So I finally finished Mass Effect 3. I have no idea how much time it took to beat this, but I've been playing it since I got my copy -- the day it was released. I got the collector's edition, so it came with the From Ashes DLC, which includes a jerk Prothean for a teammate, who aside from giving some excellent back story, did not play much of a role in my party. He stayed in his room that I visited once after each mission, and did not get to come out and play for the most part.
Sorry to say it, but unless you're an awesome character that I want to hear kick some ass, I will not choose you. You will be in my party firstmost if I think you have something personal to contribute in banter for this mission, or if I think it applies to you (if you haven't manually butted in already), or if you have awesome powers that may help fight what we're going up against. So typically - sorry Kaiden, Ashley, Jacob, Zaeed, and now James Vega, and Javik.
The story was stellar. Pure amazing. The impact of what decisions I made in Mass Effect 1 and 2 were painfully apparent, and made me carry those decisions (good or bad) forward to the end. The cutscenes were great except for the occasional character's eyes following something offscreen, or even turning their head in some inhuman way. Aside from that, the voice acting was awesome.
The combat was good. They tried to keep it non-repetitive by varying the enemies and making the objectives vary, which was a nice touch. I found playing an infiltrator quite fun. I would like to complain about one fight in particular near the end. Oh my sweet baby Jesus. No other fight before that came close to the level of ridiculous I had to claw my way out of there... The fights in particular are fun enough that I've been delaying writing this review because I've been playing so much multiplayer.
To talk a bit about multiplayer - it's awesome. I will try my hardest not to put money into this, but it has been very, very difficult. Seeing your characters progress, playing with your friends, spending points on packs with random goodies, what's not to love? Simple, cookie-cutter fights have never been executed so well. It gets predictable, but never boring. It's always intense, and friends always want to play. Which as I said, delayed this review. Oh, they also recently gave out a free map pack and added characters. This really didn't help me finish the game...
With multiplayer I have to talk a bit about Origin. It was tough for me to make the switch from Steam to Origin, and I lost almost all friend-awareness when playing Origin - not necessarily a bad thing... That said, the interface is a little clunky, but it gets the job of click-button-play-game done. There's definitely some room to polish it up, so I hope EA throws some polish at it.
Finally, the ending. I can understand why people are upset, but they're coming at this the wrong way. Sure, I wanted more too. Did I feel like I got screwed over? No. Did I feel like they left things unresolved? No, I made my decisions, and saw what became of everything because of it. I would love to see more, and apparently I will.
