Incoming...

Mass Effect 3: Take Earth Back Trailer

Alex Reviews...

Mass Effect 3: Demo

So for many, Valentine's Day was a chance for romantic dinners, snuggling on the sofa, crying yourself to sleep  finding your independence, but for the people that really matter; 14-02-2012 was the day that Bioware gave us a little taste of what was to come in the end to the Mass Effect trilogy where Commander Shepard would be called once again to save Earth and the rest of the galaxy. Now, my experience was tainted somewhat by the Playstation Network in Europe not getting hold of the demo until Wednesday evening, but I spent this morning playing the demo three times through and it was definitely worth the wait, in some ways.

So you start off with the option to play through the demo in an action orientated or story orientated mode, I guess for those who are more interested in how the combat works than the role-playing side of it and visa-versa. Saying that, even when choosing the story based mode, there wasn't much plot interaction bar a few conversation instances. This is understandable, however, as for those who know anything about the Mass Effect series; Bioware are making an insane amount of effort to make sure that how you played the first two games will have consequences, big or small, on how the plot pans out in ME3. So for a demo which asks very basic questions at the beginning so as not to waste time, you can't expect too much in terms of plot twists or anything like that, simply because the information from your previous game play-throughs won't have been uploaded. So, yes, you may be slightly disappointed in the role-playing aspect of the demo, but I am certain that you won't be disappointed when the full version hits the shelves in the early days of March.

The combat seems to have improved, although I haven't played through Mass Effect 2 recently. The addition of grenades and more destructive melee attacks are certainly welcome, although as a soldier class I only really used the melee attacks to see how they worked rather than actually needing to - my assault rifle was more than capable of dispatching foes, though I'm sure there will be more instances to use it as the game progresses. The cover system works well, and though nothing has really changed in terms of companion commands it's still satisfying to annihilate a certain foe by having Liara lift them up into the air and Garrus follow through with a concussive round while you dispatch whoever remains. I didn't get the chance to play through the multi-player mode which has been viewed rather sceptically by fans so far - reviews on IGN and such have had positive things to say, but it will likely be an afterthought for me. I'm much more interested by character interactions.

(EDIT) I managed to give the multi-player mode a go today, and I have to say it's pretty good. Most of the time it was hard to get a 4-person team going, but when it worked, it worked pretty well. The mode I played was essentially a survival mode - defeat waves of enemies of increasing difficulty and so on. Instead of a map, you have the ability to always see a shining silhouette of your allies and when there's only one enemy remaining it'll let you know where it is so you aren't running around the map looking for the last soldier. I played as two classes - the Sentinel and the Soldier, though I concentrated on the Soldier class and eventually unlocked a Krogan which meant there was a very satisfying close-quarters attack that decimated any enemy who got too close, but the price for such power was that I couldn't do any of the dives and rolls to avoid enemy fire. So, you can presume that each class and, later, each race will have their own perks to unlock so it'll fit well with any play style. There wasn't the chance for any PvP playing, though I'm not sure how that would fit in to the Mass Effect storyline; with the co-operative play you can see how it makes sense; a group of soldiers is fighting off reapers or Cerberus while Shepard is elsewhere. But yeah, the point being, the multi-player is pretty fun and doesn't damage the game in any way. Woop. 

So all in all, the demo was good if not a little teasingly short, and Mass Effect fans surely have a lot to look forward to in the next month.

Look, Ashley looks less buff and more BUFF