 'Mass Effect 3 let us never speak of them again. Seriously, even though Bioware has announced some sort of nebulous possible fan appeasement this summer I almost don't care anymore. I mean I'll probably still fire the game up to see what they added but I've really gotten tired of the level of furor the “fans” of the series have managed to sustain. That's why this week we'll be looking at, in comparison to the 'ME1' and 'ME2' retrospective of not so long ago, the mechanics of the 'Mass Effect 3'. OK, so I probably lied there. I'll probably be coming back to the 'ME3' story issues at some point but that point is not at this moment going to be anytime soon.
The Good:
I think that someone at Bioware realized that the cover based combat system that they had in 'Mass Effect 2' was probably about as good as it was going to get and as such it has seen only a few minor tweaks here and there. For example there is, for some reason, a slightly greater emphasis on melee combat in this revision. Why? Beats me. One would have thought we where past beating and stabbing people in the future and could stick to the civilized method of murdering things with re-skinned modern weaponry*. The good news is that if you so chose you can largely ignore the melee combat and stick to shooting things. It just annoyed me a bit to see so many branches on skill trees focused on increasing melee skills.
The Other Good:
So 'Mass Effect', rightfully, took a bit of beating for the extraordinarily unnecessary level of customization that it afforded players. It took criticism for overloading players with tons and tons of unnecessary guns, armor and add-ons for said guns and armor. 'Mass Effect 2', rightfully, took a bit of a beating for removing that terrifying level of customization and replacing it with nothing. Yup, as annoyed as people where with being overburdened they where equally vexed with no variety whatsoever. Well 'Mass Effect 3' seems like its found a happy medium. There are no armor add-ons but each weapon has two slots that can each take one of around five different weapon specific upgrades . And while there are no armor add-ons you can at least chose the different parts of you armor to best suit your playstyle, i.e. different helmets, gauntlets, chest pieces, etc. all have different affects/bonuses and you can mix and match to your hearts content or not as the default armor would fall under the category of perfectly functional.
The Bad:
When the Mako and its terribad physics left the Mass Effect series it left a universe that, without its awful steering and bouncing handling, felt a whole lot smaller. 'Mass Effect 2' as mentioned in previous articles tried to “solve” this problem by having the player scan planets for resources without actually having to go down to the surface and explore them. Believe me when I say this but that activity is even less interesting in gameplay than it sounds when typed out. Unlike the combat or customization this is one issue that 'Mass Effect 3' doesn't even come close to solving or improving. Sure scanning has been made easier and sure there's a sense that the resources you find this time around are somehow more important (war effort and all) but good lord it it tedious. I don't think I've ever partaken in something that I would describe as both fun and tedious. Pretty sure those descriptors are mutually exclusive. Oh and if you scan around to much in an “occupied” system your little ship will get chased around by Reapers**. I never got caught because your ship moves faster than theirs and I was never curious enough to find out what happens when you get caught.
The Ugly:
Probably the one truly new thing that 'ME3' introduces here is co-operative objective based multiplayer to what had previously been a single player series. Working with other people to gun down multiple waves of attackers while picking off select targets, hacking “mission critical” stuff, etc. is actually surprisingly fun even if 'ME3' controls are still not quite as fluid as other first person shooters. Even with some minor annoyances (unlocking new stuff in the multiplayer is kind of a crap shoot) I would still recommend that people check it out. So now you may be wondering why this is getting mentioned here? Well during the course of the single player game you will through storyline, side-questing and scanning accrue “War Assets”, that is the resources, ships, etc. that will take part in the final battle against the Reapers. You're even given a handy guide indicating whether or not your current force would be successful. You're also given a “War Readiness” indicator. This is a measurement of what percentage of your “War Assets” will actually be used in the final battle. Have '3000' points of war assets but only a 60% readiness rating then you'd best hope that 1800 points of war assets is enough to take down the Reapers. So what's the problem? Simple, the only way to raise your readiness rating is through the multiplayer. Now I have no issue with the existence of the multiplayer component of this game. What I do take issue with is potentially being forced to play it in order to get the best ending of the single player. That's not cool.
That's also it. No more Mass Effect anything for a while. Next week something new and different. See you then.
*Seriously this is one of the few things that people don't seem to harp on enough with this series. Why, in the future, are we still using the five basic categories of weapons (pistol, SMG, assault rifle, shotgun and sniper rifle) found in every modern shooter? Why are we still, essentially, using solid state ammo? I signed up for the future combat game thingy to blast things with lasers so why do all the laser weapons sucks? Think of (or look up if you don't have a working knowledge on this subject) how much weaponry has progressed in the last hundred years and then recall that the Mass Effect universe is set ~160 years in the future and realize how stupid it is that weaponry seems to have largely stopped evolving. If there is one certainty in the universe it is that people are always looking for more innovative and efficient ways to murder one another and the failure to account for this in the weapon designs of this game is among the more prominent minor failings of the series. Not a deal breaker just a kind of stupid oversight.
**Reapers who won't go away to let you finish scanning until you've done a story mission or landed on planet.
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