Reflections on Saving the Galaxy Mass Effect Style
You may not want to read this if you haven’t played Mass Effect 3 but I’ve tried to keep it spoiler free
So I was thinking of what to write next and I’ve spent the last 40 to 50 hours playing Mass Effect 3. I’ve taken my sweet time with this and really tried to enjoy it and savor every moment of my Commander Sheppard’s trilogy ending experience. Besides the Xbox, PS3 and PC version of Mass Effect 3 there’s also the ioS Mass Effect Infiltrator game for $6.99 and the Mass Effect 3 Data Pad app.
The Mass Infiltrator game on ioS controls like your typical touch screen controls which provides a very clunky experience and often irritates the user. I played the first two levels and gave up on the game.
What I like is the Mass Effect 3 Data pad application. This data app provides you access to Alliance news, Mail, Media, Galaxy at War and Codex. The keys for me for this app was the Galaxy at War section this provides the player with a view of the map and how well from a percentage stand point how ready you are to defeat the Reapers. You start at 50% ready when you start Mass Effect 3 and throughout the course of the game doing the main missions and side missions you increase your galactic readiness. There is no skill required for the data app, click a system, pick a planet and send your ship to battle after a set period of time from 1 hour to 6 hours you’ll receive credits and your galactic readiness will increase. You start with 3 ships but over the course of completing missions you earn credits to buy more ships, better shielding, more readiness points. I’ve used this app a ton to help me in my battle against the Reapers and highly recommend that anyone playing Mass Effect 3 who has an ioS device get this FREE application.
There are a couple of things that I don’t really like about Mass Effect 3 mining and the lack there of a proper explanation on what Galactic Readiness is and why it’s important to your game.
We all remember how terrible the mining in ME 2 was well they’ve streamlined the process but god damn it just eliminate this useless feature. So how it works is you send off a beacon and EDI let’s you know there is an anomaly in the area. Once an anomaly is detected you go to the planet and start scanning. Scanning will detect where you should shoot a probe (unlimited probes!!!!) and generally after collecting whatever it was on the planet it’s time to head back to the Citadel and hand over the object to the mission giver. The catch here is that you can’t simply press the LT trigger to the beacon to scan the systems if you do it to much you’ll alert the Reapers and they’ll come ready to kill you.
When you start the game and do a couple missions your brought into the war room and your shown the galactic map and which outlines how infested the universe is with Reapers. Throughout the course of the game you need to procure war assets and increase your galactic readiness that will help shape the final battle and outcome in the game. I strongly believe the game did a piss poor job in explaining all of this to me.
What also surprised the hell out of me was the multiplayer and how fun, addicting and competent it is. The premise is Horde mode with 3 other players against 10 waves enemy forces. During the course of the match there are some objective based waves were you’ll need to hack terminals for example on top of killing on the baddies that are trying to kill you.
There is an RPG element into this as well that I really like. You can pick your class and race and set your character up. What skills do you upgrade, what weapons and upgrades do you attach. Most importantly through micro transactions or through earning in game credits you can unlock more characters and better weapons. You receive the starter pack when you first start the game. The recruit pack costs 5,000 credits and is a way great way to upgrade and unlock basic weapons, mods and characters. The veteran pack is 20,000 credits or 80MS points to buy which includes 5 random items or characters and 1 uncommon item. The Spectre pack is 60,000 credits or 160MS points, which includes 5 random items or characters with at least 1 rare item. In my experience of playing online I have yet to encounter your typical 14 year old tea bag mother cursing douche bag yet and that’s made me want to go back and play more.
Well I think I’ve avoided any spoilers and now I’m off to hopefully finish the game after milking it and doing every side quest I could.
read moreGames of the Year
2010 was a year of many great games like Mass Effect 2, Red Dead Redemption, Civilization 5, StarCraft 2, Grand Turismo 5, and Call of Duty Black Ops to name a few. With a pretty darn good year in video games how could I possibly pick a game of the year? The simple answer is I couldn’t. When I sat down to think about the year in review 2 titles came to my head Mass Effect 2 and Grand Turismo 5. Both games brought me many hours of joy and in the case of GT5 continue to do so.
But before I dive into why I choose GT5 and Mass Effect 2 I wanted to take this time to try and understand how we come to the conclusion on criteria is used for game of the year. What makes a game worthy? is it the most polished, most complete package? is it the game that we had the most fun with, is it the game that left us with the most awe dropping moments?
For me I sit down and thought of 2010 and instantly thought of Mass Effect 2′s opening scene where the Normandy is attacked and my living rumbled by noise of a battle of two ships. I was blown away and knew I was in for a very good ride. I sat down after worked and played for about 5 hours. I couldn’t put the game down but knew I had too. Bioware did a great job in allowing the decisions I made in Mass Effect to be carried forwarded and ultimately help shape some of Mass Effect 2. This was an evolution in the gaming industry in 2010 for myself and I sincerely hope Bioware takes this a step further in Mass Effect 3. I’m going to get into some spoilers here so stop reading the rest of this paragraph if you haven’t played Mass Effect 2. The plot generally involves the Illusive Man bank rolling Commander Sheppard’s operation. Sheppard travel’s around the universe recruiting individuals than goes out to ensure he has their loyalty by doing specific missions for those characters. They ultimately find the collector base and Sheppard needs to decide to destroy or preserved the Collector base. I sat there for almost a half an hour weighting the pro’s and con’s of each decision before ultimately coming to the conclusion that the Collectors need to be destroyed. Mass Effect 2 had me on the edge of my seat for most of the game but for when I was bored out of my mind mineral hunting.
After 6 years of development, a delayed launch and finally a very low profile launch of Sony’s biggest title of the year Gran Turismo 5 failed to live up to a lot of peoples expectations of perfection. This game is far from perfect, from it’s horrible UI, unlocking of damage, and confusing online lobby system when you get down and dirty and look past these faults this is a simulation racing game at it’s finest. Buying, racing and tuning car’s has been a blast. I just enjoy it, no gimmickie rewinds or anything, just pure racing if you screw up it’s your fault. The game has been out over a month and we’ve already seen 3 huge patches to the game. To me this means continued support as we wait 12 year’s (I’m only joking) for the next Grand Turismo game.
For these reasons I listed above I must co-name Mass Effect 2 and Grand Turismo 5 my games of the year.
Mass Effect 3 trailer
The first Mass Effect 3 trailer.
Thanks to Game Trailers for the video
read moreMass Effect 2 Coming January 26, 2010
Commander Sheppard will be making his highly anticipated return to the Xbox 360 and PC on January 26,2010
read moreFirst Mass Effect 2 Trailer
Mass Effect was one of my favorite games of 08, yes I was a bit late to the party but it was fanastic! Heres the Trailer for Mass Effect 2
read more