Mass Effect: Andromeda (PS4): What's New is Old.

July review of a game I played in March. Good pacing, Chris.

As we all know, I generally have a pretty hate/hate relationship with the majority of science fiction. There are a handful of shining examples through various media that will grab and in some cases even hold my attention, but they tend to be pretty few and far between. With games that is just as relevant. If it has star or space in its title I'd say 70% of the time I don't even bother giving it a second glance. I don't care what color Spock's beamsaber is in Battlestar.

Which is what made it so surprising that this series managed to actually engross me to the point of being a fan of it. Because to be totally honest I don't think I actually even really liked the first one, I didn't think it was a great game. I had just bought a XB360 at the time and was told this was a game worth getting. But once I actually got into it I'll be damned if I didn't fall for this universe. I still feel the second one was the best in this series and it sure felt like the book was closed on the third one, but here we are with a new game in this franchise. After the lukewarm ending of the third, I'm ready to see how Bioware writes themselves out of this one.

MASS EFFECT: ANDROMEDA(PS4)

In between the events of Mass Effect 2 and Mass Effect 3, in a joint initiative between the Quarians and 4 races of the Milky Way galaxy have collaborated on an expansion initiative to the Andromeda galaxy. Over 20,000 of the collected races partook in a 600 year journey across space in search of "golden worlds" on massive ships called Arcs. Each race's Arc is lead by a Soldier with an embedded AI unit called a SAM, and they are tasked to find suitable planets for colonization. In this case, the human pathfinder, Alec Ryder.

You control either one of Alec's children, Scott or Sara Ryder (Sara in my case), and unfortunately after being awakened from cryo-sleep to find out that their targeted golden world isn't quite golden.... or even habitable, as it surrounded by this harmful dark energy being called the scourge. The scourge knocks out the ships power, and renders one Ryder sibling comatose. A scout team goes down planet-side to confirm if they planet is habitable or not, and they are met with resistance from a hostile alien race called the Kett.

While investigating the remains of a previous alien race, Ryder and Alec find an alien monolith and activate it. The explosion from it sends them reeling, smashing Ryder's helmet. Alec sacrifices himself to save his child, and makes them the new pathfinder by transferring the SAM AI to them. With the pathfinder lost, all that's left is to return to the centralized space station for the Andromeda Operation called the Nexus and continue the mission. But the Nexus is in shambles, none of the other arcs made it, and it's barely functional. So it's up to Ryder's team to figure out what happened, and get the Andromeda initiative underway.

So as you can tell from the plot synopsis here, we are getting no resolution on the events of the previous Mass Effect Trilogy. It's essentially so far down the timeline that the majority of the characters from original series would have died from conflict or age. They essentially wipe the slate clean sans from a handful of messages from Liara T'soni warning about the impending purge of the Reapers.

Anyways, Andromeda. I'm going to be a little hard pressed to review this one because I'm months behind writing this, they've already patched a bunch, and honestly I can't really think of a lot that has changed in this one in comparisons to the rest of the series.

First off, let's talk character models. Bioware, I'm willing to give you a pass because the majority of the cast are aliens, but some how a significant portion of them seem to look more humans than the actual humans. It was a pretty significant issue with how poor an number of the characters looked that they had to patch in design upgrades to make the humans (specifically women) look less tired and more detailed. Every character with a humanoid form still looks like their eyes are trying to pop from their heads.

The character creator is still a plate of hot garbage. I spent hours try make Velfir Ryder appealing for me to look at only to have it look like she has neon face paint the moment she left the creator, because shit looks differently in different lighting engine. Despite the incredible amount of customization to this game, you really only get one crack to make your characters so you better be confident in them when you finish up. Or, you can do what a significant number of people did and just try to make the shittiest looking characters they can come up with.

Kotaku had people send in their bad character screens, and some of them are horrifying.

Thankfully, when it comes to abilities you don't really get locked into what kind of character you have this time around. Andromeda lets you play around with all the aspects of your characters pretty fast and loose, and it makes incredibly cheap to reboot and make adjustments. So if you are playing the game as silent stealthy sniper and decide mid-way through the game you'd like to be a heavy wielding thicky with biotic powers? A quick trip to you ship and a couple of credits and you can respec however you like. I ended up liking what I was rolling with and didn't end up doing this.

Andromeda has kept the somewhat cover-based 3rd person shooter engine it laid down in Mass Effect 2 pretty much intact. If you've ever played a Mass Effect game before or even any modern 3rd person shooter, the controls should feel natural at this point its been around for well over a decade. The combat really on changes up depending on what traits you've taken and will dictate what kind of attack you will use.

Andromeda gives you lots of freedom with your specs, so play around.

In my case, I was a technician with effective sniping ability, so I would basically rain down headshot fire target after target from hundreds of yards away, and if they were foolish enough to get closer they would be burned with a incinerate fireball, then exploded with an electric overcharge. If they were dumb enough to push closer, they were ripped down with a laser assault rifle. I could clear out entire bases without ever needed to step foot in them till it was totally safe. I've seen some pretty interesting high damage builds, but I never really needed to explore them.

The only real thing different about the combat that I can think of is now there is an addition of a rocket jump and a dodge. The dodge I found useful for whipping around a cover for tense firefights. The jump is really only about as useful as the games platforming segments require them. Sure you can jump and then dodge to dash, and it helps with exploration a little bit but otherwise the game could have not had it and it probably wouldn't have affected things much.

Paw Rifle: unlimited ammo, perfect accuracy, shreds shields.  Yes please.

The cast? Ehh, cast is alright I guess. As is with most Mass Effect games there are characters I really liked like Peebee and Drack (the Asari and Krogan, go figure), and ones that I didn't like Cora. But because of your ability to overhaul your skills team composition never really felt like it was a real determining factor. From my build, it seemed like I wouldn't have needed a character like Ja'al because of the same skill set, but I rarely noticed any impact if he was on my team or not.

It feels like Andromeda tried to mix various elements of the previous games that worked in the hope of a vastly improved experience. It's better for it but I don't know how much. Maps for example are big and explorable again. It feels like they have taken a page out of the build of Dragon Age: Inquisition and set up the maps for individual questing areas. As much as I hate to say it, Skyrim really set a precedent for open world questing that's probably going to continue to be a staple for years to come. Thankfully, In addition to the return of being able to drive around the maps, it also implements a fast travel for landmarks you have already hit to save time. But it's still viable to drive since you are able to mine resources from the car as well.

Dem Duke boys is crazy

Which makes me wonder why the hell we still have to scan every single planet still. Either for meager resources or map completion there very rarely is any functional reason to do it. There are handful of areas where you scan that adds areas of interest to the map. These should be the only things we need to scan for, the rest is just pointless fluff.

It was especially bad before the initial patch where every time you wanted to transition from planet to planet or from galaxy to galaxy you had to watch this extended interspace travel sequence. Prior to the patch, there was no way to skip these sequences that basically slowed down planet exploration to a crawl. I'm sure this had to do something with load times but there are only so many planets you actually set foot on. Thankfully, this got quickly adjusted and once you are in a new galaxy, you are able to skip most of these flight sequences.

The transitions are so long that 15 seconds of gif isn't enough to show a whole one.

Speaking of patches, I found this one to be especially bad when it came to glitching in general. I would have tons of problems of animations bugging out, interactions messing up, falling through floors mid fight, things bugging out that wouldn't allow me to finish off the quests, and one situation where backing my PS4 to a new drive almost ruined my progress. Thankfully the majority of these were able to be fixed by simply restarting the game, but it gave the entire game a very unpolished feeling to me.

There really isn't much to add about the multiplayer. If you played it on Mass Effect 2 or 3, it's basically more of the same. There is a new companion app for you phone that you can use to earn more research points to unlock more weapons or equipment, more characters of the online mode, but I only really dabbled with it a few times and it destroyed me on the easiest setting, so I didn't really bother with it.

I'll give Bioware this, they always manage to leave me totally confused at the start of a Mass Effect game as they drown me in terminology, backstory, and massive opening map locations, but by the time I get rolling in the game I am completely dialed in. The story in this one is pretty straight forward for the most part, and while there aren't a terribly bountiful amount of boss fights (a handful of architect fights really), it does still get pretty exciting by the end of it.

But the one thing they got very right is that they finally did away with the stupid Paragon/Renegade system. Typically when you play this series you pretty much make the decision in your head at the onset if you are going to play this game good or evil, since there is generally no real benefit to play things neutral. You generally needed to be all good or all bad to make certain decisions, and the game suffered for it.

I liked Peebee a lot. Lived in an escape pod in the event the other shoe dropped.
Kept everyone at arm length. Behaviors I could certainly relate to.

Now instead of those options, you have conversational choices of formal, logical, emotional, or casual. I like these options better because while they aren't exactly clear what that logical response could be, it allows me to better play to the character I am talking to. Most of the time I just went with casual because I tend to be a bit of a smart ass, but in more harrowing moments I could shift to emotional and it made sense. Or meeting a new race of aliens, formal made more sense to me. Conversational trees felt better in this one, more natural.

But the biggest thing I applaud them on this front is not the conversation trees, but the decisions. Again in older Mass Effects it was: Do you want to save the box of adorable kittens? or do you want to light the box on fire. I always hated that there was no middle ground or if there was it was not worth picking. Not so in this one. In a large number of critical moments during the game you are presented with two opposing, but equally viable options. No good or evil, paragon or renegade. Just two varied grey possible options. And they fucking killed me to the point where I would sit and agonize over what selection I was going to make. It made it truly feel like my decisions mattered, and would leave me with consequences of those decisions. It really was the best aspect of this game.

So did I like the game? Yeah I guess so. When the narrative got going I was able to see it through to the finish.  There were certainly enough characters I liked to want to see their story through, and even the ones that I didn't care for I cared enough about the story to do their missions as well. But ultimately, when the final credits rolled I was with the distinct feeling of "Whelp, this certainly was a Mass Effect game." It's certainly not a game I felt I needed to keep playing the moment I had finished it.

Mass Effect: Andromeda feels like a cash in to try to draw back a fan base that felt scorned by the ending of Mass Effect 3.  I enjoyed that it took the story back in a new direction and honestly I didn't mind a return visit to this universe. It was met with somewhat lack luster reviews and similar sales. It's certainly not the greatest one in its series, but it's certainly playable.  It pushes no boundaries and breaks no molds. It simply was just a another game of the series.  If you are a fan of the franchise you certainly will find yourself enjoying your time with it. I don't think it's a must have or can't miss, not sure if it's a hard sell for new fans, but I wasn't unhappy with it.

Seriously, how long does it take to set up a goddamn movie night?

Dragon Age: Inquisition - You seem to have gotten some MMO in my Dragon Age....

*I had a very hectic January, so I apologize for not getting this review out sooner.*

So I have to say, I am actually kind of surprised that this release ever came out. Bioware showed a massive amount of success with the Mass Effect games. And after taking a bit of a beating for a very cut and pasted rush job in Dragon Age 2, and then the whole DLC debacle in Mass Effect 3 followed by the dissatisfaction of the ME3's ending, it was obvious that Bioware was going to take a moment to lick at its wounds. 

Aside from a handful of Star Wars: Old Republic dlc expansions, Bioware really took some time to knuckle down and really rebuild the experience for this series. After a 1 year turn around for Dragon Age 2, this installment took a number of years to see the light of day. Was the wait worth it? Time to take a trip back to Ferelden and see in....

DRAGON AGE: INQUISITION

The title screen opens up with a shot of Temple of Sacred Ashes sitting upon a snowy mountaintop. Two lines march single file towards it, on one side walk the Mages, and across from them are the Templars. When you select new game, a neon green explosion rips the sky and the blast blows back both of the lines.

We cut to a figure rousing into consciousness (where you create your character), and they arise to find themselves in the fade. Spiders surround them and give chase, but a glowing green figure calls out them as they climb after it, upon reaching the glowing outstretched hand, the player is dropped out of the fade and subdued by soldiers, your hand glowing the green of the fade and of the hand you took. 

Now imprisoned, we are interrogated by a Seeker named Cassandra, and Leliana from the previous two titles. They inform you that the fade has ripped a whole into the sky, and you were the only one found at the site of the explosion. Unfortunately, a large number of the Chantry officials, including the Chantry's divine priestess were lost in the explosion and people are looking for someone to blame, namely you. 

The Left and Right hands of the Divine. Cassandra may seem stoic, but
if you actually follow her substories, she's a fantastic character.

However, during a regrouping on the way to camp, we learn that the glowing mark on your hand allows you to close the rifts in the fade, thus preventing demons from continuing to enter the world. Cassandra and Leliana decide this is the best chance to close the giant rift, but the Chantry refuses as they see you as the cause. Cassandra invokes the right to reform the Inquisition, thus branding all of you as heretics in the eyes of the church and begins assembling an army to try to close the rift in the sky and bring stability to the world, with you at the forefront. 

As per my usual story line descriptions, I had to gloss over a good deal because Bioware tends to get pretty story heavy. While it certainly helps to have an understanding of the first two games, ultimately this is a brand new story with generally new characters. There are only two major holdovers from Origins, and two or three holdovers from Dragon Age 2. The rest are a brand new sect of dounkburgers. I'm not surprised, but I have to say I was hoping for this one to kind of tie the games together.

Actually, before I get to much farther, they sort of tried to address that to a degree. Prior to the release of Inquisition, they released something to Origin called Dragon Age Keep. What this was was essentially a mural that allowed you to tap into your uploaded saves and load up the characters and decisions you've made in previous titles to shape the world of Inquisition. The problem is I've played through Dragon Age: Origins with nearly every path possible, and practically none of my games were there. Which royally, ROYALLY sucks.

No matter, you can still go through and manually select all the outcomes of all the of the major events. Handy, but its very time consuming, and difficult to remember what decisions I made in a game I played nearly five years ago. Half of them I didn't remember who the people were in the event being discussed. Still, it was a cool feature (shame I forgot to import it to my game before I started).

Trying to remember choices I made years ago was harder than the game was.

The first thing I noticed is that it kept with the faster paced, more action oriented style of fighting you saw in Dragon Age 2. That's not to say it was active battle or action styled, there is still a great deal of RPG control. Generally you just move around the battle as needed, holding down a trigger to attack, The buttons on your pad can be mapped to your various abilities. The combat tends to play faster and more chaotically than I remember it.

The level of skill though really kinda hinges on what class you are playing as or building towards. My first playthrough of the game I started as a mage, and basically hung back and fired spells as my tanks took care of business up front. It was simple and easy to play, but then I upgraded to Knight-Enchanter which essentially puts your mage in the front line. It's low damage, but makes you very hard to bring down as each strike fills your barrier. Playing as a mage had challenges, but it wasn't difficult.

Standard View

I switched to a dagger rouge my 2nd time through, and I'm noticing a significantly increased challenge. My character is doing a lot more pure damage than my mage ever did, but she also can't take a beating as well as before, so I've needed to carefully map which skills would most be useful to get me through tougher fights with harder monsters. So this clearly isn't an RPG where you can basically metagame everything into taking care of it self, you do need to stay focused.

They did add a tactical mode which makes the game feel a bit more like Origins in regards to control. In this mode you can flip to character and have them use specific abilities one specific targets, and the action only moves when you allow it to, so you can oversee the whole battle and make adjustments where necessary. It almost gives the game somewhat of a JRPG/RTS feel to it with how it changes the feel of battle. I've been told for harder difficulties this is nearly mandatory, but outside of one or two battles or the need to revive a character, I barely used it.

Tactical View

The game starts off with a bit more character customization than Dragon Age 2 did. Get to choose from the 3 big fantasy races (Human, Elf, and Dwarf) and the Qunari. Get to pick your gender, pick your character class, then as I mentioned, you get to use the character creator. I have to say for the most art, its pretty good. Instead of sliders it gives me a grid kinda thing and I can easily see whats being moved around and how it looks. I liked that a lot. What I didn't like is the surprisingly limited number of hair options. Why would you go through all the trouble of full facial bone structure customization but not give us more than 10 hair options?

What liked even less is that everything you do in the created means exactly shit, because the moment you leave the awkward lighting of the creator, your beautiful elven mage will look like a roadkill disaster. No matter what setting you chose, no matter what color, or shade of gloss you pick, every single character you create in this game will look like they were just caught eating the contents of a colored glo-stick. The PC modders have probably worked around it, but I was kind stuck with it.

Its amazing how the creator can be vastly improved and incredibly limiting at the same time

So one of the biggest complaints about Dragon Age 2 is that it was tightly contained in the same town and used a lot of the same maps over and over again. It was rehashed, repetitive, and lacking a great deal of creativity. The game as a whole suffered for it, and people hated it. Dragon Age: Inquisition however basically meshed the map system of the first game, and environments that are incredibly expansive. I won't say they are as big as Skyrim in scope, but certainly bigger than the areas of Final Fantasy XIII-3.

You activate main quests from your base camp's war room, once you do so you can travel the necessary area where one of your scouts briefs you on the main reason you are there. But as you travel through the expanse, you will find a number of side quests to do as well. Doing so allows you to build the Inquisitions notoriety and therefore power. You use power to continue to unlock more quests, so its a good idea to keep a number of them open because you need them to progress in the game.

The problem is, some of the areas are too expansive and they have too much shit too. Way too much. So much so that both gaming sites such as Kotaku, and even Bioware themselves basically had to tell players "Hey! Leave the Hinterlands! We know there are a lot of quests in that first area, but there is so much cool stuff to see! You will be less bored if you actually play the game!!" Once I read that, I too needed to force myself to leave that area because I got caught up in trying to do everything I could in that area, and I won't lie I was getting bored doing it. 

Bioware took the complaints from DA2 and gave us some beautiful environments this time

And you will get caught up in side quests. MAN will you. This is one of those games that will straight up tell you "Yeah I don't care that you are 33 and working full time. You are not finishing this game in 5 hours. We worked hard on it, so have to as well." And its a pretty good change of pace. As much as I love a game I can rip through and enjoy the story, I also enjoy a game that is going to last and give me my monies worth, and on that front Dragon Age: Inquisition delivers.

This is a game for people who like to explore and while I found it a little to easy to get sidetracked from the main quests, I think that the game is better off for it. It gives the overall adventure a feeling of expansive bigness to it, and gives me the feeling of genuinely adventuring and exploring. Sometimes the game suffers from having crappy MMO sidequests like collect 10 of said plant, but sometimes you go out to slay some bandits or find a hidden treasure or cave. There is some puzzle solving in the game as well so it broadens the pallet out somewhat.

I guess if I was to say anything about that, is if that I wished main story missions were better indicated on the map, it would have let me know much easier what I had to head to if I wasn't in the mood for question. In games like this I hit a point where I just have to put it down, and if I didn't finish the story, I might never. Thankfully, I didn't in this one.

Considering I was looking forward to seeing the Origins characters again, it took a little bit of warming up to me but I have decided that I really like this cast. I might go as far as to say I like this cast the most of the three Dragon Age games. Origins had a mix of characters I liked and some I didn't (you were the worst, Sten), Dragon Age 2 had more characters I didn't much care about to ones I did. But Inquisition has a pretty strong and diverse cast through and through from varied genders, races, political stances, and faiths.

Blackwall fills the role of the honorable knight, Cassandra is the gruff crusader with a softer hidden side (and totally won me over), Sera is the wise cracking prankster, Vivienne plays the regal noble, Varric reprises his role as the cunning and dashing rogue, Iron Bull the rough and tumble thug with a heart of gold, and I could go on. Even the characters I didn't love still played their parts to compile a very interesting ensemble to give a well rounded team to cater to all tastes.

Which really is what made the decision making in this game so much more difficult. You have always had to make decisions in Dragon Age but this is a game where I've really felt the weight of the choices I've had to make. You will never, EVER, make a choice that will make the whole team happy. Because of the very nature of the story (IE: The ongoing hostilities between mages and the rest of the world) its very design means you can't please everyone. This doesn't just mean every little token decision you have to make, some of them have some very serious consequences.

Around midway through the game when the Inquisition is in full swing, you sort of take the role of judge, jury, and executioner to the villains you've fought, or people who you have apprehended via various missions or decisions as you play. Your adviser Josephine will explain to you their crime, give you something of a recommendation. You hear the defendant make their case, and you decide their fate. These decisions will have repercussions among your team and while some of them can be downright silly, a lot of them pose some very difficult choice where someone has to lose on the deal.

Most specifically are the choices near the end of the story. There is a final dungeon where you are forced to make some decisions about how to proceed, but then there is an incredibly difficult one near the end which would shake out the last few chapters of the game. Because of how I built my character it put me at a real crossroads, so much so that at 3am I was staring at my screen agonizing over the decision for 20 minutes, considering waking up my roommate to ask what he did. There was no black and white, good and evil. Just different shades of gray and those are the decisions that really make a game like this powerful.

Of all the characters, Sera is probably the only "Must Use" in my book. She is an
absolute trouble maker, talks in circles, and somehow still innocent. She sometimes
Can come off as dumb but has some complex workings about her. You just kinda have to love her.

There is a multiplayer mode to this game as well, I opened it like, once. I suppose it can turn the game into a Gauntlet-esq dungeon crawler but honestly, After one level I haven't played it since, and probably never will. I understand they want to shoehorn multiplayer into everything, but this is a place where it really didn't need to be.

I really don't know what else I can say about Dragon Age: Inquisition that hasn't already been said by paid reviewers who actually got their thoughts out when the game came out. The first game came out and it was good, the second game came out and they took a beating. So they hung back, licked their wounds, actually learned from their mistakes, and produced a very worthy successor to the Dragon Age linage that satisfied all my desires as a RPG gamer.

I think that Dragon Age: Inquisition only won game of the year honors because it was the hot new game around the time the year ended. But deserving or no, Inquisition was an absolutely stellar experience that I highly recommend to anyone who loves a good long RPG or is a fan of the classic fantasy genre.

Fuck You, Druffy. It was an accident.

Mass Effect 3 (XB360/PS3): Reaping our emotions.

I've never been a big fan of sci-fi. There is a small number of games, movies, or comics that take place in space that holds my interest at all, and those that do the space aspect of it is fairly marginal at best. So it was a bit odd that I took a chance on the first Mass Effect. However, after forging through a VERY sluggish beginning, it ended up proving to be a pretty solid game with likable characters and probably one of the best dialogs for a create-a-character ever. Following along with Mass Effect 2, it contained almost everything I liked about the first and vastly improved the combat, I had become completely entrenched with the series. Now we hopefully finish the trilogy.

MASS EFFECT 3:(XB360)

Two years after the events of Mass Effect 2, Commander Shepard (who for the sake of this review was a she in my game) after going into the collector base and saved her crew by thwarting to the collectors attempt to build a new Reaper, was rewarded by being forced to return to earth, relieved of duty, and kept under surveillance. Quite the thank you for saving the world twice, huh. So after two years of trying to warn everyone about the impending disaster,  the galactic council did nothing to heed Shepard's warnings about the Reapers, which are giant squid-like machines who's sole purpose is to purge organic life every millennium or so, and begin to panic and scramble as the Reapers have chose to start this time at earth. As they begin to lay waste to human civilization, Shepard gives the earth council a big I told you so and takes to the sky to try to assemble the entire galaxy to stop them in a massive man vs. machine war to determine the fate of the galaxy.

You'll have to forgive that bit of a in a nutshell intro to the story of this series, but I would be hard pressed to give a accurate full synopsis of the deep story this game actually has. Mass Effect's biggest strength is it's incredible storytelling and it continues again in this installment. Usually when I play a game with multiple sequels, I have to piece together what happened between them or anything I have done in the prior games is only marginally acknowledged. Mass Effect does an excellent job of linking together your decisions in the previous games and adjusts the cast and situations based upon them, and they do a great job of putting some weight behind some of these actions. So if you are like me and you like to slut around in your Mass Effect adventures, some of the people you come across during the course of your adventure might have something to say about it (Liara was mad I cheated on her with Garrus, but she forgave me. She didn't forgive me when I had lesbian fun time in the shower with Traynor. The Asari are such prudes). There is one decision involving the Geth and the Quarians that I won't spoil that my actions of Mass Effect 2 directly effected, and left me with a real "Sophie's choice" on how to a approach it because there really wasn't a win/win. It really is one of the few games where every little decision that you make in previous games affects how things play out in the new versions. The conversation wheel it uses is still probably one of the best mechanics for RPG discussion I've seen used to date and I was glad to see a series give a created character a voice and actually have it sound good. To the games credit you can skip a lot of text if you want, and you don't have to go through all the side quests which would drastically cut dialog times.

The voice acting for the most part is a cut above average. It's not Uncharted series level in how good and natural the acting sounds, but for the most part the emotions of the characters are conveyed well. Its only real faults come into when Shepard tries to raise his voice, it just comes out forced and hokey. "Ok male Shepard? You a really mad here so read this line like your doing a high school play."(and next time happier and with your mouth open). They don't hit on the all of the voices though. Some of them sound a bit samey after a while, like one voice actor is doing multiple character voices. But its definitely better than say Elder Scrolls: Skyrim where they basically had one male and one female to do every voice in the universe of the game. And the chief screw up in the voice acting comes in the play of the DLC character Javik. While I don't have any problem with his character or his portrayal of the Prothean *spoiler alert* he speaks in a what sounds like an incredibly thick Jamaican accent, and I can't help but think of or make a "Cool Runnings" joke every time I hear him talk regardless of how serious the conversation at hand is. It just comes off as goofy to me.

Mordin's voice is annoying, but is probably one of the more interesting
characters in the series. Shame he's not playable this time.

The game also rewards you for continuing to play and keeping your saves as well. I got to start off my Mass Effect 3 starting off at like level 25. The enemies tend to scale with you but it was nice to have a lot of abilities right out of the gate. If you are playing the game from scratch you essentially can be one of three starting classes (Combat, Tech, Biotic) or a hybrid of two of them. They can call them different all they want, but essentially the only thing that changes from class to class is what weapon you are better suited with and what abilities you get with them. My Shepard was an infiltrator so I used mainly pistols and sniper rifles. Those two coupled with a fireball ability and two well picked teammates, I pretty much didn't need anything else for the duration of the game since I could headshot an enemy from a mile away on a whim. That being said, they really polished up the gun combat that made Mass Effect 2 so much fun. I still find some trouble moving in and out of cover and the run can be kind of finicky when it wants to, but the game has never been more polished than this version.  I would still say its a little behind the true third person shooters like Uncharted or Resident Evil as far as fluidity and control go, but those games don't splice in the RPG and team controls into the scheme so I'm willing to over look it. Basically after one mission in I was running and gunning and smashing husks like I never put down Mass Effect 2. 

There are a couple of things that bother me about the game though. Most annoyingly to me was the load time issue. I thought this was something we've worked through? Open ended sandbox games I can cover huge maps seamlessly without ever having to stop game play. Every single little change of map you have to wait through some stupidly long loading time. Its particularly annoying when you are on your ship, the Normandy, and you are trying to change floors to talk to your whole team. You will often find yourself looking at the map first to see how many of your crew are on the same floor so you can hopefully do them all in one trip. Sorry Vega, your douchebag macho bravado can wait till I actually have to upgrade my weapons for me to make the trip to talk to you. I hate using the elevators. Really, it wouldn't be so bad if instead of just giving me some boring loading screen, they just covered it up with a small animation of my characters in the elevator like the did in the first installment. Hell, with the amount of time spent waiting at loading screens, it would have been a great idea to put in random dialogues between the team like you did in Dragon Age Some of those just made having certain party members together all the more worth it. 

While I just raved about how good the combat was, I do think that whole duck behind 4 foot wall mechanic a la Gears of War (IE: Gears of BORED) is getting incredibly played out at this point. I don't mind getting to use a little cover but this game of long distance whack-a-mole is being used to the point of nausea in literally every single 3rd person shooter in this current generation. Don't get me wrong, its a strong mechanic and still fun to play, but with regenerating health, med-kits, and no shortage of cover, the game didn't really present a challenge until the final missions of the game. I'd also like there to be a harder line in decision to use either regenerating health or the med-kid systems. Giving us both pretty much makes the game a walk in the park the entire way through it.

At this point in the series, I didn't really see the need to introduce us to a bunch of new teammates. The game was already feeling pretty epic enough with the cast we have already established, and it was kind of heartbreaking to see an old face come back only to let you know you aren't going to get to use them. Most namely the Jack character as she seems to be going through a major point of development where she's trying to change her image and outlook, and has grown attached to people now, but you only really get to learn about this during one mission. Which is a real shame because she's a billion times more interesting than the aforementioned Vega asshole. Some of the new ones are good though, once EDI became playable she never left my party. Bottom line is you spent two whole games letting me become attached and empathetic to characters in your universe, least you can do is actually let me use them. Quit sticking me with Tali, Tali sucks.

This is actually a Photoshop, because nobody uses Kaiden.

The last thing I should probably address is the ending of the game. If you have access to the Internet (which you should, otherwise you wouldn't be reading this), you no doubt have already learned that fans were not at all happy with how the game ends. I don't intend to spoil anything but to give an idea of it, I felt there's a bit of a lack of epilogue or closure. However, they entire course of the final missions of the game began to feel like one very long extended ending. Everything that took place was so crazy and intense it was really difficult to put down. It was all capped of with an incredibly difficult moral choice that was so iffy for each option that I had to pause the game, sit down, and take several minute to reflect what was going to happen to the rest of the universe. That to me is sign of excellent story writing and immersion, the fact that I had to have a serious argument with myself to make a true moral decision without being able just shoot from the hip. I became Commander Shepard in that moment, not just playing her/him. I can see how people would be upset by the ending, but I don't think I was as outraged as everyone else was. What DOES bother me however, is that all the bitching of whining and online petitioning that took place has actually forced Bioware to address the issue, and they intend to change or add on to the ending. This to me sets a very bad precedent because now the artistic creativity can be compromised just because the fans can raise a big enough stink about it. I loved the first Grudge movie (fuck you, I did), but I thought the second one was complete and utter garbage. Does this mean I can continue to write Sam Raimi letters and raise petitions to get him to come up with a better ending for the movie? No, of course not, and gamers shouldn't do it either. Somebody took the time to write out a complex and long tale for Commander Shepard and one would assume that they had the time and finances to see it through without cutting corners. So I take it as this is the way they intended to end the story. People may not like it but that's why we get to have an opinion, but we shouldn't be able to change a finished work.

Ultimately, I have to say I was incredibly satisfied with my experiences with the Mass Effect franchise and that is pretty impressive for a guy who gets bored with almost everything space related.  Each of these incredibly lengthily games I have managed to play through twice just so I can experience all the various different dialog trees if I was a hero or villain. It gave weight to my decisions and gave me a cast of characters to fall in love with. They continued to improve on the games mechanics to make a very entertaining and enjoyable 3rd person shooter. And most importantly, closure or no, it gives us a defining start and finish to this trilogy, and this day of DLC and numerous sequels, this is something I can really respect. You owe it to yourself to play all three of these titles but even if you play just one of them, you'd be hard pressed to not to enjoy yourself.

Oh yeah, and the Krogan are still fucking awesome.