Mass Effect 3 - Miscellaneous Roundup

Character writing is still clumsy in Mass Effect 3. The subject at hand is the impending destruction of the galaxy, but almost every other moment is filled with relationships, moralizing, influencing people, simplistic sacrifices, and personal problems. Melodrama infests even the cool galactic conflict between races. That’s because Bioware writes young adult fiction. There’s a lot of finding one’s way, overcoming prejudice, struggling with relationships, and growing and learning. It’s good that games like this exist. But characters need to be real and believable first. None of the other stuff Bioware is trying to do will ever be effective until they meet that minimum. Bioware knows how to write good characters. The exceptions in Mass Effect merely show how weak most of the cast is. When I said my goodbyes to most of the crew, I realized how little I’d miss all the melodrama.

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What I most get out of ME3 multiplayer though is what’s always been sadly absent from Mass Effect singleplayer – playing directly as one of the increasingly iconic alien races, rather than being locked into Shepard’s boots. Krogan, Turian, Salarian, Quarian, Drell, Asari – all humanoid and thus not that different from playing as one of the boggo humans, but they move differently, they have voices that evokes ME’s beloved cast and they have species-specific powers. Sure, there’s no roleplaying or destiny-questing, but I got a surprising kick out of discovering I’d unlocked a Krogan Soldier, then a Drell Vanguard and, my current favourite, a Quarian Infilitrator.

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BioWare's Montreal studio was developing a competitive first-person shooter called Mass Effect Team Assault in 2010 before transforming that effort into the third-person multiplayer mode in Mass Effect 3, according to a new behind-the-scenes iPad app created by gaming journalist Geoff Keighley.

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Edgarstrong said:

Sometimes I have the impression that smaller and less famous reviewing sites/magazines write exactly the opposite of what you read in Gamespot/IGN reviews; just for the sake of being "original" and "different".

That reminds me one person I knew who used to go regularly to art house cinemas , but not because he enjoyed independent movies - it was just to be able to say that his taste was superior and that he was "different".

I by no means believe that major reviewing sites are always objective or honest, but still, I find it amusing that whenever I see 9 out of 10 given to some game on IGN it pretty much guarantees negative reviews on a mirriad of smaller websites.

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