Grimm's Snow White

You’re going to think I’m crazy, but, this film is actually pretty good. Especially for an Asylum production. For those unfamiliar with The Asylum, it’s a film company who is famous for its low budget productions such as ‘Megafault’ (Which turned out to be Brittany Murphy’s last film before her death), ‘Merlin and the War of the Dragons’ and ‘Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus’, though they are more famous for their copycat versions of more famous films, like ‘Sherlock Holmes’, ‘Monster’ and ‘Transmorphers’.

This post is the mockbuster of this month’s ‘Mirror Mirror’. So the plot is Snow White’s father has died, leaving the kingdom to her stepmother, the evil Queen Gwendolyn. The Queen wants to marry Prince Alexander in order to gain his lands and armies, increasing her power. Upon learning from her Magic Mirror that Snow White is now the fairest of them all and the Prince has fallen for her, the Queen orders her death, only for Snow to escape in the forest, where she’s saved by elves.

Yes, I said elves. Okay, while I did say that this film was good, it still suffers from being an Asylum production. In this case, the Asylum version says that a star fell from the sky, creating a viridian flame and spawning two species from it, the elves and a race of giant lizards. Yes, a race of giant lizards. And I’ll say it now, there aren’t any dwarves. You know, for a film which has ‘Grimm’ in the title, you kind of expect the film to be an adaptation of a Grimm story.

That being said, the Asylum didn’t even get Snow White right, namely in this film, Snow White is blonde, and looks more like Alice in Wonderland. What the Hell? Did they not get the “her hair as dark as ebony”. I wouldn’t be so annoyed by this since it isn’t really that bad, but on the front of the DVD box I have, Snow White has black hair. Or at least the one I have has a black haired Snow White, there is an alternate cover. Speaking of the DVD cover, where was the dragon?!

The acting, isn’t bad, it’s actually pretty damn decent. Sure there are some people and moments who give the standard acting you find in a typical Asylum production, but this one actually proves to be the exception. The Asylum has actually hired actors for this! Eliza Bennett, who plays Snow, was in ‘Inkheart’, whilst Jane March was in ‘Clash of the Titans remake’, and Jamie Thomas King appeared in ‘Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy’. I was really impressed with Sebastian Wimmer, especially since this was his first film. I have to say that Jane March did a damn good job as the Queen, especially when she was pretending to mourn the King.

But like I said, this film does suffer from being an Asylum film. There are reused scenes, though not as obvious, and the effects are standard rubbish, so why the writers wrote giant lizards and mutant dogs into it is a mystery. Well, I say that, but the giant lizards were effectively plot conveniences when you want certain characters to die or Snow White to be saved from her first assassination. While the effect used to summon the Magic Mirror is alright, it is obvious that the mouth of the Magic Mirror doesn’t move.

The characters themselves are pretty good too, and this was mainly shown through the actors behind them. The Queen was, of course evil, but she was also shown as manipulative, cruel, wicked, she was truly a dark character. Snow was, of course, her kind and sweet self, and we saw how her character changed from princess to outcast to revolutionary. Alexander was just badass, he knew how to fight, he could formulate strategies, and yet he still had a caring side. How badass was he, he killed a mutated dog or two, then killed a giant lizard! And then slightly bumping his head knocked him out.

So to conclude, yes it’s still an Asylum film and therefore it isn’t going to win at the Oscars anytime soon, the effects are naff and the acting is off in places. But this has to be a serious improvement on your average Asylum production.  The story is good, the acting has vastly improved, the characters are interesting, and the film is actually enjoyable.

Wow, my first review on an Asylum film and it’s a positive one. I need to rectify this. I need to watch ‘American Battleship’!

The Ending to Mass Effect 3

And here we are, my post on the end of Mass Effect 3. If you don't want spoilers, turn back now. Then again this post is about the end of Mass Effect 3, if you don't want spoilers, why are you reading this? Anyway, I hadn’t even finished my first playthrough of the game when I started hearing of the complaints of the ending. Though it was mainly because Game Group went under, which meant that my pre-order of the N7 Collector’s Edition was cancelled, which lead to me pre-ordering it through Amazon, then payment issues lead to me getting the game about five days late. But I heard complaints about the ending two days before I got it, three days after the game was officially released. How people could have completed the game so quick is beyond me, since it took me a week or two to do it. Then again I only played the game for around two hours a day, combining it with multiplayer.

But yeah, “the ending sucks” was the message I got from everyone, with the main complaints concerning plot holes, lack of variation, and lack of closure. One guy apparently even went to the Federal Trade Commission to complain about the game. Which makes me think “Guys! It’s just a game!”.

 Eventually I came across the ending to the game, and...it’s okay. Yeah I don’t really see why people are making such a big deal over it, but at the same time I can see why they’re angry with it. I’ll start off with the mission to Thessia, since the asari councillor said there was something there which could help identify the Catalyst, the missing device to the Crucible, the prothean superweapon to be used against the Reapers.

However Kai Leng turns up and steals the Prothean VI Vendetta (the thing on Thessia) and takes it back to Cerberus. Jerk. Frustrated that Cerberus keeps popping up, the Normandy’s crew follows them to Sanctuary (Which turns out to be a Cerberus base), before following them to the Illusive Man’s base. According to the achievements, assaulting the base is the final assault, despite the fact that we still need to begin the final assault on Earth.

Anyway, after all that the Illusive Man has actually already fled, having gone to the Citadel, which turns out to have been the Catalyst, and has told the Reapers about this, which has led to the Reapers taking control of the Citadel and moving it to Earth. The Normandy then leads the largest military force, consisting of multiple species and fleets to Earth, needing to land at London in order to get to a teleporter which goes to the Citadel, since the Citadel has had its arms closed.

Now, it’s here where I saw a problem. While it is an awesome scene to see the Normandy arrive, then followed by the other fleets, then taking on the Reapers and the Oculus, one thing that runs through my head is “Where the Hell are the other forces?”. Seriously! The Alliance and Turian ships look similar so I kept getting them mixed up, I saw Asari and Quarian ships, but where are the Geth? Where are the Batarians? Volus? Elcor? The Krogan I can understand because EDI says that they don’t have military vehicles, and the Batarians were all but wiped out so I can understand that they didn’t have as many ships as they did originally. But where the Hell are all the other ships? I was hoping to see many different types of ships, but at the most we see four or five.

Heck, we only see one type of fighter planes amongst the fleet, the type we gain from the N7 mission where we attack a Cerberus fighter factory. What about the Geth fighter planes? What about the Turian fighters planes? I think I see some Asari helicopter fighters later, but in there’s still a lack of other fighter planes about. But again, seeing these two huge forces attack each other was immense.

Going beyond that we have our standard mission walkthrough. There is a point where we can interact with squad members and the surviving members of the suicide mission squadron from ME2, before beginning the final push. After surviving a ‘stand your ground’ part (Which for both my normal and insanity difficulty playthrough was very difficult), we finally get through to the teleporter. Then Harbinger shows up. F**k.

Harbinger pretty much blows the entire squad to Hell, save Major Coats who did the smart thing and ducked for cover at some point, Anderson who somehow made it to the teleporter, and Shepard whose shields and armour pretty much saved him from Harbinger’s lasers. At least I think that’s what happened, Harbinger’s lasers didn’t hit Shepard directly, yet it still managed to blast Shepard’s armour off and severely injure him.

Harbinger flies off, assuming that he just killed everyone there. Well, wouldn’t you? Anyway Shepard stumbles to the teleporter, killing some husks and a marauder on the way, before going to the Citadel, which really now does look like Hell now. Shepard continues to stumble to where Anderson has gone, where Anderson, and now Shepard, are under the control of the Illusive Man, who has had some facial work done. The Illusive Man tries to convince Shepard to join the Reapers, using his power to make Shepard shoot Anderson to try and help convince him, but Shepard refuses. The Illusive Man can then be killed, Anderson dies and Shepard opens the Citadel arms to allow Admiral Hackett to dock the Crucible.

Now comes the point when people start to get angry. Hackett tells Shepard the Crucible isn’t working, but Shepard falls unconscious. Shepard though just happened to have fallen unconscious onto a lift. The lift takes Shepard to...somewhere, where a ghost appears to Shepard. Well I say ghost, it turns out to be the Catalyst, using the outline of the boy who was killed towards the start of the game. The Catalyst explains that it created the Reapers in order to harvest advanced civilisations, in order to prevent said civilisations from creating synthetics which would destroy all life. The Catalyst offers Shepard a choice, destroy the Reapers and all synthetic life, control the Reapers, or create a new DNA hybrid of machine and organic. The first choice, Shepard has a chance for survival, but the other two Shepard dies (Or it’s presumed anyway), the Citadel and Mass Relays are destroyed, the Normandy crashes...the end.

I can certainly see why some people may hate it.

First of all, there’s no boss! After facing Saren/Sovereign in the first game, after facing the Human-Reaper in the second game, there’s no boss in the third? I was expecting to take on Harbinger, but he lives! He actually survives the conflict. Well, unless you select the destroy option. Well, I suppose Marauder Shields is considered to be the final boss since he can kill you. Originally the Illusive Man was suppose to be the final boss, with him turning into a monster. If you have access to the art book you can see the design, similar to a brute. However the developers decided against this and decided that the Illusive Man should use his greatest strength, his head. And it actually works.

 

We already saw the original (Illusive Man) idea happen with Saren, and it made more sense there; Saren was a powerful biotic, he was highly trained in combat and he was an expert marksman, it would make sense for someone like Sovereign to take direct control of him and change him into a truly powerful enemy. Don't get me wrong, the dialogue was great, but doing the same thing with the Illusive Man doesn’t seem right, as well as become a blatant copy of Saren (Though they did effectively do that with the Illusive Man killing himself).

And then we get to meet the Catalyst, who takes on the form of a kid. As stated, the Catalyst explains that it created the Reapers in order to harvest civilisations, creating more Reapers out of said civilisations, in order to prevent them from creating synthetics which would go on to kill all organic life. Many have asked why the Catalyst would create synthetics in order to kill organics so that they don’t create synthetics which would kill organics. I think...did I get that right?

But, let’s just remind ourselves of what Admiral Hackett said earlier in the game; “It’s easy to forget the Reapers don’t wipe out every species”, or like the Illusive Man says “If they wanted to kill all organics they’d do it,”. The Catalyst aims to preserve life, not wipe it out. It believes that it should harvest civilisations before they create synthetics in order to have life continue. While I do feel that the mystery behind the Reapers has now been ruined, I  now have my own theory on what the Catalyst and Reapers are after all of this information, which I’ll go over later.

The lack of endings, fine. After what...Casey Hudson (I think it was) said, yes the fans expected some very different endings. Honestly, it didn’t bother me, nor did Shepard’s death. Before the game’s release, I had a thought about what the endings would be and what the ending for my Shepard would be. And, in all honesty, the most obvious one I thought of was death. I always thought the most logical or best suited ending for my Shepard would involve his death. Yes, an ending where he lives would be great, but not in the way the developers intended.

You see, I didn’t like the ‘destroy the Reapers’ ending, since it would kill every synthetic in the galaxy, including EDI and the Geth. Wow. So, by choosing the ‘destroy the synthetics’ option, not only do you kill off the loveable EDI, you commit genocide against the Geths, a race who you spent two games with Legion trying to save and arrange peace with the other species, a race who Legion sacrificed himself to give sentience to. And you’re telling me that killing the Reapers would undue all that? No! I will not let Legion’s death be in vain! Of course all that depends on whether or not you let the Geth live earlier in the game.

 

The other two options, are kind of the same. You either control the Reapers, which for some reason kills you (Or from what I hear online, turns you into a Reaper), or you sacrifice yourself to change everyone’s DNA. Either way the Reapers go home, all that changes is the circumstance.

And then we get one of the plot holes which people mainly complain about. In all three endings, the Mass Relays are destroyed. And they don’t destroy the system. I’d like to think it’s because of the Crucible that the Mass Relays destruction doesn’t destroy the rest of the galaxy, but that’s not what annoys people. It’s the fact that the beam from the Relay/Crucible catches up with the Normandy...while it’s in warp between Relays.

Why the Hell is the Normandy there? Why did Joker retreat from the battle, after everything he has said in the game? How come he has some of the squad members with him? How could he just abandon Shepard? Those are some of the questions which people have been asking, and I did ask myself why Joker was there when I first saw the ending. But again, I wasn’t that fussed by it. When Shepard opened the Citadel arms and met the Catalyst, I saw outside that the huge fleet that I spent the entire game gathering together, appears to have been wiped out.

Yes, I saw Alliance ships, maybe some Turian ships and others in the distance, but that huge armada I gathered has effectively been dispersed. Since we do not see what happens with Joker or the squad members we don’t pick during the last selection, I can only assume that the others were pinned down by Reaper forces and Joker picked them up, before being forced to retreat through a Relay by, I don’t know, Harbinger or some other Sovereign-class Reaper. Although there is the possibility that a squad member who Harbinger fired at at the teleporter had apparently teleported to the Normandy. Again, possible off-camera antics. Yes, the developers just wanted the Normandy to crash land on a planet where signs of a new hope are shown, but we don’t really know what happens off-screen.

Why the Catalyst appeared as the child from the beginning of the game..no clue. The only reason I can think of, is that the Catalyst created the Reapers, which had the power of indoctrination, or rather the power to get into your mind. I can only assume that the Catalyst has the same type of power, used it on Shepard, saw the child in his mind, and decided that that was the best form to use to communicate with Shepard.

But here’s the thing which I really hated; there’s no CLOSURE! What I really loved about the Dragon Age: Origins end, was that whether or not the Warden died or not, we saw what the Warden meant to the other characters, we saw how the Warden has affected everyone’s lives, then we got an epilogue which told us what happened to everyone years after the game. And, whether you like Dragon Age 2 or not (I personally do, even if reusing the same dungeon was lazy), they did the same thing. While Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2 did have the epilogue, we still had a conclusion, we saw Shepard and the other characters interact with each other, we had an aftermath.

Mass Effect 3 has NO aftermath! Yeah, the Reapers either die or go away, the Relays are destroyed, the Citadel is destroyed, Earth might be destroyed, but once Shepard makes his choice on the Catalyst, we don’t get a single line of dialogue until after the credits where this “Stargazer and child” talk about the Shepard, with the child asking for another story (Which seems to imply that Shepard’s story isn’t finished, even though it is). We don’t know what the other characters do after this war, we don’t know if Garrus does go to the beach, we don’t know what our romance option does when s/he finds out Shepard is presumed dead. Hell, we don’t even see if the other characters even learn that Shepard has died, or that the Reaper threat is over, or that the Citadel has been destroyed.

One of the more popular theories for the ending though is the Indoctrination Theory. For those who haven’t heard of the Indoctrination Theory, here’s a Youtube video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ythY_GkEBck). For those who don’t have the time, the Indoctrination Theory theorises that Shepard hallucinated the last segment of the game, as he was now under the control of the Reapers. Firstly, I do have to give a nod to the guy who put this video together for putting together a compelling and persuasive argument.

But I have to say, I don’t believe in it. Firstly, the Prothean VI, Vendetta, can detect indoctrinated individuals, prime example being Kai Leng, but doesn’t detect anything with Shepard. Some people argue that indoctrination is a long and timely process, and therefore the Vendetta would not have been able to detect it in Shepard, as he wasn’t fully indoctrinated. So what your telling me, is that the Protheans developed a VI which can detect a fully indoctrinated person, but not detect ANY hints of indoctrination? And about nobody seeing the kid? Anderson has left when Shepard hears the kid, and the kid has left when Anderson returns. The reason why nobody helps the kid on the shuttle? True, maybe they can't see him. Or everyone on that shuttle are jerks.

But what really gets me about this theory, is that many people have complained that their decisions in the game does not affect the outcome much; except whether or not you get the geth or the quarians or both join your cause, whether you help Wrex cure the genophage or follow the salarian Dalatress and get her fleet’s support, doing certain missions before they expire, whether the Earth gets destroyed, etc etc.

But if Shepard was indoctrinated and the ending was a hallucination, then that means that not only did every decision in Mass Effect 3 not matter, but neither did every decision in Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2. Every single decision, every single ally made, every single line of dialogue, would be completely, and utterly, pointless. Also, we really have no idea what truly happened. Did the Normandy crew actually survive? Did the choice actually make a difference? Did the Reapers actually survive and we only think we destroyed them? The Indoctrination Theory only raises more questions.

My own personal theory, is that a long, long time ago, an advanced species created the Citadel and the Mass Relays, and implanted the Citadel with the Catalyst, a form of VI (Maybe even an AI). The species tasked the Catalyst with devising a way to protect all life. An event however, similar to the Geth and Quarians going to war occurred, which the Catalyst saw as a recurring event; which it is, as Javik says a similar event occurred during his cycle, and humanity almost caused a technological Apocalypse with Project Overlord. The Catalyst therefore calculated that eventually, organics will create a synthetic life form which would go on to wipe out all life.

The Catalyst therefore designed the Reapers, somehow creating the first one (Most likely Harbinger, as he’s the most powerful) and harvesting current civilisations and creating more Reapers. Rinse and repeat. The Catalyst keeps ordering the Reapers to harvest civilisations, sparing the younger races in order to give them a chance; the Catalyst deciding every 50000 years on whether the current society is in danger of creating Skynet. So really, this is all the Quarians fault for creating the Geth (Even if the Geth don’t want to kill organics) and the humans for turning a human into an AI. There’s my theory behind the Catalyst and the origins of the Reapers anyway.

So is the ending to Mass Effect 3 the best? No. Do I hate it? No. Yeah the ending has problems but it’s not as bad as everyone makes it out to be. The developers have had so much hassle over this, they’re developing a download entitled ‘The Extended Cut’, where there’ll be extra cinematics and some closure to better explain the ending. The main problem, however, is that, as the last in the trilogy, there were high expectations on the game, especially the ending. The ending felt rushed, but it's not really something that frustrates me, it's just lacklustre.

Some people have even stated that they’re “no longer going to buy any downloads until the game’s ending is rectified”, the problem with this is that the Extended Cut and the only other proper DLC since the game’s release (The multiplayer DLC Resurgence pack) have been FREE. I am one of those people who think that people who put time, work and effort into something for us gamers, they should be paid for it. How would you feel about putting so much work into something, only to not get paid for it.

So, in short, it's disappointing, but not devastating. Whatever happens, let’s just hope that the Extended Cut gives us a more clarified ending.

P.S. Where were the Scions and Praetorians? And the Geth's Hopper, Armature, Colossus, and Juggernauts?

Mass Effect 3

Yeah, there was no way I was going to put this under the ‘An Hour of’ banner, as there was no way in Hell that I was only going to play this game for an hour. It has since been nearly two months since the game was released, in which I have now gone through the single player campaign twice, and the multiplayer and the recent Resurgence DLC many times, in order to truly understand the game’s mechanics. I warn you now, there are spoilers in this.

For those who don’t know what the Mass Effect franchise is, for some reason, it’s a sci-fi game set in the not-too-distant future, where humanity has discovered interstellar travel through the discovery of an ancient civilisation, the protheans which vanished 50000 prior, which had highly advanced technology, namely devices called mass relays, which are transportation devices which can send a ship or ships from one end of the galaxy to the other. In doing so humanity has come into contact with many alien species, such as turians, salarians, asari, geth, quarian, krogan and drell. In the games you control a human called (Insert name here) Shepard. Yeah you can give him whatever first name you want, no-one will say it. We also know that the many species are governed by a council, initially consisting of a councillor representing the turians, asari and salarians, and that they can employ a high ranking agent called a Spectre, who can effectively do whatever they want in order to preserve the peace.

In the first game one Spectre, named Saren, goes rogue in order to bring back a race called Reapers (A name given by the Protheans), a race of sentient machines whose only desire is to wipe out organic life every so often. Saren enlists the geth race to help, whilst also utilising a ship called Sovereign, which turns out to be one of the Reapers. Shepard is tasked to stop him, enlisting allies during the course of the game.

In the second game Shepard is killed off at the beginning and his ship, the Normandy destroyed, by a race known only as the Collectors. The Collectors turn out to be the old Prothean race, having been converted by the Reapers and now serve to kidnap entire human colonies on Reaper orders. Shepard is resurrected by pro-human group Cerberus (Think Nazis), lead by the Illusive Man, and they work together to fight the Collectors. A piece of DLC which bridges the second and third games involves Shepard going to a batarian (An alien race which has a violent history with humanity) system and, in my case reluctantly, destroys the star system to prevent the Reapers arrival, wiping out 300000 batarians in the process. I really didn’t want to wipe out a star system, since it’s committing mass murder on a grand scale, only to delay the inevitable.

The third games finds Shepard awaiting trial on Earth for his atrocity when the Reapers invade. Shepard is reinstated in order to gather an alliance of all the other species, but that’s easier said than done, as the Reapers have invaded the other species home planets as well, the krogan don’t like the salarians or turians, the batarians have effectively been driven to extinction, and the quarians have decided this is the best time to reignite their war with the geth (The geth were created by the quarians, but the quarians tried to destroy them when the geth started to gain sentience. The geth would then drive the quarians from their home system (and planet) during the Morning War). Oh, and Cerberus has betrayed you. Jerks.

Now to actually talk about the game. It’s fantastic. What else could I say? The graphics are beautiful, the story is fascinating, the gameplay is brilliant, and the characters are interesting. Well, most of them.

We might as well start with the characters. Most of them are returnees; we have Ashley Williams/Kaidan Alenko (Whoever survived), Liara T’Soni (asari), Garrus Vakarian (turian), Tali’Zorah vas Normandy (quarian) and EDI (the Normandy’s Artificial Intelligence) who is operating a synthetic body. We also have two new squad members, James Vega and Javik, a Prothean.

Yes, we actually have a living Prothean on our squad, as his stasis tube was the last one with power, whilst all the others were switched off. Javik proved to be a very interesting character, especially with his interactions with Liara, as before ME3, everyone expected the Protheans to be this noble race, to be somewhat perfect, as Liara puts it to “have all the answers”. Javik proves to be...not quite what people expected. It turns out the Protheans were effectively dictators, forcing other races to join their empire or face certain death. Javik himself proves to be cruelly truthful, though his surprise at how the races from his cycle have evolved truly astound him. Of course all of this was due to the war with the Reapers in his cycle. When he was born the Reapers had already claimed the Citadel (Which became somewhat a myth to his people), and his first memories were of his home planet burning. He states later that having spent his entire life in war, he cannot foresee how he will live in peace. He proves to be one of the funniest characters as well, mainly through his unintentional insults like “Impressive. The asari have learned how to write”.

James meanwhile, he’s my least favourite of the characters. Not that he isn’t good, he’s okay and I do like Freddy Prince Jr (The voice actor). But as a character, he’s just not that interesting, he just seems to be your standard stereotypical jarhead. Then again he does have some good aspects to his character, his guilt over saving intel to use against the Collectors instead of a colony was a good addition (Which proved to have probably been the wrong decision as Shepard managed to defeat the Collectors with the intel), but apart from that there wasn’t really anything fascinating to say about him. Would I have preferred an old squad member from the other two games like Wrex or Legion (Or Conrad Verner, I actually thought at one point that Conrad would join the crew)? Sure, but James isn’t that bad a character, it’s just we have a more emotional attachment to the other characters.

 

Even supporting characters proved to be brilliant. Joker is still his usual funny self, Steve Cortez was a great emotional character, and Samantha Traynor, oh lord Samantha Traynor. I actually love Traynor, and all because of her voice, I absolutely love her voice. Alex Wilton Regan did an excellent job voicing Traynor.

The only exception would be Diane Allers, who is voiced by and modelled on IGN host Jessica Chobot. Now, I’m sure she’s a very nice lady, but she was an awful voice actress. On top of that, Diane Allers looks nothing like Jessica Chobot. Well, okay they have the same hair. But apart from that her face just doesn’t look right, especially when she’s interviewing Shepard and she turns to face the camera; she looks bloody possessed there.

For the other characters they are their usual awesome selves. Well, Kaidan is probably, I prefer picking Kaidan over Ashley personally. However, if you romance one character in the first game and another character in the second game,  there wasn’t really much of a confliction. I’ve only played the game twice, I’ll say that, with my male Shepard having only romanced Ashley. We then go over to my FemShep, who in the first game romanced Liara, and in the second game romanced Garrus.

It was part of a storyline you see. In the first game FemShep was all goody-two-shoes, and related to Liara the most as a result of it. When Shepard was brought back via the Lazarus Project in ME2, I decided that, since FemShep was woken early, that there would be something wrong with her; namely she went from goody-two-shoes to a complete bitch. Interacting (And eventually romancing) with Garrus, however, allowed her to regain her old personality. So I went into ME3 wondering what would happen.

Liara asks me if I’ll continue seeing Garrus, I say no. Garrus asks me if I’m going to continue seeing him, I say yes. You see, I was expecting some sort of middle ground for the time being, like “I don’t know. I, I’ve got to think about this”, but no, we only get a simple yes/no answer option. Then I was expecting a big argument to occur between the three, resulting in romancing one, or neither one, and a bad feeling remaining for the rest of the game. This does not happen. FemShep and Garrus go to the top of the Presidium on the Citadel, kiss, and that’s that. Liara gives me the cold shoulder for one line of dialogue, then acts like the Liara in my non-romanced game.

Ah well, let’s talk about the plot! There’s good things and there’s bad things about it. Let’s start with the bad. In the first two games, we are given multiple story missions and optional side missions, which we can do in any order at any time. Unless you have several left when you get the Reaper IFF in ME2, but you know what I mean. Meanwhile in ME3 we get main story missions, N7 side missions (Six in total), a couple of side missions and what is effectively treasure hunt objectives. So there is a significant drop in the number of missions we can do outside the Citadel.

And we don’t really have control over what missions to do. Sure we can decide when to do certain missions at a certain time, like you can rescue Primarch Victus’ son before taking on the Reaper on Tuchanka, or you can do the Tuchanka missions before going to find Aralakh Company, but you do run the risk of missions expiring. Which was what happened when I went back to the Citadel after Tuchanka, with the aim of completing some objectives I hadn’t done yet, only to find that Cerberus had invaded. Jerks.

But that’s not to say that the missions themselves are bad, they’re great. They’re full of action, such as Kalros vs Reaper, have hints of humour, feel of desperation and have some of the most emotional scenes in them. There’s the conclusion of the mission of Thessia where you see the Reapers arrive in force to conquer the planet, there’s the mission on Tuchanka where you have to stop Cerberus setting off a bomb and Primarch Victus’ son sacrifices himself to stop it, there’s Legion sacrificing himself to give the geth full sentience, and there’s Mordin sacrificing himself to cure the genophage.

Actually I need to give Mordin’s sacrifice a special nod. This is without doubt, the most spectacular, the best and most emotional scene. I tell him about the Dalatress’ knowledge that the Shroud (The thing we’re planning to use to cure the genophage) had previously been sabotaged. This leads to Mordin staying at the Shroud to fix the sabotage whilst the Shroud is exploding. For some reason. Anyway, after previously talking to Mordin about what he’d like to do after the war, he said he’d like to go relax on a beach. He’s then told he’ll get bored easily, in which case he says he’ll experiment on the seashells. At the Shroud, he says “Would’ve liked to run tests in the seashells”. This better become a meme for likable characters deaths. Then of course there’s the other dramatic death scene where Mordin yells “I MADE A MISTAKE!”, regarding his work on the genophage, showing his guilt over what he did, even if he did say it was the right thing.

Gameplay wise, the game has reduced the RPG aspect of the game. There’s hardly that aspect which the first game and the Dragon Age series have, in which you can play the game the way you want. In the end, there’s only one outcome for every mission, there aren’t that many other options for them. Okay, maybe there’s options like spare/help the Rachni Queen (Again), spare/kill a certain character...okay so maybe that aspect is somewhat still there but just barely.

Then there’s the little things, like Vega and Cortez arguing which is better; the M35 Mako, or the M-44 Hammerhead (Neither of which you could operate), with Cortez citing what a lot of fans have said about the Mako. Honestly, I never had a problem with the Mako, to be it handled really well, climbed mountains unless it was too steep, and it had heavy fire power. Heck, I actually found it quite agile when I wanted it to be. The M-44  Hammerhead on the other hand I found tricky to operate, it overheated easily, lacked firepower, and was easy to destroy. There’s also bits in the game which actually take the DLC for the previous games into effect, ‘Bring Down the Sky’ and ‘Project Overlord’ being the prime examples. I thought this was pretty cool, especially since I’m pretty sure that this was the first game that has done that.

 

A new aspect introduced in ME3 was the melee combat, primarily the omni-blade melee function. Gamers have said that this proved to be useless against enemies later in the game, but for me I actually probably used it as much as I did in the early part of the game, especially on insanity as it was an instant kill move.

And the other new aspect? Multiplayer. I for one think that the multiplayer is actually pretty good, though it is the same thing over and over again, facing wave after wave of enemies. They do tend to change the objective of a wave, like eliminate certain enemies in a time limit, hack a terminal or turn off multiple devices around the map, but it is easy to see why some players may get bored. However you have to keep playing multiplayer, as the galaxy readiness  rating decreases daily. This is both a great way to keep players playing the multiplayer, and annoying as you have to stop playing the single player campaign as you’re getting less war assets in the final battle.

Oh yeah, war assets. During the game you need to gather war assets, which changes the result of the game, whether certain groups are able to hold their own against Reaper forces or fail miserably. These war assets are interesting to look at as they do also depend on decisions in the previous games.

Uh, what have I gone over, romance, characters, story, missions, gameplay. I think that’s it. Yeah! I believe I’ve gone over everything. So overall this game is fantastic, it’s a great addition to the franchise. Is it the best one in the series? Hmmmm, maybe, but whether it is or it isn’t, the game is brilliant.

Oh wait! I know what I’m missing. The ending! But that will require another post. So coming up next, the infamous ending to Mass Effect 3!