Mass Effect 3

Man, talk about retro reviews. I've finally got around to finishing the Mass Effect franchise after my laptop had a catastrophic failure so I replayed the entire thing from start to finish on my trusty old PS3.

Mass Effect 3 was the conclusion to the science fiction trilogy developed by Bioware and published by Electronic Arts. Just to show you the lateness of this review, the game is available to play on a PS3, Xbox 360, Wii U and any PC that happens to be running Windows.

Now, despite this game being almost half a decade old at this point it is still a god damn feast for the senses, unlike its predecessors. Visually there are going to be so many set pieces that just blow you away, but even aside from the prerendered the game is incredibly smooth, this is the best the characters have ever looked, its the most detail this franchise has ever been realised in, the musical scores are some of the best ever created for a videogame and its an experience that would put some games that are going to be coming out in 2017 to shame I feel.

Its essentially impossible to talk about Mass Effect without talking about the narrative. Because that was one of the salient points being touted about the game by the marketing teams since the choices that you make in the first game are supposed to have an impact later down the line, later down the line being here in the conclusion of the trilogy. Obviously there are going to be spoilers, so don't be a jack ass about spoilers about a game that is almost five years old.

I'll start with the overall narrative of the game, the stakes were set very clearly and very dramatically right at the start the game and I loved that. It made every mission feel justified, it made every action have weight and it is the most driven I've ever been playing a Mass Effect game. Even the minor details show the true struggle of the conflict that you are fighting, a nice little example being that the highest rating you can have when fighting the reapers in a 'poor' rating. But, there were some massive plot holes that made no sense to me, I'll take it as a given that Cerberus does want to control the reapers, however,  where the fuck are they getting so many people to fight with? This is just a numbers situation, if literally every single military organisation the galaxy is having trouble finding people to use how is an organisation similar is scale to a covert government organisation even capable of competing in actual pitched conflict? Because this would be similar to the CIA fighting the US, Russian, Chinese, German, Japanese, and so many other military forces at once and someone winning. It really and genuinely bothered me. Aside from that, where are all the other rouge alien organisations, these are all races that predate humanity and you want me to believe that don't have organisations as elaborate or powerful as Cerberus running around? I just really didn't feel the that they were a sufficiently menacing or threatening enemy to have in the game. Had there not been a reaper threat this game would have really fallen apart for me, but there was and that threat was always clearly manifested and shown and kept me on track regarding the real fight that was taking place.

Its over, its all over.

Getting to the ending of the game, there was so much hate for it and that was a big reason I stayed away from the game for so long because I was worried what was going to happen to all these characters that I love. However, once I actually got to the end, I didn't hate it, you could even say that I liked it. Yes, there are a few things in the ending cinematics that don't make sense, however, given the scale of the conflict and the implications of the narrative I felt it was appropriate that the game ended the way it did.

They will always be my Suicide Squad.

Now, getting to the more detailed choices and the impact they had on the game. I really loved some some of the character arcs ended because god damn, this game was providing conclusion and resolution left and right and it was so satisfying seeing the characters that I had invested in so much emotionally in again. The rise of Wrex for example my favourite thing, he brought the Krogan back from the brink. The martyrdom of Mordin was absolutely heartbreaking, the incalculable tragic suicide of Tali vas Normandy and the death of the Quarian race due to their own obstinance, the will they won't they dynamic that Ashley and Shepard had and so, so much more really made me appreciate the significance of the choices I made in this game. Even characters that I had hated in the previous editions of the game like Grunt and Jack had real life blown into them, this game is without a doubt a masterclass when it comes to making a gaming world feel alive and the characters within it feel like they have a a purpose beyond that of the gamer and their character. Having said that, who the fuck was that fucking cholo they tried to jam in this game?

Ummm, who the fuck is this?

All we've got left now I guess are the mechanics of the game. I've felt that the game has mechanically gotten much smoother with every edition of the game, but that really came at the cost of complexity. Both ME2 and ME3 are much simpler games with regards to mechanics when compared to the first ME. You've got very few fields to actually take your character in different development paths. The game essentially was a slightly more complex shooter, in the same vein as Bioshock Infinite as opposed to being a real role playing game like one of the Dragon Age games for example. That is an entirely fine thing to be, I'm just saying that I would have preferred the game to have a more complex RPG element that existed earlier in the franchise.

I'm so glad that I played this game, it was absolutely fantastic being back in this universe and seeing the story to its conclusion and despite me having some differences with the mechanics of the game, I just can't deny that it was a fucking roller coaster ride from start to finish. This simply has to go down as one of the greatest games and greatest trilogies ever made.