Written by: PlayDevil.com

 

 

 

"Mass Effect 3" is just a few short weeks away, and now the demo is live on the Xbox Marketplace. Despite the popularity of the series, the 3rd game is mired in controversy, with multiplayer and Kinect controls causing consternation amongst the game’s hardcorefanbase, who are accusing BioWare of stepping away from the game’s RPG roots. Are their concerns founded?

 

The multiplayer section of the game has only just gone live to a select few players, and will not be properly supported until Friday. Hopefully BioWare can sort out some of the problems by then, as matchmaking is slow, it is not very intuitive to ready yourself up, and in-game I had several problems with distracting lag, players dropping out, and an overall difficulty level than was pretty insane. Obviously you need to work together, but it seemed a definite notch above the single player difficulty.

 

The modes currently available are basically a straight rip-off of Gears’ Horde mode, which is fine, but it’s a shame that you couldn’t see more of the co-operative modes on offer. Horde is great for those who like it, but it’s quite a marmite mode, and I’ve had my fill of it to be perfectly honest. Multiplayer definitely has some promise, but I think I’ll need to hold my judgement on it until the full game is released, and the full number of modes available.

 

The single-player portion of the game sees you play over two levels, the first of which is, by the looks of it, the first level in the game, whilst the second is about half way through. The game looks stunning, surpassing even ME2, but at the same time, is no-where near the leap forwards that we saw between ME1 and 2. I guess that’s no surprise given developers have just about reached the limit of what is possible on the current consoles, but nevertheless a little bit of a shame.

 

The areas are definitely larger though, and there were some spectacular moments as the reapers invade Earth. However, as you and Anderson move through the rubble, some of the animation (always a bit of a problem in ME) looked particularly off, which was quite distracting. Again, hopefully this is an early build which has been improved upon. Whilst you can now play in ‘action’ or ‘story’ mode, those who chose ‘role-playing’ will be treated to a traditional experience for sure- everything was very familiar, right down to the abilities and weapons you wield.

 

However, you can now shout commands to your squad if you have a Kinect. When the game brings these up in context (i.e. when selecting a conversation option or by a door or object) the integration works extremely well; better than any other game so far. However, I had real problems with orders and abilities which can be used at will. This got quite frustrating, so I ended up going back to the regular way of doing things. Out of combat, the voice commands are just a gimmick which will wear off, so it’s a shame to see the combat commands working at a significantly worse fidelity, where they could be genuinely fun and useful. Again, hopefully these will have been improved for the final game.

 

Fans needn’t worry about ME3. It looks and plays brilliantly, and whilst it’s too early to judge the new features, they certainly have a great deal of potential and could make excellent additions to an already fantastic game. Fingers crossed, but when March 9th comes around, Mass Effect 3 looks every much the major release that you would expect and hope for.