Mass Effect 3 Review

Nowadays it seems that every popular game franchise makes it to a third game.  Few go onto outshine their predecessors.  Well the final act in BioWare’s sci-fi trilogy Mass Effect 3 has arrived and may I dare say it is the best entry in the series and quite possibly frontrunner for my 2012 Game of the Year.  Mass Effect 3 refines all the mechanics from the previous two games in the series to perfectly blend the combat of a third-person shooter with the character building and storytelling of a RPG.

Your sole purpose in Mass Effect 3 is to take back Earth, the human home world which was invaded by the Reapers during the game’s stunning opening.  Every mission you complete, every decision you make, every asset you find from scanning planets contribute to building your army to take on the Reapers in the final mission.  It makes every mission, story or side, mean something to the game’s end result.  You feel the need to explore every corner of the Mass Effect universe taking in everything it has to offer.  Mass Effect 3’s story is among the strongest in the series as it twists and turns and offers choices that make you think, make you cry and make you furious.  You will get emotionally attached to these characters and thinking about the other possible outcomes will circle in your head for days.

While the decisions and story are what you will cling onto, the superb combat keeps you engaged in the game’s various missions.  Just like in the story, there are many different ways of approaching combat.  You are able to run and gun bouncing from different pieces of cover to avoid enemy fire or you can be more strategic, use different biotic, tech or combat powers to take down enemies or use a combination of those approaches.  You can also add upgrades to your weapons at workbenches throughout the game and switch your armour to improve different stats.  The missions in Mass Effect 3 are great.  Some standout over others, but each one offers a lot of variety, which keeps things from getting tedious and repetitive like in other games.  Mass Effect 3’s art direction is absolutely stunning as it brings each locale to life from the wastelands of Tuchanka to the slick, metallic innards of a Geth Dreadnought.  The biggest feature added with Mass Effect 3 is the online co-op multi-player.  While I am not a fan of the multi-player being online only, it is very fun addition to the series.  Mass Effect 3’s multi-player pulls from the game’s great combat to create a fun co-operative experience much like Gears of War’s Horde Mode, but with much more strategy needed to last all 11 waves.  Personally there are a few games that I enjoy playing online, Mass Effect 3 is one of them.

No game is perfect.  Even the best have a couple little blemishes.  In Mass Effect 3’s case, it comes in the way of graphical glitches that happen every once in a while.  It ranges from pop-in to talking to invisible characters.  It can be annoying, but it does not happen enough to consider these glitches as a big problem.  With a game as big as Mass Effect 3, the developers cannot catch every little thing.

At the end of the day no matter all the controversy surrounding it, Mass Effect 3 is one of the best RPGs of this console generation.  Mass Effect 3 improves on the shortcomings of its predecessors and creates an experience unlike any other game out there, a full-on RPG with a real-time combat system of a third person shooter.  It is a game well-worth its 60 dollar price point and the 30+ hours you will spend playing it.  It is Mass Effect 3, quite possibly the best game of 2012 and the best RPG from this side of the world.