Mass Effect 3 Demo

[rmoxon]

So this is a relativley meaty demo as it features 2 single player "missions" and a sample of the multiplayer (which I havent had a chance to personally sample yet).

You create your character and then play through the opening of the game and then afterwards play a mission that takes place much latter on with your character at level 12. Whats intresting is that members of your team seem to be made up of ones from the previous games, some of which could have died, so everyone is probabaly going to end up with a different set of team members in this, although I dont know wether they are all in the demo or not (at a guess I would say they are though).

As for the way it plays, I'd say its not much different from the second game at all really, the combat feels exactly the same from what i remember and everything else is as youd expect, the biggest edition here is probabaly the kinect features, but I dont have a kinect so someone else will have to talk about those.

Overall this is a pretty good taste of the game and has me pretty excited, the opening is certainly a great set up, though perhapse not quite the jaw dropper the start of Mass Effect 2 was.

Highly likley that this will be one of the best games this year.

[Robster]

Is there actual online mp inlcuded in the demo, when I started it up it asked for ea account details but did not allow me to enter them..?

Overall the demo just feels like ME2 which is not a bad thing, personally the connect would just annoy me because Im not used to playing games that way.

Anyone know how to achive the unlockables for KOA reckoning..?

[Charlie]

Disappointed to hear it's not that different from ME2 and that the combat feels exactly the same. Leads me to suspect that ME3, rather like Skyrim, is primarily designed to make lots of money - not to iron out the faults of it's prequels and be the best game in the series.

[Robster]

Not a huge amount of combat in the demo but it did have that pick and play natural feeling to it, I havent played ME2 in over a year I think and it felt natural. I wouldnt get too hung up on the combat at this time, I hope(think) the full game will have a few nice addtionas and tweaks smoothed over.

[rmoxon]

Disappointed to hear it's not that different from ME2 and that the combat feels exactly the same. Leads me to suspect that ME3, rather like Skyrim, is primarily designed to make lots of money - not to iron out the faults of it's prequels and be the best game in the series.

Well many people (myself included) would argue that Skyrim was a massive improvment over oblivion, and I imagine that just as many people would argue that Mass Effect 2 played very well and hardly needed improving really.

To be honest i wasnt expecting a big step up here gameplay wise, they improved alot of the first games faults with Mass effect 2, but that meant that there was nothing majorly wrong with the second game, people who didnt like the more stremlined nature and tonned down RPG elements of part two will probably be disapointed again with this though.

[Charlie]

I'll withhold further comment until I play the demo but I was hoping the combat would be tweaked, polished and refined from ME2 which I thought rather, for want of a better word, clumsy and with plenty of room for improvement.

[rmoxon]

I think it depends on your class.

As a Vanguard I found the combat in Mass Effect 2 highly satisfying, however if you picked a solider, who is focused purely around shooting with rifles then it probably wasn't as fun.

[Prototype]

Disappointed to hear it's not that different from ME2 and that the combat feels exactly the same. Leads me to suspect that ME3, rather like Skyrim, is primarily designed to make lots of money - not to iron out the faults of it's prequels and be the best game in the series.

Of course it is designed to make lots of money. But don't label it a poor game because of that. Mass Effect 2 was a great game, and the gameplay was much better than the first one.

[EvilBoris]

The more they polished the shooting mechanic , the more the haters would complain it had been dumbed down.

You can't please everyone

[JU!]

Interested to play this and give it a try. Can't see the demos on sores yet though. . Good impressions peeps.

[SUMIRE]

Played it through, thought it was good, the sound and music is amazing as usual, that first bit with the spider bot thing, bass! damn!

Graphically it looks really nice, facial mouth animation is a bit behind though, but I guess it is a limitation of the engine, no worries, still not bad, small gripe. The Kinect stuff is as you would have guessed, pretty pointless although I could see it being very useful for selecting weapons, but I couldnt get it to work how I wanted it to.

I think the game is definately exciting to play, but the old problem still persists, the cover system is bothersome at times, in fact, many times.

[PeteJ]

Graphics have taken a bump up though as mentioned the facial animation is pretty poor. Hilarious eye movement on the character creation screen (wiggle the right stick!).

Movement is slightly refined and therefore combat is improved. You can now move between cover easier and you can also turn faster when running... though this may just be me remembering Gears 3 and not ME2. Combat doesn't seem to have changed much gameplay wise but if the opening is anything to go by they've ramped up the set-pieces a lot. Weapons felt more powerful and also you can use any weapon type as any class, which I seem to remember not being the case before.

It's a great opener to a game especially the final cutscene which has incredibly good music. The sound seems vastly improved too. Quite a nice option at the start for those that want it - you can select if you want a 'traditional' ME experience, an action focused experience (no dialogue options) or a story driven experience (easy combat). A nice way to not have to dumb things down to appeal to everyone.

I could have quite easily sat and played from the end of the first part of the demo until the early hours. The second part of the demo is much more like the missions you'd see in the previous titles, and if it wasn't for the slightly better (and darker?) graphics you wouldn't know it from ME2.

Multiplayer - which is only unlocked for those with Battlefield 3 until the 17th Feb - seems pretty solid. It's a 4 player coop\ survive several waves type but with a few nice twists. Every few rounds you have an objective - hack a server or kill certain enemies - and also a nice defend the point moment while you wait for extraction. You earn money from objectives which can be used to buy kits, each one containing a random set of weapons and one-off items. The more expensive kit you buy the more chance of better stuff.
It's quite a neat system and combined with the levelling system from the single player game (although you seem to have less powers - at least initially) it has some depth. You can select any of the classes and level them separately.

I'm happy Bioware haven't screwed this up and it remains my most wanted game of 2012

[Charlie]

Of course it is designed to make lots of money. But don't label it a poor game because of that. Mass Effect 2 was a great game, and the gameplay was much better than the first one.

You missed out a key word in my post - "primarily". All games are designed with an eye to make money, that's to be expected, but when that's the primary objective the game suffers.

When I look at Halo Reach I regard it as Bungie's attempt at making the best Halo game they could, it was refined and polished and included new features and tweaks from other titles in the series. When I look at Skyrim, I don't feel Bethesda set out to make the best game they could in the series, if they had then they would have improved the combat and used a much larger and more talented cast of actors for the voice talent. Same with the Resi 4 remake for XBLA, the ommission of 5.1 sound clearly shows it was released primarily to make money - not released to serve as the definitive version. I want developers to create games to the best of their abilities, not play it safe and release games with the same faults and weaknesses as their last multi-million selling hit.

[englishbob]

It's going to be the best game of the year. Played about 3 minutes of the demo and switched it off (as not to spoil it for the real release).

Still pissed off that (what I thought was) a major release has that bloody 3 day "release day" gap between US and Europe, again.

[EvilBoris]

3 days!!!!!! Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!