Massive Effect Tripled.

Well, I've done it. I have finished Mass Effect 3! Woot! OK, cool.

Now, on to the review. Disclaimer: As I mentioned in the review for the demo, I am slightly biased. Just a little. Yeah. Probably something to keep in mind.

Mass Effect 3 is the last in the Mass Effect Trilogy, wrapping up the story of Commander Shepard and the Reapers. If you haven't played through the first two - you'll want to, just because it effects the game so much. Apparently, there's several hundred variables or something that can affect ME3 from previous choices you've made in 1 or 2. The "love interest" in number 1 (and who I went back to in ME3, even though her lips looked plastic :P ) was decidedly annoyed that I had gone with someone else in ME2, even though I didn't know that you could even stay with her! She wasn't even on the ship!

But anyway. You have the opportunity to bring together all the races - ALL of them - to pitch in to a final fight against the Reapers. Age-old rivalries will be sorted out, because Commander Shepard is just one cool dude. (Or gal, if you go for FemShep.) I don't know if it's possible to get fleets from every race - I didn't quite manage it, got all but one - but you can get forces from all of them, if you work at it. And, what I found interesting in this one; your Paragon (nice guy) and Renegade (badass guy) points add up to a total Reputation, rather than working in opposition to each other. Oh, and you get an omni-sword. :D And with the DLC, you can get a Prothean on your team. Which is pretty darn cool.

Another thing I like that they've changed is that you're not scanning every planet looking for things. You have an extra scanner that checks if there's anything on the planets nearby, then you scan just planets that actaully have stuff there. Oh, and you don't really get heavy weapons very often, which was interesting. Interesting development - you can also have same-sex relationships, if that's your kind of thing. You could do that before if you were FemShep with the Asari, but they were all women anyway. Now, there's a human same-sex option for both Sheps. I'm betting that they got a few angry letters about that. Anyway.

A lot of people have whined long and hard about the ending to the game. Now, I can't exactly give a definitive answer, because I've only seen one ending. There's three different ones that you can choose (well, technically there's a fourth; you could just fail): you can decide to control the Reapers (like the Illusive Man wants to), destroy the Reapers, but also all synthetic life, including the geth (like Anderson wants to), or fuse organics and synthetics together to create a new type of lifeform. I'm a pacifist, who doesn't like the idea of controlling or destroying much, so I went with the third. Oh, and, just to make it clear - all of these were available to you if you got to the end, no matter what choices you made in getting there. (Or at least, so I'm told.) I really liked the ending I got. I've heard some people complaining about not really finding out what happened to people - honestly, I'm OK with that. I got to see a few of them, smiling faces,bright blue skies, etc, I'm happy. Hey, maybe I'm just a cheap sell.

To sum up, I thought that Mass Effect 3 was pretty damn fantastic. Probably my favourite game, definitely one of the best I've ever played. If you're into your RPGs - this is an absolute must-have. Buy. It.

Oh, and as a parting note, the music is fantastic. Leaves a lovely poignant tone to it.


EDIT: OK. Figured out why everyone's saying the endings are shit now. Thanks YouTube.
Each ending is almost exactly the same. You don't really get to see what the different ones lead to - about the only difference between them is that in one the Reapers blow up. But the rest is almost exactly the same animation, with pretty colours so you know which ending you picked.
OK, yeah. Think I'd like something a bit better than that.