Mass Effect 3 (2012) by BioWare

Like my review for Mass Effect 2, it's difficult for me to speak in a balanced manner about BioWare's Mass Effect 3 because it's one of my favorite games of all-time.

This game exhibits all the strengths in atmosphere that the prior games do. Its worldbuilding is second-to-none in gaming; this feels like a real galaxy, with real politics, and real culture and history, and it's a pleasure to exist in. The soundtrack—although done by Clint Mansell this time around instead of the typical Jack Wall effort—is phenomenal and does a lot to help shape the atmosphere. And Mass Effect 3's characters—carried over from the prior two games (if they survived)—are some of the most genuine-feeling characters in the medium.

That brings me to my first caveat: Don't play Mass Effect 3 if you haven't played the first two games. You're going to be dropped into a strange situation for which you have zero context. You're not going to know any of the characters or the world, and all of the moments which are meant to be emotionally resonant will fall flat for you because you lack important context provided by the prior two games. With this series perhaps more than any other, it's paramount that you start from the first game and play your way through completely. Doing otherwise will rob you of all the great emotional moments and reveals of the later games in the trilogy because you haven't been properly set up for them, and even if you go back and play the earlier games afterwards, you will still be robbed of the genuine reaction you would have had had you played the games in order.

Lots of praise is given to the writing of the Mass Effect series, and a lot of it is deserved. However, with Mass Effect 3, I noticed the writing dip into the unevenness for the first time.

Plenty of fuss has been made about the ending not being satisfying, and I mostly agree with that. But I tend to find the "Mass Effect 3 has great writing and a terrible ending" statement to be untrue. There are some really, really great and satisfying arcs in this game, which I can't really mention by name without spoiling the experience for players. But for each one of those, there's an equally dissatisfying, contrived plot point which seems like it has had too much material cut and fails to make sense without the story. For example, at about the midway point of the game, there's a sudden and drastic attack which feels like it has no set-up and lots of holes. And late in the game, a key battle takes place off-screen leading to a sudden and colossal loss, which is barely even commented on by the characters. It has always seemed to me that this battle was meant to be in the game and unfortunately cut due to development concerns.

In addition to these, does anyone like Kai Leng? Anyone!? He's by far the worst, most artificial character in the entire series. He has no backstory, serves little point other than to rile the player with cheesy one-liners. Go away, Kai Leng. Nobody likes you. In addition to this, the Illusive Man loses all the nuance which made him such a fantastic, morally gray character in Mass Effect 2. This poor character turn was extremely disappointing to me.

Those criticisms aside, the two arcs I previously mentioned as being excellent (one in particular, involving synthetic hivemind robots and certain aliens who must wear suits all the time due to their failing immune systems) are a couple of my favorite stories in gaming history. I've been playing games for nearly 35 years, now, and I still tear up at portions of this game because of how strong the emotional impact of the story is, and how much history I've built up with these characters over the past two games.

With Mass Effect 3's writing, you've got to take the good with the bad. Some portions will fall flat—Sure. But the portions that strike you are so damned good that they're enough to elevate this game for me. It may not be as consistently well-written as the first two games, but it's damn close to hitting the same highs. And for me, that's more than enough to suggest this game.

I'd be remiss not to mention the gameplay, too. Mass Effect 3 plays easily the best of the three games in the trilogy. Shepard is granted added mobility, cover finally works well, and friendly AI is hugely improved from Mass Effect 2. It's so much fun to play as a Vanguard, for example, zipping around the map, blasting enemies here and there while creating biotic detonations. Ditto to Engineers, who finally get detonations of their own now, or Adepts, who are detonation machines. Soldiers are the same as always; lots of firepower and hardiness. And those who play Infiltrator can cloak and snipe all they want. It all works phenomenally well and is rather well-balanced.

In addition to this, Mass Effect 3 has the best set-pieces in series history. The scale is much larger here (for obvious reasons, if you know what occurs in the plot), but the actual enemy engagements are more varied than in previous games. Some of the situations which you are put into make you feel the moment so much more: Engaging in combat on a fallen planet with an orbital cannon firing and shaking the entire screen, deafening you. Or making a mad dash back and forth and trying not to get blasted by a giant laser cannon as an enormous enemy bears down on you. How about spacewalking, in vacuum, down a tube which is falling apart as a space battle rages on just outside. Mix in the fantastic combat with moments such as these and you find yourself fully immersed in an epic space opera like no other game has ever managed before. It's fantastic, even playing this stuff 8 years later. If you like space opera, the stuff in this game will blow your hair back, guaranteed.

There's so much variance with how to play this game. The plot changes due to all of the past decisions incorporated into it, your chosen character class will strongly affect how combat flows and which companions you use, even your Shepard's chosen gender will change things up. This kind of variance has led to me putting hundreds of hours into this game (500+ on console, 250+ on Origin, and now, Steam), replaying the campaign endlessly just because I enjoy the combat and its strongly affecting plot moments so much. I've never played and replayed a single player game like this before and I don't really expect to with any other game ever again. And, man, I don't even have enough space to talk about the multiplayer! It's great! I expected it to be tacked-on crap when I first picked this game up in 2012, but it's actually quite good. Give it a whirl if you get a chance!

Basically: If you've played the first two games, you've got to play this one. If you haven't, pick up Mass Effect and enjoy the ride. Maybe this trilogy will become your favorite gaming experience, as it has been for me over the past decade. And make sure you play this game with all DLC included. There are some really, really important lore reveals packed in with the DLC that should not be missed!

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Mass Effect Andromeda (2017) by BioWare

Perhaps the most important part of playing Mass Effect Andromeda is to go into it with carefully managed expectations.

This was a game made not by the flagship BioWare team (they were working on Anthem at the time), but by BioWare Montreal—the team primarily responsible for Mass Effect 3's phenomenal multiplayer component.

Going off of that, you can expect really good combat. Andromeda is easily the best a Mass Effect game has ever played, combat-wise. You are far more mobile than ever before thanks to jump-jets, there are more powers to choose from in your build than ever before, and guns feel almost universally exceptional. They even fixed the original trilogy's notoriously awful vehicles by having by far the best feeling, looking, and controlling vehicle in the entire series in the Nomad.

In addition to the strong combat, the move to the Frostbite engine (although it caused a severely difficult development, as Frostbite was not intended to be utilized for RPGs) looks absolutely beautiful in comparison to the Unreal Engine 3 which the previous games were built on. Perhaps most stunning about this game's visuals are the lighting and particle effects; the way light glows in space, reflects off of surfaces such as ice, and scatter due to particle effects such as fire and explosions is unequaled by any other game in the series. I would even make the claim that space has never looked better in a video game than it does in Mass Effect Andromeda—no exaggeration! It looks incredible.

To top it off, this game sounds amazing. Sound design is something we don't typically notice much, but Andromeda is one of the best sounding games I've ever played. Gunshots echo beautifully throughout the environment, every weapon has pop, the way biotics distort sounds is really impressive. The deadened sound of space is engulfing. Even the effects used for things like reloads or door switches sound really great. Top-notch sound design, and it really makes a difference in the gameplay.

There are some drawbacks to combat, though. BioWare Montreal chose to remove the pause-and-command features from the original trilogy, which is a huge disappointment. I'm sure they chose to play to their strengths—which are real-time—but the tactical aspect of pausing and assessing the situation was a huge feature that made Mass Effect different from every other third-person shooter, and it feels more generic without it.

In addition to this, managing your squadmates loadouts and power usage is also gone, further removing the more tactical feel of the original trilogy.

Aside from these drawbacks, though, the game really does play wonderfully in combat. Being in the thick of it, causing biotic detonations and hearing the amazing gunfire makes combat a joy.

Unfortunately, though, BioWare Montreal are not a team who have ever put together a story or compelling characters, and it shows.

One of my favorite things about the Mass Effect series is its worldbuilding and its strong characters. The original trilogy feels so alive because its galaxy feels like a real place with real political squabbling and real conflict of cultures. The Batarians versus the humans, the Krogan versus the Turians and Salarians, etc. And its characters feel so real and lifelike that their conflicts ring true and really affect the way you view them and the norms of the setting. Sadly, this is not the case with Andromeda, which feels incredibly basic, tacky, and uninteresting by comparison. The entire setting feels so generically space opera that I find myself wholly uninterested with any of its lore.

Peebee's obnoxious nature falls victim to stale cliché.

This lack of writing prowess sadly extends to its characters as well. Although I really liked Drack and Vetra, there were so many crewmates I absolutely detested that I refused to bring them with me in almost any situation. Peebee is little more than an impulsive moron, whose flimsy loner personality feels completely artificial—she feels like a writer tried really hard to give a "character quirk" rather than simply writing her as an actual, complete person with motivations and desires; which is what all good characters should feature if they're to jump off the page at you.

It often seems the rest of the crew hates Liam as much as I do.

And then you have Liam, who is basically just an obnoxious, impulsive screw-up. Liam is such an unrepentant idiot that it even seems like most of the rest of the team hates him as much as I do. Perhaps some of his hijinks were meant to endear him to me, I guess? If so, his writers completely failed on that front. I truly wished I had the option to kick him off the crew in-game, as he did nothing but act like a fool and consistently put everyone in terrible, life-threatening situations. And then you have people whose dialogue is just flat-out annoying, even at the best of times: an example being Gil, the mechanic. Go away, Gil. I'm tired of hearing your annoying, nasally voice and try-hard attempts at wit.

The entire game is permeated with poor dialogue, too. Characters say things that feel awkward and completely unrealistic. Every time I sit down to play this game, I think to myself, "This isn't how people talk! Nobody would say things like this!" None of the writing feels natural or real. The characters feel like video game characters, the world feels like a video game world. And so none of the conflicts or the ideas this game feebly attempts to discuss are interesting at all. They're just busywork; something that's in place because it's a Mass Effect game, and Mass Effect games need to have things like squadmates and aliens. The writing in general is so uninspired that I've never replayed this game—even though I've replayed Mass Effect 3 a dozen times at this point. It's so, so disappointing to see from my all-time favorite video game series.

In addition to this, the quest design really leaves a lot to be desired. There are far too many busywork fetch quests here. BioWare Montreal designed these gorgeous, huge, atmospheric environments which feel amazing to look at and fight in, and then chose to populate them with some of the most mundane, uninteresting busywork crap-quests imagineable. Get ready to scan 32 plants, mine 26 rocks, kill 10 beasts, etc. Over and over. Ad nauseam. Because, unfortunately, Mass Effect Andromeda is that kind of game.

It's really unfortunate that the poor animations (they are bad, but they're nowhere near the biggest flaw this game has) got so much press at the time of release, because, in general, this game really does look excellent. And its biggest flaw—by far—is how it fails the series' reputation by putting together such a mediocre writing effort.

If you're looking for a fun third-person sci-fi shooter with some nice visuals, give Andromeda a shot. That being said, although Mass Effect Andromeda does indeed do some really great things, I still don't think I would recommend it unless you're a very hardcore fan of the series. And even then, it's important to go in with well-managed expectations: Mass Effect Andromeda is certainly not a great game, but, depending on your tastes, it can be an enjoyable experience.

⭐⭐