Mass Effect 3 (PC) - Part 4: Extended Cut

THIS IS PART 4, YOU CAN FIND PART 1 HERE.

Around four months after release, Mass Effect 3 received an alternate ending DLC, with a price of absolutely nothing. The Extended Cut replaces the original ending, but not by default; it needs to be downloaded and installed separately. Unless you’ve got the Wii U version that is, then you’re stuck with the new content.

I actually think it’s great that the original ending’s still there for people to experience first hand, as we should be preserving content like this. Plus developers shouldn’t be able to edit our copies of a game to change the story without permission anyway!

Is it a good thing that BioWare ‘caved’ to their fans at all though? Does it set the medium back as an art form when customers can demand changes when a story doesn’t match their expectations? And does it actually fix anything?

 *** WARNING: ULTIMATE SPOILERS ***

Mass Effect 3 (PC) - Part 3: The Original Ending

THIS IS PART 3, YOU CAN FIND PART 1 HERE.

I've already talked about Mass Effect 3's gameplay, but now that it's three years later and emotions have calmed down I'm going to revisit the controversial conclusions to the Mass Effect Trilogy and finally answer the question "Is there actually anything left to say about this bloody ending that hasn't been said a thousand times before?"

And the answer is "nope".

Sorry, there just isn't. The game was so thoroughly torn apart back in 2012 that there's absolutely nothing new I can bring to the table.

Though I remember that reviewers at the time didn't really take issue with the game's ending, which is kind of bizarre considering how many of the fans did. My theory is that they were thrown off by the fact that you needed to play multiplayer to boost your War Assets for the best ending, and assumed that they must have gotten a crap outcome. Everyone else playing after release was able to check YouTube afterwards to learn that all endings are the crap outcome.

I don't usually like to call what I write for this site 'reviews' even though they can get a bit conclusiony down at the bottom, because most of the time I haven't finished the games I'm talking about and for some games that really matters. When a game's a story driven as this, that last 1% of plot can make all the difference, just ask a 'Lost' or 'Battlestar Galactica' fan.

So for once I actually am going to be finishing something. Twice over in fact; first with the original ending and then a second time with the reworked Extended Cut DLC installed. And I will have opinions to share.

*** WARNING: MAXIMUM SPOILERS ***

Mass Effect 3 (PC) - Part 2

Welcome to part two of my epic four part review thing!

In part one I played through the prologue up to getting my ship back.
In part two I'll be going through a typical mission and talking about how the game progresses. I'll put my conclusion here along with the comment box.
In part three I'll be going one step further into madness and analysing that ending to figure out why people were so bothered by it.
In part four I'll be talking about the new ending, and whether BioWare did the right thing by retconning their art. Yes I realise that no one's going to still be reading by this point, but I'm putting a second comment box there anyway.

There'll likely be massive spoilers for the first two games, and I'll be talking about how some major storylines wrap up near the end. See, this is what happens when I actually finish a game for once, I feel like talking about all of it and end up ruining the whole story for people. You should be safe to skip to the conclusion though.

Mass Effect 3 (PC) - Part 1

Developer:

BioWare

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Release Date:

2012

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Systems:

Windows, Xbox 360, PS3, Wii U

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This week on Super Adventures, I'm celebrating N7 day by replaying the first couple of missions in Mass Effect 3 and briefly... oh fuck it, I'm going to go and beat the whole game again. No sense in half-assing it after I finished the first two to get here.

Plus I remember there being a bit of controversy about how the game wraps up the (first) Mass Effect trilogy, so I'm going to go through the ending in excruciating detail and share my own thoughts on how it plays out, and whether people were freaking out about nothing. You're not going to get a 47 page let's play out of me, I haven't entirely lost my mind, but this shall be an epic four part article!

PART ONE is what you're reading now, where I'll talk about first couple of hours and show how the game plays. It'll likely spoil the last two games along with the start of this one but not much else.

PART TWO is where I'll talk about the game overall and give my thoughts about it. Likely to be more spoilery. I'll review the game at the end and give you a box to leave non-spoilery comments underneath.

PART THREE is going to reveal my SHOCKING opinions about the unloved original ending of the trilogy, as I go through the final act in the aforementioned excruciating detail. This will have all of the spoilers, maximum spoilers.

PART FOUR is going to quickly go over the changes made for the Extended Cut and whether altering the story was a good idea. It'll also have maximum spoilers, plus a second comments box for you to chat about the ending specifically. If you want.

I'm going to be playing the Windows version so some of my issues will be PC specific (like not being able to click on anything without disabling the Origin overlay first). Also I'm using a fix to enable ambient occlusion on my Nvidia card, following this guide I found on the BioWare forums, so my visuals will look slightly sweeter than the default. Or maybe slightly glitchy and screwed up, it could go either way!

(Click the screenshots to expand them to their original resolution.)

Genocide 2: Master of the Dark Communion (X68000)

Holy shit I think this must set the record for the longest subtitle in video game history. Or at least the most bullshit written onto a title screen. Bonus points for misspelling 'which', 'aware' and 'crisis'.

Today I'll be playing through an hour or so of Genocide 2: Master of the Dark Communion, released in 1991 for the Sharp X68000 home computer, amongst other things. I've heard that this is one of the games on the system worth having a look at, so I figured I'd have a look at it.

Night Slave (PC-98)

I'm always eager to try games for systems I'm not familiar with, but it's surprisingly difficult to find out about good Japanese computer games that are both playable without understanding the language, and not filled with cartoon porn. So I decided to compromise this time around.

Wikipedia tells me that Night Slave on the PC-98 is an eroge game, warning that it's gonna have naked anime ladies in the cutscenes in place of an actual storyline. But it also comes with an option to turn the cutscenes off in the menu and play it as a pure action game about giant robots shooting things. No sex, just good clean violence.

So I'll assure you upfront that this post is going to be entirely safe for work, for so many obvious reasons.

Metal Warriors (SNES)

Today I'm taking a quick look at Metal Warriors on the SNES. It... apparently has giant robots in it. Plus that starry background leads me to assume it'll be set in space. I don't know much else about it really.

Ever notice how many title screens feature a shiny metal logo in front of a black background or starfield? Because until this month I had no idea it was so common. For some reason my site's front page has become a sea of chrome and darkness, and every new game I play seems to perpetuate it.

Doesn't matter if it's a classic Japanese fantasy RPG, a cartoony first person shooter, or even an isometric platformer about a snake eating balls, almost everything I've played lately has gotten the shiny text. Manic Miner probably would have had it too, if the game hadn't been created way back before the human race invented metal.

Walker (Amiga)

Walker is one of DMA Design's post Lemmings, pre GTA games, released 20 years ago alongside Lemmings 2. It'd be fair to say that DMA were primarily Amiga developers before they moved to consoles (and eventually changed their name to Rockstar North), but everything they'd made up to this point had all gotten a multiplatform release eventually. Poor Walker on the other hand never made it off the Amiga for whatever reason, dooming it to a lonely future of relative obscurity.

I actually had a go of this a few years back so there's no way you could call this a blind playthrough, but I'm playing it again anyway. Just because I can.

MechWarrior (MS-DOS) - Guest Post

BETWEEN THE FALL OF THE ANCIENT STAR LEAGUE AND THE RISE OF THE HEIRS OF STEINER-DAVION THERE LIVED AN AGE OF WAR UNLIKE ANY BEFORE OR SINCE. FIVE GREAT HOUSES STRUGGLED FIERCELY FOR SOLE POSSESSION OF THE INNER SPHERE OF MAN. ACROSS THIS TROUBLED STARSCAPE MARCHED MIGHTY MACHINES OF WAR LIKE TITANS THROUGH A GREAT STORM OF FIRE.

IT WAS A TIME OF HIGH ADVENTURE...

Check out that box! Oh yeah, it's stompin' robots time! (external link)

SHOGO: Mobile Armor Division (PC) - Guest Post

Yes! SHOGO! Yes!

Future Cop L.A.P.D. (PC) - Guest Post

People say that there isn't enough mecha in mecha-neko monday. That changes today.