The demo gives you a chance to play through two different segments of the main storyline, where one is primarily focused on the narrative and cinematic effects, while the other mission is more about showcasing Mass Effect 3's combat.
After the very mood dampening experience that it was to play the demo for "Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning", I was almost scared to try out this demo, in case BioWare had managed to ruin my favorite gaming franchise.
You get a chance to spec out your Shepard before you start the demo, so you can choose if you're going to play as a male or female, your background story and also select which class that you want to play as. Sadly you don't get to import your save game Shepard for the demo, but I guess that would be a bit overkill as you'll be through the two missions within an hour or two.
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| "Oh crap, Reapers! This is going to significantly reduce local property values" |
After a nice intro sequence the demo kicks off with the first mission, which sees Shepard back on Earth where he has been stripped of his military rank after an incident that you could play through in the last bit of DLC for Mass Effect 2.
When reports of human colonies going dark suddenly start pouring into Earth military command, Shepard is brought before the armed forces leaders to confirm the obvious; the Reapers have finally shown up and have begun nom-nom-noming on the sentient beings of the galaxy.
Events really pick up when Earth itself comes under attack by Reapers and Shepard needs to escape the military compound while it is being assaulted by Reapers and the zombie-like "husks".
Your old buddy Admiral Anderson is also there to help you out, as you scramble through the apocalyptic war zone, which also acts as a tutorial for introducing you to the various controls of the game.
This segment offers some great moments of awe, giving you front row tickets to watching the Reapers land on the planet and start blasting everything apart with their giant lasers (though how smashing cities like some giant mechanical Godzilla is going to help their insidious galaxy harvesting plans is unclear. I guess even giant space squids really just love to smash shit).
Combat is pretty light in this mission, which is broken up by a few brief conversations with survivors, along the way to meet up with the Normandy space craft.
It's a pretty good way to give you a little sampler on everything that makes Mass Effect Mass Effect. There're some nice cut scenes, some conversations with decisions for you to make, beautiful surroundings and a decent pinch of some respectable combat.
Oh, and giant fucking robot aliens.
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| Liara is back. No doubt she'll try to tempt me away from my relationship with Tali. Stay away from me you blue skinned hussy! |
The second demo mission is all about showcasing the combat of Mass Effect 3.
It takes place at a Salarian facility that for one reason of another is holding a fertile Krogan female.
Perhaps for the purpose of creating some kinky inter-species porno movie (Ass Effect, anyone?).
More likely it has something to do with the "Genophage" virus that the Salarians invented and applied on the Krogan race to prevent them from multiplying too quickly, if you want the boring explanation.
The Genophage has made fertile female Krogans extremely rare, so she is therefore a valuable asset to anyone that want to restore the Krogans to their full power, which is probably pretty handy if you're fighting a huge force of genocidal Reapers.
Shepard is at the facility to pick up this Krogan female along with his old buddies Wrex, Liara and Mordin (Mordin! Yay!).
As they make ready to leave with the female, their plans are interrupted by the arrival of the human supremacy group "Cerberus".
You'll probably remember that Shepard was actually working for Cerberus in Mass Effect 2, but evidently that relationship has gone somewhat sour somewhere between ME2 and ME3, to the point that Cerberus wants nothing more than to blast Shepard's skull into a wet pulpy mash of space hero brain goo.
The combat in Mass Effect 3 feels fine to me.
The Mass Effect series was never really about the combat to me, and while Mass Effect 2 was a significant improvement over the combat in the original game, it was no Gears of War.
The combat in ME3 feels pretty much the same as in ME2 to me and if there are any major changes to how it was handled in the previous game then it's subtle enough for me not to have noticed.
You are able to take cover behind objects, order your crew members around through a few simple commands and you have a handful of different skills available to you, depending on your class.
I went with the "Adept", which is strong in the "Biotic" powers that are the Mass Effect universe's answer to magic.
This allowed me to hurl deadly bolts of energy at my enemies, or create a nifty black hole-like entity that sucks up enemies and casts them adrift, giving them time to ponder their nefarious ways while floating about with a confused look on their face. Until you decide to put a few bullets into their bodies and snuff out their miserable existence, of course.
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| Looks like Shepard brought a space rifle to mech suit fight. Boy, I bet his face is red! |
I can't say that either of these missions in the demo blew me away with something completely spectacular and ground breaking compared to Mass Effect 2. It showed me a game that is shaping up to be *at least as good as ME2* in all the mechanical aspects, and that is really all that I am asking for.
The make or break criteria for Mass Effect 3 is going to be how well BioWare does in pulling off a great and interesting story. It's quite a challenge to create a game that has to tell the story of the fight against the Reapers and also allow room for telling the personal stories about your crew members that is such a huge part of the Mass Effect series.
All in all the Mass Effect 3 demo has left me satisfied that BioWare hasn't broken any of the things that made Mass Effect 2 one of my favorite games in a very long time, and there is no reason that Mass Effect 3 can't surpass this and make it straight to my geeky sci-fi game hall of fame.
March can't come around soon enough for me!
Oh, and as to if I saw any of my "Top 5 things I can't wait to see in Mass Effect 3"?
Well, I got to see a lot of Reapers, though I can't say that I actually did much fighting against them.
More like: "Reapers! Run the hell away!" But it was still cool to see them out in force and putting the hurt down.
I did also get to see Mordin briefly, even if he didn't do any singing. Let's hope for more musical segments from him in the full game!
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