Mass Effect Trilogy

With the release of the Mass Effect trilogy collection, I believe it would be a good time for a review of the series. So sit back, relax, and try to forget the ending of Mass Effect 3, this is gonna be a big one.

Let’s start with the original Mass Effect. The story is set far into the future and tells us the tale of Commander Shepard and his efforts to stop an alien species known as the ‘Reapers’ from destroying the Galaxy. There are many different alien species in the game such as the Turians, a race of raptor-like humanoids, the Geth, a group of self-aware robots, the Asari, a group of blue, peaceful aliens, and my personal favourite the Elcor, a race of huge four-legged creatures that speak in monotone. These are just a few of the many races that exist in this rich universe and they all blend together seamlessly. This creates one of the most engaging universes I have ever experienced. With so much lore and background information you can easily find yourself enriched within this universe. The graphics for the time were stunning, and even to this day I find some of the locations you visit to be very pretty. Gameplay in the first entry was perhaps the game’s main weakness however. Combat consists of traditional cover-based shooting mixed in with some unique powers, however the controls are a bit clunky, Shepard himself is slow and shooting feels very odd and unnatural. However that is only one half, the other consists of talking with the various interesting people and making dialogue options that will impact your world. This half of the gameplay is very well done and it provides an enriching and interesting experience.

Next we have Mass Effect 2. Improving on the success of the original game, the sequel blows away the competition. Improving the combat significantly and making an even more interesting universe to explore. A unique feature of the series is the ability to import your character from the previous games. This means that you can complete the original Mass Effect, import your character to Mass Effect 2 and all the decisions you made in the original will have some kind of effect in the second game. The story of Mass Effect 2 begins with the death of the main character. Oops… sorry… spoiler alert, still, that’s one way to start off a new game, kill off the main character. Anyway you are brought back to life using cybernetics and immediately tasked with helping a shady pro-human group known as ‘Cerberus’ and their leader ‘The Illusive Man’. From here it is up to Shepard to discover what the Reapers are up to and to stop them from returning to the Galaxy. While not sounding like anything exciting it’s the characters and scenarios that really make this game stand out. I grew attachments to many of the characters in my squad and when one of them died I physically yelled at my TV in sadness and remorse… ok so maybe I was getting a bit too attached but this game has that effect on you. It makes you care about the characters you are working with, giving them all unique personalities and backgrounds to make them see more realistic and believable. Graphics are of course improved and look extremely nice even now and combat is heavily improved from the previous entry..

And finally, Mass Effect 3. Being the last in the trilogy it had a lot to live up to and it succeeded. The story this time is that the Reapers have returned to the galaxy and they are destroying it, as well as earth. It’s up to good old Commander Shepard to unite the races of the galaxy together and launch a counter-attack against the Reapers on earth and take back his planet. The whole story of Mass Effect 3 brings up a sense of scale, with the whole universe engaged in war with the Reapers. Graphics are hugely improved and offer up some of the best looking scenes in current video game history, with a special note to the fantastic CGI space battles. Combat has also been fine tuned to near perfection, With Shepard being able to roll and the with game being more focused on war the battles are big and very impressive. This makes the game much more action based and exciting compared to past games though some may find the less emphasis on RPG elements to be disappointing. However the big problem with Mass Effect 3 is of course the ending. I won’t spoil it, but just know that it goes against everything that was promised about it and half of it doesn’t even make sense. DLC has been released to fix this terrible ending but by the amount of hate videos on Youtube, the damage has already been done.

So what is my verdict on the series as a whole then? A resounding success by video game standards and one of the best Sci-Fi franchises I know of, coming into par with series such as Halo and Star Wars. If you are a Sci-Fi, RPG, Action fan or just simply a fan of good video games then I pledge for you to play this franchise. And with the Trilogy collection out now then there is no reason to pass up 3 brilliant games for the price of a single one. Now if you don’t mind, I’m going to play through the series again making different decisions, I wonder which race I should destroy this time…