Review: Mass Effect 3

Pros: Exciting combat, engaging characters, epic and original story line.

Cons: Confusing and unfulfilling ending, overly simplified exploration system.

Final Judgement:  If you’ve played the previous titles, you don’t need my two cents to decide to play this game.  Even with the ending, Mass Effect 3 is still one of the best games I’ve played.

http://masseffect.com

Available For: PS3, Xbox, PC

Holy Fuck, look out god damn it, its Mass Effect 3! Where or where do I even begin with this title? To pretend that I wasn’t stupid excited to get my mits on this game would be like saying Captain Picard enjoys his tea lukewarm. It’s rare that I get this excited about the release of a title. Oh sure, I look forward to the release of lots of games… X-Com, Bio Shock:Infinite, Halo 4 just to name a few that are coming up. But when Mass Effect 3 showed up at my door three days before its estimated delivery date... I may have pee’d a little. Mass Effect has always been exactly what I look for in a good video game. A great story with well thought out memorable characters that you actually find yourself giving a damn about. A game that tells truly epic space opera that we really haven’t had seen since Battlestar Galactica. Add to that a level of character customization that not only lets you play a hero that looks like you but lets you play anything from a complete fucking bad ass tearing through the universe to a  granola munching kumbaya singing nice guy… or ya know, anything in between.

As I said... or anything in between, seriously what is Shepard doing here?

And so here we come to it, the final chapter in what some are calling “The Reaper War” Saga.  In the lead-up to this title Bio Ware played up the idea that those players who carried forward their characters through the first two games would be able to see the total sum of their decisions in the final show down with the Reapers.  The accumulation of their consequences or actions the mass of the effect on their… oh I get it now, clever. While Bio Ware does a superb job on this third game they fall short in the final fifteen or so minutes of the game. Sorry I should rephrase, it doesn’t just “fall short” it falls face first through a plate glass window in to a pit full of vinegar salt and barb wire.  However, let’s look past this minor faux pas for the moment as thinking about it too much makes me grow despondent and I start staring longingly out the window and singing Usher.  So I’ll come back to it at the end of the review after I’ve thought about all the good times I had.

"We had some good times running around the galaxy didn't we EDI?"
"We Sure did Jeffy, we suuuuure did."

For those new to this series the big thing you need to know about Mass is that there is a continuous story line between the games, a story line that is by in large determined by your decisions as the player. What this means is that two peoples play through of the Mass Effect trilogy will look grossly different depending on how they chose to play the game.  The continuous story line makes for a richer gaming experience then you normally find in story driven games and I would say it’s the Tao of Mass Effect.  Without it you basically have Gears of War with less steroids and characters that didn’t get personality cues from an Ed Hardy commercial.  If you haven’t played the previous two titles do yourself a huge favor, go download or pick up the previous two and play them through sequentially, importing your character. If you don’t you can still enjoy Mass Effect 3 for what it is but you will miss out on all the extra content and tailored encounters that the game affords you for playing the trilogy cover to cover.

Extra content, like sexing up your helmeted alien friend here.

Now, for those of you who have played the previous two titles, there isn’t a lot that has changed from the Mass Effect 2 as far as gameplay is concerned.  The combat system from Mass Effect 2 was one of the best things the developers  did for the series and luckily they continued the same style through to Mass Effects 3.  The primary action and story of the game unfold through third peron, cover based shooting missions, in these missions you select two squad mates from your team to accompany you, which again adds some uniqueness as each squad mate has their own unique reactions to events and conversations that they will have with Shepard and with each other as the mission unfolds adding to the replay value of the game. The other half of the game is an non-linear free roaming type game where you explore the galaxy, your ship and the Citadel (a giant space station which serves as the galactic capital). The combat scenes in each mission are exciting and well-paced.  It’s clear that Bio Ware has improved in the level design with levels and enemy encounters feeling more creative and varied.  The exploration segments however feel more simplified and dumbed down. There is now only one place for you to visit between missions, where in previous titles you could visit four or five areas.

The galactic exploration has also been dumbed down, allowing the player to simply fly around solar systems sending out radar pings and then being told if they found something or not. Now I know the exploration bit is something that by now I’m sure Bio Ware just feels it can’t win on. After all in Mass Effect 1 there was the totally awkward and time consuming vehicle segments in which you drove your six wheeled moon truck around what felt like a million planets trying to find… I dunno, your lost pocket change or some shit. This was considered one of the worst parts of the original Mass Effect.  In Mass Effect 2 they got rid of the moon truck and instead went with planetary scanning bits in which you had to systematically wave your scanning reticule over the surface of what felt like a million more planets in order to collect enough stuff that your crew didn’t die at the end of the game. This was also time consuming and considered the worst part of the second game. So I feel like in the third one Bio Ware just threw up their hands and said “Ok fuck it! Fine no more exploring! Just fly in circles and press a button, we’ll tell you when you get something! Happy?” To which my response is… well, no. Ok yeah, it was time consuming but at the same time it really made the galaxy feel like a galaxy. Now the galaxy feels unfinished and small.  There has to be a medium between painfully boring and stupidly simple, unfortunately I don’t know what that would be so I’ll just move on.

Ahh good times with the ol' Mako moon truck... Stupid truck.

The two biggest advents in Mass Effect 3 from the previous titles is the inclusion of Multi-player and voice commands via the Kinect system. Coincidentally these are also the two things that I was the most skeptical about in the lead up to the games release.

Multiplayer is a co-op game in which you and three other players team up using several different character classes and customizable models. There are five mulit-player maps which are introduced to you throughout the single player campaign. The missions are essentially twenty or so minute matches where you and your allies take on ten waves of enemies that progressively get more challenging. Interspersed throughout the ten waves are moments when you receive special mission objectives that you must complete within a time limit, such as killing off “targets of opportunity” or hacking a console (king of the hill style). Mass Effect 3 gives you an incentive to participate in Multi-player as every mission you complete adds to your “Galactic Readiness Rating” which is a measuring stick for how well your alliance will do against the Reapers in the final show down at the end of the Single Player Campaign. The multi-player was surprisingly fun, though I found participating in any of the missions above the “Bronze” challenge rating punishingly difficult. Even though it was repetitive the matches were often butt clenchingly pitched and exciting, particularly at the end of the tenth wave where you have to hold an area for extraction while your team gets totally mobbed by a seemingly endless horde of bogies. I really enjoyed the multiplayer aspect and it complemented the Single player game well.

YO JOE!

The Kinect commands were also an interesting addition.  The Kinect provided you with the ability to command your squad in combat by telling a squad member what to do for example “Tali, sabotage” or “Squad attack my target” you could also switch weapons and abilities by just saying the type of gun or ability you wanted to use instead of having to pause the action to bring up the ring menu. Out of combat  you can also use the Kinect to quick save, interact with devices and carry on conversations by saying the prompt for what you want Shepard to say next. I didn’t find voice command as useful in these sections as there was no real rush for me to issue a command. As well I found it awkward to be physically saying to a tv screen displaying an image of a person that doesn’t exist “Its good to see you again”  as opposed to just clicking on that selection on the conversation wheel and letting Shepard do the talking. The only real issue with the voice command was that  sometimes when characters were talking it would trigger the Kinect accidentally. There were a few times that a character would be talking to me while I was standing near a computer and they would say something that the Kinect registered as “Use” or “Examine” and suddenly I was purchasing a vacation home on Illium instead of paying attention to what floating jelly-fish man was trying to tell me. Ok on to the story line and in particular the ending… deep breath, Redcoat… you can do this…

Three games and I still can't tell which end their face is.

So… If this game is about fifty hours long, then the first forty-nine and a half hours of it are absolutely amazing. There are moments with incredibly well voice acted and masterfully directed dramatic sequences that had me on the edge of my seat. The introduction to the game, when the Reapersarrived on Earth and laid waste to Vancouver gave me goose bumps. As well one of the main villains in the story Kai Leng, is the type of villain that you just love to hate. He’s the type of douche bag that gets you invested in the game in that way that just makes you wanna keep playing so you can have a chance to really stick it to him.

Ahhh I wanna punch him right in his future goggle eye cover thingies.

All that being said however, the ending to this game was crushing, not because of the way it went down but because it was such a jarring departure from the rest of the trilogy. Minor spoilers ahead…

The game drummed into your head from the minute you started the first title that your decisions would have far reaching consequences and that there would be lasting repercussions to your actions. For the most part this held true, however, in the last scene of the game a decision is put to you where you faced with one of three decisions. A Decision that is available to you no matter what other decisions you made in the rest of the game. You may have saved the Krogan, you may have brokered peace between two bitter enemies, you may have saved a race from extinction because you felt they deserved a second chance, hell you may have helped an AI understand the human condition, but in the end, none of that mattered as all those choices go out the window for three equally unappealing outcomes. Door number one, door number two or door number three… make your choice. Oh and no matter which one you choose, it’s the end of galactic civilization as we know it.  

Now am I just upset because I wanted a happy ending where I got to live as the champion of the universe with my Quarian Girlfriend sipping mai-tai’s while people lavish me with adoration for saving all of creation? Sure that’d be nice, but it’s not required. I’m upset because it felt like all of my work, all the time I had invested into the trilogy didn’t matter. It felt like Bio Ware just didn’t try with the ending.  Like they had really good intentions but then just ran out of ideas or ways to make everything work together and  instead just banged out three similar endings to give the illusion of choice. It felt empty.

Now to the Mass Effect team, I appreciate what you did with this series, and you deserves definite props and plenty of applause for what you created. I would recommend this series to anyone in a heartbeat and still consider it one of my favorite games of all time, I just really wanted an ending that made me feel like I had beaten the odds and saved the universe.

In closing, I’m going to share a few links. Some have come up with well-articulated lists of reasons why the ending is a load of bullocks to which I will place a link to here.

Others have looked for deeper meaning in the ending and come up with a rather interesting theory which I will put here. If they’re right then boys and girls at Bio Ware are some of the craftiest mother fuckers who ever lived, but I think that this theory would just be coming a little bit too much out of left field for it to be true.  

Some people are so upset about it that they’ve started a group to lobby Bio Ware and EA to rewrite the ending and even raised afrightening amount of money for charity to support their cause. To that effect Dr. Ray Muzyka, the co-founder of Bio Ware has released this statement. Very interesting and makes for a very interesting commentary on the relationship between game designers and their consumers.

I’m interested to see what Bio Ware plans to do and will be watching this story closely, stay tuned to my twitter account and the review for updates.

Commentary - Syndicate: How a promising game jumped the plot line shark.

Note: I had intended to review Syndicate initially but found myself far to fixated on the plot line so decided to just go with a commentary on my views on the Syndicate plot. If you’re thinking about playing Syndicate it’s an overall well-designed game and will be appreciated by both the FPS and the science fiction crowd, just be prepared for a letdown in the story department.

I know in my reviews and in conversations about games I oft find myself harkening back to days gone by and games that I grew up with. Reminiscing about the days when the video game market wasn’t the bountiful cornucopia of treats that it is today. The original Syndicate, released in 1993, was one of these games and introduced me to the “cyber-punk” dystopian setting seen in such movies as Blade Runner and games like Shadowrun. For all its redundant game play, Syndicate was an enjoyable game. So when I learned Starbreeze Studios (makers of “Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay”) had been green lit by EA to come up with a modernized version of this classic I was hopeful. After all if the game turned out to be anything like Riddick, we were in for a real treat. 

Unfortunately Starbreeze took a beautiful opportunity and sqandered it.  Instead of taking the opportunity to flesh out the skeletal storyline of a shadowy world run by faceless corporations who fuck the little guy and routinely commit atrocities, Starbreeze decided to mail in the ending of the storyline with a ho-hum predictable off the shelf story of betrayal and changing allegiances.

 As I said back in 1993 I played Syndicate for the first time and thoroughly enjoyed it, to the best of my recollection the story line of the game was this:

It’s the future, the world governments have been replaced by multinational corporations and the world is suffering from over population and pollution. You are some dude in a blimp that’s part of one of these groups. Your job is to take over the god damn world using a cybernetic squad of thugs whom you control. Oh and don’t worry about killing innocents or causing property damage because screw them you have a blimp, a cybernetic squad of thugs, and a multinational corporation backing you with more power than god almighty. Your squad thunders through the different territories killing, capturing and destroying the opposing syndicate’s resources until the world is covered with your corporate logo.

Blimps... because every evil dictator needs a mobile oppression platform.

The thing to take away from the 93’ version of Syndicate was that there were no “good guys” you and every corporation out there were complete ass holes and only concerned with profits and market share. In Syndicate, you were not a hero, in many ways you were the most vile and reprehensible villain. You were the Lex Luthor of the Legion of Doom.  Syndicate didn’t have a super deep or thought provoking plot, but its main theme, that the corporations were ruthless and all powerful shone clearly throughout the game.

So with a clear direction  from the original game and a talented studio like Starbreeze, the reboot of the series could only get better... right?

The modern Syndicate game places you as one of the individual cybernetic agents you previously controlled.  Removing the faceless squad based game play of the original. You play as Miles Kilo an Agent in the employ of Eurocorp, the largest and oldest Syndicate.  The game follows Kilo as he ruthlessly carries out the orders of Eurocorp which are piped directly into his brain via the “Dart 6 Chip” which is essentially a smartphone implanted in his head. The Dart Chip has a symbiotic relationship with Kilo and refers to itself and Kilo as “us” and “we”. The chip also routinely communicates with Eurocorp, seeking direction and revised objectives rather than allowing Kilo to make his own decisions. You as the player are never given an option as far as obeying orders are concerned you just do what the Dart Chip tells you to.

Dart Chip says: "SHOOT DUDES IN FACE!"

The first two thirds of the story are reminiscent of George Orwell’s 1984, with Kilo observing a world which is firmly in the control of Eurocorp. Those who have succumbed to the corporate will have been Dart Chipped and live in relative luxury. Those individuals who refuse to bend to the corporate will are cast into decrepit slums rampant with crime and disease. While playing you learn about this dystopian future from various documents and downloads that Kilo can collect.  As the game progresses this information paints a picture of a world suffering under the corporate superpowers.  The game is bleak and depressing.  At first, blush corporate life appears more or less utopian, but you quickly learn of the darker side with invasion of privacy, silent killings of dissenters, and filtering of the media to spin the corporate story.   The developers did well with the design of shiny steel and glass corporate towers where people are supposed to be living the ‘good life’ but upon closer inspection appear more like corporate prisons. 

Kilo carries out the corporation’s orders blasting through everything that gets in his way. Kilo never speaks or expresses his opinions on his predicaments or duties. He just moves around doing his job. Kilo never voices an opinion or even takes action to show that he has a personality which in the context of this game was appropriate for the protagonist. It added to the feeling that Kilo was nothing more than a manifestation of the corporations will. To me it didn’t matter what Kilo thought, because from the previous syndicate I was led to believe that Kilo doesn’t think. He cannot be reasoned with and he cannot be dissuaded by fear or personal feelings. Eurocorp points and Kilo obeys. Playing a blank silent character fit well with the dehumanizing theme of Syndicate where people are referred to as “soft assets” and the amount of trouble the corporations will go to protect their populations is directly linked to how much money they are worth.

IN THE FACE!

So the first two thirds of the game stay true to the original games theme: a world controlled by ruthless powerful corporations,  Any attempt to stand against them or get in their way is met with a response that involves guys like Kilo and high calibre firearms. Unfortunately Syndicate jumps the shark around the last portion of the game, with a fairly predictable twist likely intended to add depth to the Kilo character. 

The change in story line comes during the last segment of the game when the only true voice of descent against Eurocorp, a group of unchipped slum dwellers, has just been wiped out by Kilo alone.  While  The group represented a resistance that was only allowed to continue because it was so ineffective against the corporate power that it was below the corporations notice.  The mission ends with Kilo being injured while attempting to terminate a rebel sympathizer who was a scientist at Eurocorp. The scientist informs Kilo that she triggered a safety protocol in his Dart chip when he tried to kill her and he is now unable to injure her. As she turns to leave she tells Kilo that there is a human in him somewhere and that she hopes he finds it again someday. As a result of his injury, Kilo recovers memories of his childhood in which he learns that Eurocorp murdered his parents and kidnapped him at an early age because they deemed him to be genetically compatible to becoming an agent. To which I remarked, so what? Was this supposed to be a surprise? Did you miss the lion’s share of the game where Eurocorp demonstrated repeatedly that they were murdering dick holes who would sell their mothers eyes?

Young Kilo is taking this very well... after all he did just see his parents get shot, in the face. IN THE FACE!

So out of left field Starbreeze decides to shoe horn a personality into the up until now, silent more or less blank state of a character.  Apparently Kilo, who has been the pointy end of the aforementioned dick holes for his entire adult life, is surprised by the actions of Eurocorp.  He decides to change sides and fight alongside the rebel sympathizer through Eurocorp HQ to the CEO’s office while the building is being attacked by an opposing syndicate.

Kilo preforming brain surgery to steal the Dart Chip of a dude he shot. Why? Because Kilo and Eurocorp are dicks.

All of this just feels out of place and like two different plot lines got spiced together in post-production.  Aside from a single short cut scene where Kilo grabs the sides of his head and appears distressed after killing his former partner Kilo doesn’t do anything to show he has changed or even cares that his parents were killed by Eurocorp. Perhaps if they had from the beginning of the story shown that Kilo had a mind of his own or  reservations about his actions I might have been able to swallow this twist.  However,  as the game stands itfeels like Starbreeze never really knew where they were going with Syndicate and after painting themselves into a corner decided to wrap it up as quickly as possible.

"Ok Kilo, time to learn about your way tragic past and then spontaneously grow a personality, ready? GO!"

Personally, I would have preferred to see Syndicate go the other way and stay true to the 93’ versions roots. Kilo could have learned of his past and battled his way through the forces of the opposing syndicate to the CEO’s office only to have him turn and kill the sympathiser at the behest of the Dart chip and Eurocorp like the good corporate flunkey he is. Stay with the dehumanizing, depressing set up to the game and make the point that Kilo isn’t free, Kilo never was free because Kilo is an agent and an agent is an instrument of the corporation.

There is an adage in movies that says that if you drop the ball in the ending people’s perception of the whole movie will be tainted.  With previous games like Chronicles of Riddick under Starbreeze’s belt, I truly thought that this new Syndicate would easily be able to put forward a story that would do its predecessor proud and With the way that the first portion of Syndicate’s plot was playing out I thought I was going to have one of the top games of 2012 on my hands. Unfortunately the game concluded with an unsatisfying crash landing in predictability with an unconvincing change of heart. Syndicate had an opportunity to tell a thought provoking story that would strike chords with people and draw parallels with current events such as the greed that led to the global debt crisis, or at the very least given us a story that would make George Orwell proud. Sadly all we ended up with was a plot twist worthy of a Michael Bay film.