Mass Effect 3 Collector's Edition - Xbox 360 Review

Mass Effect 3 is probably one of the most anticipated titles to come out in some time.  Like Diablo III will be in a couple of months, Mass Effect 3 has certain expectations that will be almost impossible to meet for some people.  In truth, I feel the expectations are higher here then for Diablo 3.  Certainly the wait has been shorter, but Bioware did something incredible when they brought choices made from the first Mass Effect into Mass Effect 2, changing certain parts of the storyline to add continuity to the storyline you crafted.

As a result, Mass Effect 3 has become a title that not only has expectations due to being part of a popular series, but because players have already become greatly invested in the storyline to date.  Along the way there have been books and iPhone games to help tide gamers over, but none of those things compare to the primary three games in the series.  There were a lot of design choices that people questioned along the way such as the addition of multiplayer and the ending of the game.  I would have loved to have rushed out a rapid review on this game so it could be just a bit more timely, but my personal policy of playing through a game until I am done with it/beaten it once would not allow me to do so.  Here are my thoughts on it.

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Mass Effect - Xbox 360 Review

I remember hearing a bit about Mass Effect prior to its release, but it was not a title I was terribly excited about.  My only real experience with Bioware at that time had come in the form of Neverwinter Nights, which I had thoroughly enjoyed - but it was quite clear that this science fiction title was going to be a completely different animal.

Finally for Easter after it released, I picked Mass Effect up used because of the overwhelmingly glowing reviews it had released to.  I gave it a shot, did not much care for the shooting mechanics and put the game away in favor of other titles I was working on at the time like Oblivion.

Some months later, I had beaten every game in my current library except one.  I decided to dust off Mass Effect and give it an earnest chance this time.  I made my way through the first few hours, fighting off the confusion over the strange blending of shooter and RPG as I became more comfortable with the mechanics and the game's universe.  Fast-forward about 50 hours and I had just beaten the game, and found myself wondering how things might have ended differently if I had made some different choices at key moments.  I then proceeded to find out as I immediately played through it again.  I would go on to beat the first Mass Effect two more times over the following few years as it became one of my favorite video game titles of all time.

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Initial Mass Effect 3 review scores (not mine), bugs and other info

I have a series of Mass Effect reviews coming - but I'll preface this by saying this has become one of my favorite gaming series ever.  I unfortunately have to wait a few days to get my copy of Mass Effect 3.  By the time I set aside enough to order the collector's edition for my 360 (one of the only Collector's Editions of anything I've ever bought), they were sold out at Gamestop and Amazon, so I was forced to get it direct from EA.  Downside is it can take 2-5 days to arrive, and I was just notified last night that it shipped, so I have a couple more days to try and wrap up Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning before then.

There are some disquieting concerns though about some bugs.  As  reported on Kotaku, there is an issue where some people have trouble loading in prior characters.  This set of issues apparently comes in two flavors.  One is that Mass Effect 3 cannot determine the custom face from your prior character and returns an error, and it looks like there is a pretty active thread about the issue on BioWare's forum.

Another glitch or concern is apparently you cannot import your characters from the hard drive - it can't be pulled down from Microsoft's new cloud saves feature and used directly.  The bigger catch is this apparently has to be done on your 360 the save file was originally created on?  I'm a bit baffled by this, but here's the help article on EA's site.

I'll be curious to see if I have any issues as I have ME 1 and 2 saves, and some that are linked together and some that are separate, some using the default character setup and others with customized characters and faces.

And for the entire Kotaku article, that can be read here.

In the meantime, this is easily my most anticipated title this year and I am very excited about it.

IGN has a fairly lengthy, detailed review up here, where they scored the game a 9.5.

Gamespot scored it a 9.0 here.

And Metcritic is averaging a 94 right now here.

My own review and thoughts will likely come down the line a bit later as I generally try to beat a game/quit playing the game before I put a review up here, and I tend to do almost all of the side stuff in RPG's (I'm at 85 hrs on Amalur right now but only about 1/3 of the way through the primary story line)

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