Hands-On Preview: Mass Effect 3
Keep your eyes on the sky because any minute now the reapers will be here to wipe out humanity. Mass Effect 3 is almost here. Throughout its showing of gameplay in the past year, some fans have been vocal about their worries when it comes to the core gameplay. Some of them feel as though the game is becoming more Gears of War than Role Playing game. I recently had the chance to play 90 minutes of the single-player and trust me when I say that you have absolutely nothing to worry about.
The first 30 minutes of the demo is the same as the one that went public a couple of weeks ago. The reapers have attacked Earth and Shepard gives the great advice of run away. If you haven’t guessed yet by playing it, the game looks fantastic. When running on the rooftops of building, just take a moment to look into the distance and watch the reapers land and cause destruction; you almost feel like forgiving them already because of great the destruction looks.
The new mission sae Shepard go on a mission to Mars. To save any sort of spoilers, I will just say you’re looking for someone and Cerberus does not want the mission to be completed. The shooting mechanic feels as tight as ever. There was a couple of occasions that really got my adrenaline pumping as I ran low on ammo and the enemies just kept pouring into the room. The end of the mission is quite spoilery so I won’t say what happens, but it will impact people who were fans of some of the first game’s crew
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The last section was a quick trip to the Citadel, although I’m not entirely sure if I should have been there. Being the awkward person that I am, I pressed continue instead of new game and left me further into the game than I was supposed to. The Citadel anyway looks fantastic. Once again it looks and feels different to your previous trips to the Citadel but the views out the window will remind you of what you saw in the original game. It was also here that I came across Diana Allers, voiced by Jessica Chobot from IGN and G4. She is a reporter, and wants to join your crew. Her decision to be in the game has sparked up some controversy on what they boundaries are between reporting on games and being in them. Nevertheless, if I was asked to be in Mass Effect 3, you damn sure I would jump at the opportunity.
The build of Mass Effect 3 was a nearly complete build but it wasn’t without its faults. NPCs glided across the floor, things popped in out of nowhere in the cut-scenes and enemies and shields sometimes just floated in mid-air. They were all minor and can easily be patched but Mass Effect, and Bioware have always been impeccable when it comes to polish on their games.
The 90 minutes or so I played had a lot of story, dialogue and cut-scenes so Bioware is certainly not cutting down on that. I spent a lot of the time looking away and just waiting for the dialogue options to come up to choose the top right one, so I’m just as clueless as I was before I went in which is exactly what I wanted.
Mass Effect 3 releases this week and you bet your ass Game-Smack Ireland is looking forward to this one. Having completed Mass Effect 2 in just one long weekend, Mass Effect 3 is the epic conclusion to Shepard’s story and you check back here soon for the full written and video review, only at Game-Smack.net
