Gun for hire

I'm sure even the non gamer people might have heard recently about a game called Mass Effect ... It's been hitting the headlines for a few reasons :

It was the first Headline sign that the Game group of shops were going under,
The day 0 DLC that was included on the dvd
Nerd Rage is rampant over the endings
And there's the online campaign to get those endings changed ...

I've just finished the last in the trilogy now so I now know what they meant by those endings.

As a purist gamer and avid viewer of scifi on the telly, I really don't have a problem with the general theme behind the ending I chose. The very worst thing with episodic scifi, which the Mass Effect series definitely counts as, is where the story is left hanging. B5 Crusade was just getting interesting when it got cut off in its prime. Serenity didn't really close out the Firefly arcs. Star Trek (original timeline) left it hanging too. The Star Wars Yuuzhan Vong (New Jedi Order) books just kept digging a deeper and deeper hole for itself.

I much prefer definitive finishes to my scifi.

Blakes 7 definitely did it that way and it left it open to the imagination too. What precisely did happen when the screen went dark and Avon started his maniacal laugh ? There was a book to follow up but the book was rather pants. Farscape ended itself well, eventually.

And Mass Effect does that well too, in my opinion.

The first game set the scene and opened up a wonderful universe with great colour and contrast between its inhabitants. It was a gritty, real universe where possibilities abounded. The second heightened that, showing the darker side. And the third takes it to an apocalyptic conclusion. The ending is fitting and final, as it should be.

As a game though, the third falls a little short. The second is different to the first and improves upon the first in almost every way. The only area where ME2 fell short is that it is more linear with less potential for free roaming, the compensation being far more variation in the scripted areas. ME3 takes the base ME2 game and removes the annoying mining minigame. However, it also has less attention to detail in some key areas like the quest log. That used to update according to the status of quests, that's got broken. It's ME2.1, rather than ME1 done better.

But ... the whole charm of the Mass Effect universe is that your choices in previous games come back to either haunt or hug you. Every choice matters and there are lot of awesome nods going back to what came before. Save the rachni, there's a mission to come later. I'm curious now as to what would happen if you didn't save them, as there's a powerful enemy artillery type unit that starts as rachni.

Will I play ME3 again any time soon ? I don't think so. While I went through Deus Ex HR 4 times in a row and was happily addicted to ME1 and ME2 in their time, that addiction has broken with ME3. I think it's more grindy than the previous games. Almost like there's a lot of padding in there to make the game longer with artificial content. Except it's still quite varied. It just felt grindy at the time. (That could be me getting jaded on gaming in general).

If you're a gamer and haven't tried out the Mass Effect series, give it a go. It's a highly impressive blend of first person shooter and role playing game. It has the trademark Bioware story quality as well.

But ... my last memory of the game for a while will be the ending (not giving spoilers here) followed by a popup saying "You can continue the Mass Effect series through DLC and expansions". WTF ! And you'll need to know those spoiler endings to know where that WTF comes from.

It's really sad that the last impression and therefore the lasting impression from this epic series is EA looking to fleece the customer for more money from DLC. The ending was fine but that ending message left a very sour taste.

At least the Deus Ex Human Revolution people resisted it with their game, except with an Easter Egg type nod to Deus Ex. (Deus Ex HR = 3rd game, set 20ish years before Deus Ex = 1st game). And that's where I'm likely to be headed next for my next gaming fix, although there are those pesky dragons menacing Skyrim ...