Mass Effect 3 Demo review

Review of Mass Effect 3 Xbox 360 Demo

I have just come straight from my XBOX where I have just finished playing the Mass Effect 3 demo for the third time and I want to play it three more times! That should give you an intention as to how the rest of this review is going to go. For any of you few few people who don’t know the Mass Effect series, just think Skyrim and Star Wars combined… but better!

Obviously this review is going to be on the demo and my impressions of the demo not the full game so there will be certain features missing such as some of the RPG factors like upgrades and the like, but graphics, sound, gameplay and story will be mentioned as always!

Before you begin the demo you get to decide the background of your story of your player by changing such things as how you grew up, how you joined the alliance and what type of character you are. These are all options that you could choose in previous games, however in this demo you do get the option to choose who died in your previous Mass Effect games because in the previous games you had options to pick certain players to do certain missions which resulted in them dying. However, I believe that in the full game you’ll get the option to pick up your save from Mass Effect 2 as you could do with your character’s information from Mass Effect 1 in Mass Effect 2. Personally, I don’t think these decisions make a MASSIVE change in the gameplay but just simply change the conversation path a little. Also you can choose between six classes: Solider, Infiltrator, Vanguard, Sentinel, Adept & Engineer. These change whether your person has powers or not and how trained they are in combat. Some specialise in combat and have no powers such as the Soldier class, whereas the Sentinel class allows you to possess all the powers and have training in combat also!

Before you start the demo you get three options for how you wish to play the game: Action, which allows you to jump right into the action and the conversation possibilities just play as cut scenes, Role-Playing which is the traditional Mass Effect experience where you can choose dialogue and customise your character then there’s Story that is the same as Role-Playing but the combat is easier so you don’t have to worry so much about dying and you can enjoy the story more which is what I think is going to be most people’s choice! This is a new feature to Mass Effect and is something that I don’t believe any other RPG has done before and it adds a re-playability factor!

Well let’s in fact begin with the storyline of the demo. Seeing as it’s a demo there isn’t a massive amount of time to get the gist of things, but it’s easy enough to pick up. I think the idea is that the Reapers, who are an enormous race of beings who plan on trying to control the universe, are coming back and they’re coming back far harder than before. In the previous Mass Effect games, you went to them and helped defend other planets; however, in this game it appears they are striking first and you’re on the defensive and it feels like it may be a more desperate fight than before. Anyway, the game begins with a diplomatic argument discussing the fact that they believe the Reapers are going to attack and Shepherd (the protagonist) says that the only form of defence is to attack back. Instantly after the discussion, the Reapers attack the city you are in and the whole room explodes and everything goes quiet. You begin the demo with a simple pistol and you are learning the basic controls of running, shooting, aiming etc. The first enemies you come up against aren’t very hard and they are simply to teach you how to shoot and also how to use melee attacks.  Just after this section you find a child in an air duct tunnel who refuses to come with you, no matter what you say. After this there are sequences of shooting which are very and fun and the debris around you really makes you feel like you’re part of the war.  After a lot of shooting and a few short cut-scenes later, the final cut-scene appears which is one of the most powerful cut-scenes I have ever experienced. Anderson (the boss of Shepherd) decides to stay and help defend the planet after resistance from Shepherd. Then as Shepherd is flying away, he sees the little scared boy on the surface, powerful music plays as the boy gets on one of the escapee ships as an enormous machine with a laser destroys the ship as Shepherd shows sadness and anger; this is such a powerful ending to the first part of the demo.

The second part of the demo is simple an action mission and doesn’t really have much in the way of a storyline; it appears that you are transporting a female Krogan onto a planet safely for some reason and you basically have to defeat waves of easy-to-defeat Reapers. Not quite as powerful as the first mission, but still fun to play of course!

Mass Effect plays simply exquisitely; the controls are smooth and easy to use. The reason Mass Effect is so successful is because it is a third-person RPG but plays as nicely as a first-person shooter, plus with the additions of powers that allow you to shoot electric or lift enemies makes the game so fun! Mass Effect 3 feels even better if that’s possible, the guns genuinely feel like futuristic weapons with little recoil and it feels satisfying hitting the enemy! In general, the game won’t let you down, there’s no doubting you’ll never find a time when you’ll have trouble with the controls.

When Mass Effect 1 originally came out for the XBOX 360, it seemed to create a new bar for other RPGs to hit in the graphics department. The scenery was detailed and well lit, the characters and costumes were incredibly detailed in-game and even more so during cut-scenes. Now what amazes me is that I think Bioware have done an even better job with number three; the cut-scenes look simply sensational and the in-game graphics are quite breathe-taking at times too. For the second mission there is a cut-scene beforehand showing the planet they are about to land on and I genuinely believed it was real-life footage.

All-in-all, the Mass Effect 3 demo has to be the best demo of a game I have ever played and what excites me is that I’ve not yet experienced the true storyline, all the weapons, all the missions, the emotional attachments, the brilliant upgrading system, the multiplayer or any of the things that have come to make the Mass Effect series truly brilliant! Be excited for the release of this full game, be VERY excited indeed!

Presentation – 9.6

Graphics – 9.7

Gameplay - 9.5

Sound – 9.7

Lasting Appeal – 9.3

OVERALL – 9.6