So it was Saturday morning and I was getting a little bored with myself. I had been playing Gotham City Imposters since release mid week and already notice the lacking of full lobby joy already. I had to quit and as I was in one of those 10 minute wall staring moods I decided to venture onto my facebook. There it was, a post shared by both Xbox UK and Mass Effect. A post that stated a chance to win an early access code to the up and coming MASS EFFECT 3 DEMO! 2011 was a good year for me and the lucky code wins and I wasn’t going to let this one see off my long streak of luck.
The comments below read a heap load of players, gamers and fans already downloading their early access codes. They were already experiencing the most anticipated game for me this year! I know it’s early in the ‘12 but come on?! What is going to top Mass Effect 3 would only be Bioshock Infinite and I doubt that’ll make its way round this year. My chance for an early access code failed upon many attempts and every attempt was limited to two hours of solid waiting. All afternoon I tried for a stupid code knowing that they’re being handed out by the dump load. I failed my fourth attempt, was beginning to feel this was never going to work and that maybe the code offer had already finished when suddenly, on my girlfriends first attempt….. the glorious jumbled 25 numbers and letters were all there and with my rapid keypad fingers I tapped in the code and all that was left to do was wait for that beastly 1.8gb to download.
Enough of my long Saturday afternoon of code cracking! Down to the nitty gritty of this fine game. Well if you’re a fan of the Mass Effect games you won’t notice a lot of difference in game mechanics, HUD and menus. They’re all iconic really to the game and BioWare are sure not to go adjusting that too much because it’s fine. The third person rolling and manoeuvring however is definitely tweaked in the slightest making combat situation a little less fiddly.
Graphics are stunning and views are jaw dropping. I simply had to stare at the amount of chaos and destruction being caused by the Reaper attacks. Amongst all the chaos I continued on with the controls tutorial which blends in with gameplay all too well. Mass Effect fans are all too familiar with the controls but the situation whilst tying in the story is perfect for newcomers to the series and the third person genre. The combat has come a long way since the first Mass Effect which really felt sluggish and almost sticky. They did an excellent job with the combat in the second and I just think the third now has it bang on! The Mass Effect 3 demo doesn’t give the story away too well but if you’ve played through 1 and 2 I’m sure you’ll get the gist of the utter mayhem these reapers are causing.
Finally, what I’ve been itching to tell you is the Kinect functionality and how surprised I was. I’ve not been a great fan of the Kinect. We got one despite my ignorant views on it. Used it a few times and then again to try out Forza 4’s ‘Autovista’ open and closing of car doors… Despite Microsoft’s attempt Forza 4 really wasn’t ‘Better with Kinect’. ME3 however rocks with Kinect voice commands. I absolutely thrilled over the idea of commanding my squad to move left behind cover or over there on the right. GARRUS MOVE! In the previous two games I never even bothered with the D-Pad controlling squads. I was too busy getting the kills myself and the whole thing with the selection wheel, well that is a thing of the past. Weapon selection for Kinect owners is a doddle when selecting or swapping a low ammo item just simply say “Pistol” or “Shotgun” and with that you don’t interrupt any combat play what so ever. Now with all this said I did end up throwing grenades accidentally when asking my other half for lemonade. Also if you do find yourself conversing with another then trying out these voice commands, they tend to not work at all and I found myself repeating. For first time users of Kinect’s voice commands I can only suggest being patient with it. Be as clear as you can and if background noise interferes way too much, no harm just using the classic controls.
All in all it was an interesting experience with the Kinect, and the single player play through is gorgeous yet pretty bog standard but what we’re all looking forward to is a good solid multiplayer portion of the package and that won’t arrive until a few days later than the release date of February 14 according to EA/Bioware and I believe there is early access to that too if you had pre orders for Battlefield 3. If you were one of the lucky few who had played the early access then share your thoughts. The rest will look forward to tomorrows demo release but please don’t forget your date for Valentine’s Day.
This work by Immersed Gaming is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
