Seneste anmeldelser af val ≽^•ω•^≼

After completing every iteration of the trilogy, I have to say I'm kicking myself in the shins that I hadn't picked this up sooner.

[Story]

I'm a sucker for a good storyline, I especially get invested when that storyline is populated with memorable characters. I couldn't tell you a single character from Borderlands 3 if I tried and I completed that in its entirety, yet (Spoilers ahead) I felt a genuine sadness when Mordin stayed behind to cure a disease he helped create, perishing in the process. I adored conversations I had with Tali, as if I was genuinely creating a friendship with her throughout the series. While I don't typically care for romancing in a silly digital setting I was deadset on upholding my character's relationship with Liara. (Spoilers end here)

But what totally sold me on the story and characters was by no means the dialogue, it's of course not perfect, some of the personalities for NPCS are dry, sure, and there plenty of awkward moments and nonsensical writing, but it's the fact that decisions in prior games impact the way your story progresses.
As a comparative, I love the world-building and storytelling in Fallout but it always felt disjointed, I hop timelines and make new characters between each iteration, I was never the same person between each game because how could I be in different eras and different regions that had barely any correlation.
Mass Effect took the idea of having your own personal custom character and persisted with it to an outstanding capacity, I felt genuinely invested in my character because a lot of what I did mattered, my backstory I chose from the first game was constantly remarked throughout the whole series, decisions I made would come back and either bite me in the ass or save me a lot of effort later on, it was a world that I had an impact on rather than just some shallow linear story-line where you do the tasks the game tells you to do to reach a default white-bread good or bad ending. That being especially clear in the final game where how much you interact with the world around you impacts what ending you are able to achieve.

The endings offered in the first two games were fair enough and act to set the scene for the following games, with choices impacting who you see and certain elements of the next game.
Without spoiling much, despite the fact they each ended on a fairly generic "woo we did the thing" scenario where you just sort of end with everyone popping out the champagne despite hints of future threats, I didn't mind because loose ends were tied up in the following games, with previous interactions being mentioned either discretely or through actually bumping into the individual you met in the prior game.
The final game gave you several ultimate choices in the finale, that served to be the final conclusion to this huge buildup spaced out across all 3 games, from what I saw many aren't happy with how it was concluded with (Spoiler) Shepard dying for the most part, with only one ending hinting at their survival, but I felt it was only fair, it was the ultimate sacrifice and brought the huge buildup and entire trilogy to a close. I was satisfied, my adventure ended with me saving the world a final time and improving it for the indefinite future. (This of course depends on which ending you pick, but they all generally hint to the same kind of happy ending better world scenario) (End of spoilers)

In regards to actual dialogue, it tends to be fairly black and white with "more context", "paragon good guy" and "renegade bad guy" responses with the occasional "neutral avoid moral dilemma" response which is a good and bad thing, if you're expecting a full interactive experience with ambiguous responses for that true roleplaying experience you probably won't get it, but I did find myself thinking over certain dialogue multiple times before making a plot important decisions, you can definitely invest yourself in conversations you between characters. I also quite appreciate the inclusion of the paragon/renegade interrupts which can totally change how a 'cutscene' plays out by letting you interrupt it for better or worse.

[Gameplay]

Generally speaking, I can't see myself writing much for gameplay, because honestly it wasn't exactly outstanding or exceedingly satisfying across all 3 games, it served its purpose to an acceptable standard. But that was ok, because while I was fairly often gunning down the same copy-pasted enemy in a corridor with my laser handcannon I enjoyed using it as a way of breaking up the moments where I'm taking in a lot of dialogue.

The combat got progressively better throughout the games, with the first game being a kind of, hold/tap left click until the thing in front of you is not longer standing vertically and and inventory that would get clogged with clones of the same weapon, the second game made off with the inventory and just gave you preset choices you could choose from when you purchase or find a new weapon, now offering heavy weapons of mass destruction with scarce ammo that could be used to wipe out a room (and yourself.) The final game in my opinion had the most satisfying actual combat, with weapons that ranged from "totally useless" to "left click to commit a war crime" and offered a fairly uninspiring but fairly handy modifying system for upgrading your gun, sadly no more heavy weapons except as single use pickups though.

Biotics is a fun concept and is essentially the "mage" kind of magic projectiles of the sci-fi world and are a nice alternative to just flinging light-beams at the enemy with your funky space toaster.

Aside from the monotony of the fetch quests in each game while you survey planets in a vehicle or just by firing probes, which was somewhat fun until I had to do it an additional 9 times, there isn't much to say about gameplay.

[Conclusion]
With story and gameplay summarised, there isn't really much else worth remarking, none of the games are exactly graphically outstanding, they all run reasonably well on a laptop, and it has its flaws so its worth concluding here.

As someone who has played a fair few story-driven games, I've got to say mass effect did it quite a bit better than most I've played, and packaged together in the legendary edition alongside the DLC was the best purchase I've made in a long time. After completing the whole trilogy back to back in over 140 hours, I feel like I've got to the point where I've exhausted my attention span for the game series, and that's perfect considering the ending I got left me feeling totally satisfied, I sat back in my chair and felt at peace with the outcome I reached, which is rare considering I leave so many games wishing I could do more with my character, games like GTA V and Red Dead Redemption 2 that felt TOO short considering the story was so much fun. With the trilogy spread across 3 titles, I don't feel like I need another title to be happy with where the story ended (though one would be very much appreciated).

Definitely worth picking up.

driller satchel charge is a bigger threat to your team than the dreadnought you're fighting

ghosts have proven to have a violent disposition when you play THUNDERDOME EARLY RAVE MIX over the mic while sprinting through the house (at no more than a brisk jog that is the sprint in this game). funnily enough, neither do the people i'm hunting with much appreciate it.

occasionally the ghost will even retaliate by sensually whispering in your ear which spooks me no more than it gives me an erection.

i've had more fun autoclicking the car in the garage to make literal speedcore than actually finding the ghost, and the TV is unbearably loud when it's on, so you bet i'm hiding the remote, forcing people to put up with it the whole game.

in the odd occasion i do genuinely play the game, yeah i guess it's ok, it's a cheeky bit of guess who but instead of it being a board game it's just a dark abandoned school with a dead corpse under the floorboards.

it's only really fun with friends otherwise it just becomes a bit repetitive and mundane after you can just identify the ghost based on what it ate for lunch on sunday, most of the fun genuinely does come from friends and especially playing it in vr.

i denied my friends from accessing any resource nodes, proceeded to build 28 nuke launchers and gave the AI a taste of exterminatus.

10/10 would commit mass genocide against heretic AI again

i took 12 morphine needles and proceeded to beat the living hell out of a pig with my bare hands.

its meat was delicious.

in my short time playing with 4 other friends, I met someone called Habibiy who spoke in a thick middle eastern accent and ended all his sentences with "man", he had just invited himself into building his base right next to ours, we commanded him to execute random freshly spawned players and trained him up to be a worthy warrior, we gave him resources and food and in return he gave his loyalty.

eventually, however we all got executed by the crossbow-wielding-UN for our war crimes against the freshly spawned.

everyone logged off after the massacre and only Habibiy and I remained, I can still hear him standing outside our corpse littered base sadly exclaiming "where is everyoen maen, hello??? are u al ded friends??" as I hid in our resource shed silently, knowing we weren't going to join the server ever again.

i felt like i abandoned my pet dog in a forest and drove away looking at it in my rear view mirror, man this game sucks.

nothing quite beats partying up with 3 friends and giving wrong call-outs in a loud irritating indian accent to the one extra person that gets automatched with you.

ubisoft servers are genuinely horrible btw.

broken ranking/competitive system and a lot of turkish people who keep calling me rude words.

The game still isn't dead despite my expectations, the updates are slow and underwhelming and the community is still intolerable. But for whatever inane reason, I keep returning to play it.

I love to hate you, mordhau.

MACGREEEEEGOOOOOOOOOOR!!!!!!