I have tried to play this game since it was released numerous times and just couldn’t get into it. After putting 110 hours into the Mass Effect Legendary Edition recently, I decided it was finally time to blow through it. After 40 hours I can say that the game is more enjoyable than I first realized, but also has more flaws than I imagined. Most of the major visual bugs are patched out at this point, but what remains is the core game that can never change or improve without an actual sequel.
I love the premise of Andromeda. The game takes place 600 years after the events of the original trilogy and that’s because a private company sent every species known to Council space out on several arks to the Andromeda galaxy and establish lives on then discovered “golden worlds”. Everyone stays in cryostasis while an illegal AI named SAM watched over all the arks. You play as Ryder who wakes up to the human ark being hit by something called the Scourge. This is a space phenomenon that honestly is never really explored or explained in the game. Strange tendrils reach out and destroy worlds and ships. Your brother also ends up in a coma as his pod was damaged during the incident.
This is where you learn the basic controls and how to interact with the world. The core ideas and gameplay loop of Mass Effect are intact. You can read datapads, and talk to people for extra information and story, but in the end, your conversation choices make zero difference in the story. Whoops. I’ll get to that later. Once you finally try to explore the first golden world you realize it’s not. The Scourge changed it somehow, and all the golden worlds are no longer habitable. This sense of fear is something I wish the game touched on more. Being lost and stranded in space with no way back home is a really great idea, but they never play upon it. Once you land on the first planet, you learn how to do everything else. Controlling Ryder is a breeze, and the character is nimble, has a jetpack to jump around on ledges, can infinitely sprint, and the shooting is more akin to standard third-person cover shooter gameplay, but barely.
Let’s go over the combat. Sadly, Mass Effect 3 had more satisfying combat than Andromeda. It plays well, but it’s very generic and just gets the job done. Once again, like in Mass Effect 1, there’s too much loot. Weapon mods, augmentations, armor, armor mods, minerals, random collectibles, etc. This means that while each weapon looks unique, it doesn’t feel too unique. A shotgun feels like a shotgun, and an assault rifle feels like an assault rifle. They just picked a center lane for each weapon type and stuck with that. Games like Gears of War have weapons that have their own unique personalities. They are almost characters among themselves. At least in Mass Effect 3, the weapons had punch and weight to them, while these do not. The combat is mostly boring, and the same enemies repeat forever. You have the kett, Remnant, and the usual raiders. The kett are the main enemy as you are trying to stop the archon from using this Remnant tech to destroy worlds. More on that later. Then the Remnant is just a generic, boring robot. Each faction has different enemy types, but the game, in general, is pretty easy, and I rarely ever died, even during boss fights.
The biggest change in Andromeda is being able to explore actual planets. There are quite a few here, and they are actually really fun to explore. There are many side missions that involve your crew, and there are tasks, but honestly, just exploring and doing the main missions was the most fun I had in the game. The open maps feel like major filler, and while the worlds look beautiful, the new vehicle you get is much better to control, and it can get upgrades, but no combat; it’s 90% filler. There are tasks you can complete, but most don’t have objective markers, so you either have to wander around aimlessly looking for them or use a walkthrough. In the end, most missions don’t give you any rewards at all outside of XP. Unless you are a completionist, there are zero reasons to stray outside of the main missions. This is really a bummer, and most of Andromeda is just filler with no real rewards or pay-off.
There are also way too many things to keep track of. AVP missions, R&D, buying and selling, modding, unlocking cryopods teams, and bonuses. It’s just too much. AVP missions are pointless, as you just send teams out to complete missions for you. There’s a co-op multiplayer section tied in here, but why bother? The rewards are pointless. Andromeda tries to create an economy but ultimately fails, as it doesn’t need one. The game is too easy, so most of the weapons are useless. Once you get a level five weapon, you’re good. I had one of each weapon, and the mods are nice; they actually do help, but this meant I never needed to buy anything after the second world was finished. I mostly collected so many minerals on missions that I just R&Ded the weapon I wanted, and that was it. I needed research points to research the weapon, and then I could develop it. I also found the most rare weapons as loot. By the time I got to the third and fourth worlds, I stopped caring about all that and ignored it. I just continued to level up. Another thing I don’t like is that elemental ammo is now expendable, and you need to acquire it as it’s limited. It was hard to keep track of when I was using it, as there’s no sound or icon flashing that shows me when it’s gone. The icon just disappears.
So the main reason you explore these worlds is to establish a base and to clear each world’s hazardous conditions by activating three Remnant monoliths and then the vault. The monoliths sometimes require you to solve a sudoku-type puzzle using glyphs. Yep, I sighed at that too. At least it’s a real puzzle, but why do we need these? They just slowed the game down, and some are insanely difficult. Once you get into the vault, you activate consoles to get a path to the purifier console, then run out as the gas chases you. You do this about six or seven times, and it gets more boring as you complete each one. One thing I liked was seeing each race and how they fit into the Andromeda Initiative. It really feels like a reboot of the series while keeping the core of it intact—sometimes too intact.
That leads me to the main reason why most people felt so engrossed in the original trilogy: the choices. The dialogue is now split up into five emotions, and the binary moral system is gone, but each choice doesn’t really do anything. The only thing you can really control is who you form a relationship with. There is so much dialog and so many choices, but they mean nothing in the end, and that is one of the major problems with the game itself. I enjoyed the story itself, and the personalities and politics of the races remained intact and were in full force here, but my character was probably better off just not having any dialog choices. That would have been a bold new move, rather than keeping a system that is hollow in the end. And essentially, that’s what Andromeda is. A bunch of systems from the trilogy are either just there because they’re familiar and don’t do anything new, or they’re just there for no particular reason. This leads me to the Galaxy Map. BioWare just can’t get it right, even four games later. Sure, you are actually on a map this time and can zoom across the system, and it’s pretty cool for the first few times, then you want to skip it after that. It’s slow and uninteresting after a while, and there’s no reason to explore most planets outside of reading their descriptions. Sometimes you can launch a probe when Suvi announces an anomaly, but that’s it. So while the map is visually more impressive, it’s still pointless.
The visuals are outstanding, as the game uses EA’s Frostbite engine, but the game is horribly optimized. Frame drops happened mostly in cut scenes and in random areas. Sometimes dropping into single digits. It didn’t matter if it was on an overclocked RTX 2080 or an overclocked 1660ti. Both exceed the minimum requirements exponentially. The game still looks good with detailed textures and models, and I can’t explain just how beautiful the worlds are. I really felt like a space pioneer when exploring them. Overall, Andromeda is only worth a play-through for hardcore fans. If you just pick up this game, you’re going to get bored and not feel interested. It’s clearly geared towards fans of the series, as a lot of events carry over from previous games, and the knowledge of the races and events that took place reflects a lot in this game.
Mass Effect was a big part of my teen years growing up. It was a massive sci-fi odyssey that let you explore planets, and BioWare created a giant world with lore that could rival Star Wars. Alien species with in-depth military and political backgrounds, and the amount of detail spread across the whole game that fully incorporated the lore and detail. Being able to talk to numerous species such as the Elcor, Hanar, Volus, or Asari about their individual lives or more galactic issues. It was fascinating and ground-breaking for the time. The facial animations, the graphics, and the sheer scope of the game were unheard of. Fast forward over a decade later and it’s still impressive, but video games have evolved and so have action RPGs. The flaws are big red scores on the game, but it’s still fun to play through.
The game starts out like any other BioWare or Western RPG. You create a character, and pick a class, and a background. Mass Effect’s character customization was never grand, and LE’s improved version helps a bit, but it’s still not very detailed. You can choose a pre-made character, but I chose to create from scratch. I picked a class that balances biotics and weapons and a female. Biotics are powers you can use in the game (and describes how humans become biotics in fascinating detail) and you’re off. You start out right off the bat learning that dialogue is a huge part of the game here. In fact, every choice you make shapes the ending and the outcomes of missions that carry across all three games. You can be Paragon or Renegade based on how you respond. There are usually three different levels. Nice, mean, and down the middle. One major complaint players had was the Renegade path was Shepard just being a complete asshole and nothing in between. It also doesn’t serve you to be neutral through the whole game either. This path can unlock dialogue options for either side that can change the tide of the entire game including making missions easier or harder.
Once you learn the ropes and get into your first mission you will learn how to play with the combat and shooting in the game. Mass Effect never had amazing combat, but the shooting here is slightly improved and is more enjoyable than it was before. You can move into cover, peek around ledges, sprint, and throw grenades. You can carry four weapons. Assault rifles, pistols, shotguns, and sniper rifles. Throughout the game, you can acquire crap tons of loot that allow you to mod the weapons in various ways as well as acquire new weapons and armor. This is essential to staying alive and you also need to manage your crew’s armament as well. Over the course of the game, you will meet various characters such as Wrex the Krogan, Liara the Asari, and Garrus the Turian. These characters are quite memorable and some even offer missions. I didn’t particularly care for Kaiden or Ashley as they were just boring humans honestly, and there is nothing exciting about their personalities and you only learn about their past through optional dialogue when visiting them on the Normandy (your ship) after each main story mission.
One of the major hub areas of the game is the Citadel. A giant spacecraft that trillions of aliens live on. There are various parts you can visit and can easily get around through a fast travel system. There are about a dozen missions to complete on the Citadel as well as vendors to visit. Some missions are given to you here to complete in space, but overall the Citadel isn’t a very enjoyable place to explore. Most of Mass Effect suffers from slow exploration, linear corridors, and various other problems. It’s a flaw of the times as the Xbox 360 wasn’t powerful enough for the vast open worlds we have now and there were also time constraints for development. Honestly, exploring in Mass Effect just isn’t very enjoyable. I only really liked the main story missions. Side missions are a bore fest with nothing truly gained outside of cash and loot and there’s too much of it. The game is so short that you will end up with millions of credits with nothing to spend it on. About halfway through I acquired the best gear just by completing missions and opening crates.
It’s a very unbalanced game difficulty-wise. I found the game very easy early on as acquiring loot so fast and quickly means you can kill everything in a couple of shots. This also led to me never really venturing outside of my pistol as my class specialized in that weapon. I nearly maxed out my level by the end of the game and there are so many different things to put points into that it feels unnecessary due to the short length of the game. All these biotic powers, weapons, mods, and classes for a game that can be finished in less than 20 hours? I wound up finishing everything in the game in about 33 hours. While this sounds strange that there would be so much RPG stuff in a short RPG, the game mostly just runs itself. I micromanaged my inventory a lot, but the game is so easy that I never worried about trying to find the best stuff. It basically falls into your lap.
That’s also not the weirdest thing about the game. The MAKO driving sections are a notorious and infamous chore and bore-fest. The vehicle has a mounted turret and shoots grenades, but there’s not much reason to use it outside of main missions. The vehicle is floaty and the worlds you drive on are insanely difficult to navigate. The terrain feels like it was made by a child who was given a terrain deformation editor and they went nuts. Nothing makes sense, there’s no logic. Just cheer cliffs and mountains on every single planet that are a pain to drive on. You can go around and discover hidden anomalies and metal deposits (these are for credits), but it’s such a chore and it’s boring. The first few planets are interesting, and it’s fun to feel like you’re exploring planets in space, but they’re completely empty. There are no other colonies or cities to visit outside of the Citadel itself. Just hours of empty driving and getting out to do a stupid puzzle to complete a few fetch quests.
Most side missions are given once you enter a new cluster on the Galaxy Map. You are looking at a solar system and can click on planets and you get a zoomed-in view of them. These are actually quite awesome and they are all different. You get info sheets on what type of planet it is and that part is really more fun to explore than actually landing on planets. Most clusters have one planet you can land on, and once you enter a cluster that has a side mission you will get an incoming message. Then you land, explore, find anomalies to complete the fetch quests, find deposits for credits, then you go into the same three generic interior buildings that are rotated to shoot something dead to complete the side mission. Maybe there’s one that involves dialogue to complete the mission. These interior levels are boring with just a few hallways and open rooms.
With that said, what’s the point of completing side missions then? Maybe completionists will want to for achievements, but it’s not needed to get the credits to buy weapons and armor. You end up getting all that stuff organically as you play anyways. The most enjoyable moments are the dialogue sections though and combat is fun for the most part. It’s just clunky and most everything feels underutilized. However the story is fantastic and the majority of characters are memorable, and that’s Mass Effect’s strongest point. The world-building, the lore, the characters, the story, the writing, and everything involved in that.
The game looks good and the LE upgrade is definitely several steps up visually from the Xbox 360 original. There’s better lighting, higher resolution textures, more detailed models, and everything in between. The music in the series is also fantastic, and the PC graphics options are decent. There’s ultrawide screen support which is a huge plus in my book as well. Overall, Mass Effect 1 Legendary Edition improves mostly on the visuals and that’s it. You can’t fix the core gameplay too much. They tried to add sprinting, but it’s only for three seconds, so why bother? You can skip elevator rides, but only some of them, and interesting dialog takes place here, so again, what’s the point there? I also had physics issues, stuttering, slow down, and the game would randomly crash sometimes. Hopefully, this gets patched at some point.
If you can look past the awful MAKO missions, the clunky combat, overly easy difficulty, and the unbalanced loot system, the game is worth playing. The main story is short, and the side missions aren’t worth investing time into unless you want to complete everything. The story, lore, characters, and dialogue are what make the game so great, but it really hasn’t aged well over the years and feels like a time capsule of two generations ago.
Mass Effect 2
Mass Effect had a lot of issues when it was released and many things needed to be balanced, tweaked, and changed, and BioWare listened with Mass Effect 2. You can immediately see many improvements, especially right after playing the first game, but some issues were fixed in the wrong way or weren’t quite realized enough. As a sequel, the game is bigger, more in-depth, more fun, and definitely a much tighter experience overall.
One of the first things you will notice right away is the game plays more like a traditional cover-based third-person shooter. The shooting is tighter, the weapons are more satisfying to shoot, and the cover system is a lot better. One of the first major changes in the implementation of ammo was in form of thermal clips. I know in Mass Effect 1 it was said that the weapons shave off pieces of metal and each gun has a small mass effect drive, but for some reason, thermal clips are now needed. You can pick thermal clips off of dead enemies or around the levels, but you also now have more limited use of weapons in your class. Each class can use specific weapon types. The game also ditched the traditional loot system in favor of set upgrades that you acquire throughout the game for everything. Each weapon has 5 levels of damage you can upgrade to, there are biotic upgrades, but your biotic powers are now set in stone based on class. Once you pick your class your weapons, biotic powers, and even ammo type you can use are all permanent. Some people didn’t like this and felt it was the opposite direction of endless, mostly useless, loot.
I actually felt this was an improvement as BioWare went with a more traditional cover shooter system so they took out most of the RPG elements outside of adding stat points to one of your four or more powers based on your level. I chose to use any weapon type, but I couldn’t use sub-machine guns. I also had access to all ammo types, of which there are four. This actually came in handy when dealing with certain enemy types, as there are a wider variety of them. I used incendiary ammo for organic enemies, and for Geth and mechs, I used a disruptor ammo type. I felt the cryo was a bit useless, but I also had access to my two teammates’ powers, and I could command them to use them at will. You can acquire new weapons by discovering them around areas, as mission rewards, or sometimes at shops. There aren’t many weapons in the game, so just be aware of that. At least they feel more unique instead of just a statistic change in a massive pile of crap. Shepard also moves faster in this game, and the entire pace of the main missions and side missions is even faster and more streamlined.
Another huge change is the level design. In the first game, the only unique areas were during the story missions and side missions were a boring hodgepodge of empty hallways that led to empty square rooms. At least in this game, there are more worlds to land on, about three times as many, and there are about twice as many teammates to acquire so that means more unique areas as well. Each teammate is a mission in itself to acquire them and then they each have their own mission to gain their loyalty and this is used to advance your romantic relationship with them. There just aren’t more worlds, but they feel more lived in. Sure, they’re still small and linear and cramped, but the Citadel is what it was in ME1. You’re now just on three levels of the wards and the shops. There are aliens everywhere; the backdrops look gorgeous; there are more ambient sound effects; and it feels great—for the first visit. The game is still very static, and I wish alien positions would switch up or more random events would happen. Nothing ever changes, and every NPC is glued to that spot forever. It still feels good to be in these areas, and the extra detail everywhere is really noticeable.
Side missions are now acquired during main missions or other side missions. You might find a datapad that has a mission, or you will find messages on your personal terminal. The navigation of the galaxy map has greatly improved as well. All missions are now shown on the galaxy map, and there are bubbles on each nebula or cluster with the name of the mission. You can now directly control the ship on the map, but it’s honestly pointless and feels half-baked. You have fuel and probes now, and fuel is used to get across solar systems in a galaxy. You still need to use a mass relay to jump around the major clusters in the galaxy. The fuel feels stupid, as that’s all it’s used for, and probes are the answer to taking away the MAKO and finding resources.
Yes, the MAKO is gone! Hallelujah!, but now you are stuck with another mundane chore: scanning planets for resources. There are five resources needed for upgrades, with Element Zero being the rarest. Most of your Eezo is acquired on missions in containers rather than planets. What you have to do is hold down a button to scan the planet, and a bar graph will spike high when there’s a strong amount of an element in that spot. It’s incredibly tedious and feels like a chore, and there’s zero fun in it. Sure, you can acquire a better scanner later, as each crew member you recruit has a major upgrade to offer the Normandy, but it doesn’t make things better. What’s more annoying are the limited probes. Why? I can only get more at a fuel depot, and those are only near mass relays. So, if I’m in a system that has no depot, I have to travel back on the map and fuel up. Just give me unlimited fuel and probes! This limit makes no sense. I also don’t like how there’s no zoomed-in view of each planet like there was in the first game. It’s just a small ball on a screen. At least each planet has a unique description.
While the galaxy map is slightly improved, it introduces new issues, and the dialogue system hasn’t changed a bit. Shepard is a little less of an ass in the Renegade options, but the binary moral system is really crippling as the game tries so hard to be extreme on either end. There are now some quick-time events during certain scenes that allow you to perform a Paragon or Renegade action that can boost that meter, but at least the smaller choices in conversations now add a little bit too. The top, middle, and bottom responses are good to evil in their respective order, and you will get maybe two points for responding nicely even in parts of the conversations that don’t matter. Sometimes you can win an entire dialog-driven scene by having your morals polarized more on one side, but I will give BioWare credit for its continuity. Every action you take in the first game reflects whether it’s a crew member who died on a small side mission and you just get a message about it later. I noticed every action I took in the first game unfold and take hold here, and these actions also had dire consequences.
The main story is still really short, with only maybe half a dozen missions or so. The last three crew members are optional, and there are a couple of crew members attached to DLC. Sadly, these crew members don’t have any dialog trees, and their characters aren’t expanded upon enough. With that said, the new characters are really likable, memorable, and well-written. The expanded lore and world feel grand despite the game’s actual limited scope. I felt I had more control over the dialog, but the binary moral system is constricting in itself and is one of the main issues I have with the whole series. The game is about as long as the first, but it feels more satisfying as you aren’t spending 10+ hours driving around in a boring MAKO. I finished almost everything in about 35 hours, and it feels solid and thorough. Less filler was scrapped for more actual content.
The Legendary Edition upgrades are mostly visual, and they look great. The game is several steps up from the first game visually, and the voice acting has improved a bit. There are more scripted events, cut-scenes, and animations. But the same 3-second sprint still exists, which is annoying. Overall, Mass Effect 2 is so much better than the first in every way. The story feels grander, and the Collector’s are a new formidable enemy. More questions are answered that you actually care about, but also more questions are raised, and the game ends on a cliffhanger. I liked having to choose teammates to do certain things on the final suicide mission, as some might die, but you don’t know in what situation or how. Sometimes it’s not even the team member you actually pick who might die, but yes, team members die at the end, no matter what you do; it’s just a matter of who. I loved every minute I was in the game and couldn’t put it down.
Mass Effect 3
Here it is. The finale to one of the largest video game sci-fi epics ever created. It’s a huge undertaking, and when Mass Effect 3 first launched, it became infamous for its disappointing ending, which basically had to be rewritten and patched back in. This is it. The final push against the reapers and any other enemies that stand in Shepard’s way. The game focuses heavily on shooting and veers more away from a traditional RPG, but it also has a more focused mission structure with a lot of writing and dialog with choices that mean even more than they ever did before.
The main focus of the game is to now gain war assets towards defeating the reapers. This is your main goal and what all your main and side missions will give you in the end. You have a minimum meter and can’t engage in the final mission until you’ve met this bar. This is all based on a score, and it’s broken down based on what you have done. All main missions give you the largest chunk, as your next big goal is to basically figure out what to do with each species that we have learned about up until now. The krogan and turian conflict, the krogan genophage, the quarians, the rachni, and the geth. All questions are answered, and each main mission focuses on the main characters that either survived during Mass Effect 2 or just in general. Dealing with each and every major issue with all species is pretty incredible and cool. It feels right that everything led up to these huge decisions.
One of the first noticeable things is the improved combat. It’s more cinematic and feels closer to something akin to Gears of War. Infinite sprint, finally, with snappier cover mechanics and dodge and roll mechanics, and the guns feel more tweaked, unique, and satisfying to shoot. This feels like a proper third-person shooter now, with some RPG stats tacked on. However, despite the more unique weapons, which include a loadout bench, and the fact that each weapon can have two mods attached, the game is still too easy. I rarely ever died, and when you fully upgrade a weapon to level five, everything dies in a couple of bullets. I wound up finding preferences for how the gun feels over how much damage it can do. I feel there are way too many weapons for such an easy system, and every enemy feels like cannon fodder. While there are now only Reaper enemies and Cerberus enemies, they repeat often and get boring to shoot. I was never afraid of any situation, and I could even stand out in the open most of the time and just mow everything down without a scratch. While the combat feels great, it’s not challenging, and all the effort feels almost wasted.
Once again you command the Normandy ship and its layout has changed once again. It’s lost more streamlined and you no longer have to walk around talking to everyone hoping to unlock the next relationship stage. You only acquire five squadmates this time and most of you already have met before. I really felt no need to walk around the ship anymore except to invite people to my cabin to advance a relationship. You are informed when someone wants an invite so the whole relationship thing is better and streamlined. The game switched focus from a lot of planets to visit for side missions to just very unique and cinematic main missions with a few side missions here and there. There really aren’t many. There are a ton of main missions and it keeps the pace going. Most side missions for acquiring war assets come in the form of probing planets. Don’t worry, it’s not as tedious as ME2, but this time you just probe the flashing spot on the planet and get your asset. And very rarely do you ever land on a planet for something. This allows you to solely focus on main missions and map exploration, which is pretty much the same as in ME2.
The map removes the need for probes and just has fuel, which I still don’t really get. Now that the Reaper threat is imminent, you can scan the map as you fly around to find hidden assets. Sometimes this will alert the reapers, and they will swarm you on the map, and you usually have to escape and come back. So, once again, the map is improved in some ways and hindered in others. Never did BioWare really get this system down working flawlessly. The only place you can now visit off-world is the Citadel, and nowhere else. It’s also been streamlined as you visit different areas again. There’s a central elevator that takes you around to the five different levels, and it’s mostly used for war asset acquisition. You overhear people talking, and you then need to go to that system on the map and probe a planet for the thing they’re looking for. Sometimes it’s something you pick up on the main mission, but sadly, these can be easily missed, and there’s no way to go back if you do.
I found the binary moral system hindering once again, as it matters here more than ever. It still unlocks certain actions during scenes and dialog options during important scenes, but I don’t like being either really nice or really mean. There’s no in-between, and after going through three games like this, it’s really annoying and holds things back. It feels so black-and-white here that I almost predicted what outcome would happen if I chose a certain response. Other than that, the ending itself was satisfying, and you can replay the final scene and go through your options to see different outcomes. I didn’t like how I couldn’t get a detailed epilogue of what happened to each surviving crewmate and my romantic partners. You get concept art stills and Hackett giving a speech at the end (which doesn’t spoil anything), and it felt pretty generic in the end. Like a fizzle and hiss rather than a huge emotional finale.
The visuals in ME3 are better than ever, with insane details in the backgrounds and overall detail of the game. I found zero crashes and glitches with this game, as with ME1 and ME2. I did actually find one glitch where I fell through a floor, but I think it was my own fault that time. I did also find the DLC in ME3 kind of weird. There’s one DLC that’s all about comedy and stopping a clone of Shepard. You get an apartment that you can deck out? Why? It’s not like this is a game I want to spend time in a player’s home. I can buy furniture and stuff, which is not very exciting and completely useless. This DLC also has more mini-games in the form of an arcade and is basically an entertainment strip mall. While I enjoyed the funny one-liners and overall humor that the main game lacked, this added feature was super strange.
Overall, Mass Effect 3 improves by giving you more cinematic story missions, less filler, improved combat, and bigger choices than ever before. You really feel like all of your actions from the past have caught up with you, for better or worse. While BioWare still can’t seem to nail down combat and the galaxy map well enough, it works. Combat feels great, but it’s way too easy, and thus the time and effort spent on creating so many unique weapons and mods is a complete waste. Why bother when I can stand there and mow down every enemy with the same weapon through the whole game? There’s no incentive to mix up the weapons and experiment. With the ending being iffy and the DLC being kind of weird, I enjoyed my time with ME3 but also felt the flaws were glaringly obvious. It’s still a great ending to one of the greatest video game franchises ever made.
Legendary Edition Changes
The changes made for this release are nice, but a lot of effort felt only half-baked. You can now sprint anywhere in Mass Effect 1 and 2, but only for a few seconds, so why bother at all? The visuals are greatly improved in all three games, but a total remake would have been better. Why not take what Mass Effect 3 improves on and change these over to the other two games? Get rid of the MAKO levels entirely in ME1 and just drop me down into the side missions from the planet. Allow me to collect resources from others, as they’re only used to gain credits anyway. The Galaxy Map should have also been changed in ME1. While driving around the map wouldn’t benefit much, it would at least fit into the rest of the game. Some might say it doesn’t leave the game as original as possible, but these features are widely disliked by fans.
Combat could have also been changed from Mass Effect 3 in both games. While ME1 is more of a traditional RPG in terms of loot, why not scrap it entirely? There are a lot of design questions about this game, as it mostly feels like just a visual overhaul, and that’s it. At least the game runs well on modern systems and consoles, and that’s what mostly counts. This would also have given the developers an opportunity to redo the ending of the series completely. Take the fan feedback from the last decade and use that to rebuild a better ending.
Here it is. The finale to one of the largest video game sci-fi epics ever created. It’s a huge undertaking, and when Mass Effect 3 first launched, it became infamous for its disappointing ending, which basically had to be rewritten and patched back in. This is it. The final push against the reapers and any other enemies that stand in Shepard’s way. The game focuses heavily on shooting and veers more away from a traditional RPG, but it also has a more focused mission structure with a lot of writing and dialog with choices that mean even more than they ever did before.
The main focus of the game is to now gain war assets towards defeating the reapers. This is your main goal and what all your main and side missions will give you in the end. You have a minimum meter and can’t engage in the final mission until you’ve met this bar. This is all based on a score, and it’s broken down based on what you have done. All main missions give you the largest chunk, as your next big goal is to basically figure out what to do with each species that we have learned about up until now. The krogan and turian conflict, the krogan genophage, the quarians, the rachni, and the geth. All questions are answered, and each main mission focuses on the main characters that either survived during Mass Effect 2 or just in general. Dealing with each and every major issue with all species is pretty incredible and cool. It feels right that everything led up to these huge decisions.
One of the first noticeable things is the improved combat. It’s more cinematic and feels closer to something akin to Gears of War. Infinite sprint, finally, with snappier cover mechanics and dodge and roll mechanics, and the guns feel more tweaked, unique, and satisfying to shoot. This feels like a proper third-person shooter now, with some RPG stats tacked on. However, despite the more unique weapons, which include a loadout bench, and the fact that each weapon can have two mods attached, the game is still too easy. I rarely ever died, and when you fully upgrade a weapon to level five, everything dies in a couple of bullets. I wound up finding preferences for how the gun feels over how much damage it can do. I feel there are way too many weapons for such an easy system, and every enemy feels like cannon fodder. While there are now only Reaper enemies and Cerberus enemies, they repeat often and get boring to shoot. I was never afraid of any situation, and I could even stand out in the open most of the time and just mow everything down without a scratch. While the combat feels great, it’s not challenging, and all the effort feels almost wasted.
Once again, you command the Normandy ship, and its layout has changed once again. It’s become more streamlined, and you no longer have to walk around talking to everyone, hoping to unlock the next relationship stage. You only acquired five squadmates this time, and most of you have already met before. I really felt no need to walk around the ship anymore, except to invite people to my cabin to advance a relationship. You are informed when someone wants an invitation, so the whole relationship thing is better and more streamlined. The game switched focus from a lot of planets to visit for side missions to just very unique and cinematic main missions, with a few side missions here and there. There really aren’t many. There are a ton of main missions, and it keeps the pace going. Most side missions for acquiring war assets come in the form of probing planets. Don’t worry, it’s not as tedious as ME2, but this time you just probe the flashing spot on the planet and get your asset. And very rarely do you ever land on a planet for something. This allows you to solely focus on main missions and map exploration, which is pretty much the same as in ME2.
The map removes the need for probes and just has fuel, which I still don’t really get. Now that the Reaper threat is imminent, you can scan the map as you fly around to find hidden assets. Sometimes this will alert the reapers, and they will swarm you on the map, and you usually have to escape and come back. So, once again, the map is improved in some ways and hindered in others. Never did BioWare really get this system down working flawlessly. The only place you can now visit off-world is the Citadel, and nowhere else. It’s also been streamlined as you visit different areas again. There’s a central elevator that takes you around to the five different levels, and it’s mostly used for war asset acquisition. You overhear people talking, and you then need to go to that system on the map and probe a planet for the thing they’re looking for. Sometimes it’s something you pick up on the main mission, but sadly, these can be easily missed, and there’s no way to go back if you do.
I found the binary moral system hindering once again, as it matters here more than ever. It still unlocks certain actions during scenes and dialog options during important scenes, but I don’t like being either really nice or really mean. There’s no in-between, and after going through three games like this, it’s really annoying and holds things back. It feels so black-and-white here that I almost predicted what outcome would happen if I chose a certain response. Other than that, the ending itself was satisfying, and you can replay the final scene and go through your options to see different outcomes. I didn’t like how I couldn’t get a detailed epilogue of what happened to each surviving crewmate and my romantic partners. You get concept art stills and Hackett giving a speech at the end (which doesn’t spoil anything), and it felt pretty generic in the end. Like a fizzle and hiss rather than a huge emotional finale.
The visuals in ME3 are better than ever, with insane details in the backgrounds and overall detail of the game. I found zero crashes and glitches with this game, as with ME1 and ME2. I did actually find one glitch where I fell through a floor, but I think it was my own fault that time. I did also find the DLC in ME3 kind of weird. There’s one DLC that’s all about comedy and stopping a clone of Shepard. You get an apartment that you can deck out? Why? It’s not like this is a game I want to spend time in a player’s home. I can buy furniture and stuff, which is not very exciting and completely useless. This DLC also has more mini-games in the form of an arcade and is basically an entertainment strip mall. While I enjoyed the funny one-liners and overall humor that the main game lacked, this added feature was super strange.
Overall, Mass Effect 3 improves by giving you more cinematic story missions, less filler, improved combat, and bigger choices than ever before. You really feel like all of your actions from the past have caught up with you, for better or worse. While BioWare still can’t seem to nail down combat and the galaxy map well enough, it works. Combat feels great, but it’s way too easy, and thus the time and effort spent on creating so many unique weapons and mods is a complete waste. Why bother when I can stand there and mow down every enemy with the same weapon through the whole game? There’s no incentive to mix up the weapons and experiment. With the ending being iffy and the DLC being kind of weird, I enjoyed my time with ME3 but also felt the flaws were glaringly obvious. It’s still a great ending to one of the greatest video game franchises ever made.
Mass Effect had a lot of issues when it was released and many things needed to be balanced, tweaked, and changed, and BioWare listened with Mass Effect 2. You can immediately see many improvements, especially right after playing the first game, but some issues were fixed in the wrong way or weren’t quite realized enough. As a sequel, the game is bigger, more in-depth, more fun, and definitely a much tighter experience overall.
One of the first things you will notice right away is the game plays more like a traditional cover-based third-person shooter. The shooting is tighter, the weapons are more satisfying to shoot, and the cover system is a lot better. One of the first major changes in the implementation of ammo was in form of thermal clips. I know in Mass Effect 1, it was said that the weapons shave off pieces of metal and each gun has a small mass effect drive, but for some reason, thermal clips are now needed. You can pick thermal clips off of dead enemies or around the levels, but you also now have more limited use of weapons in your class. Each class can use specific weapon types. The game also ditched the traditional loot system in favor of set upgrades that you acquire throughout the game for everything. Each weapon has 5 levels of damage you can upgrade to; there are biotic upgrades, but your biotic powers are now set in stone based on class. Once you pick your class, your weapons, biotic powers, and even the ammo type you can use are all permanent. Some people didn’t like this and felt it was the opposite of endless, mostly useless loot.
I actually felt this was an improvement as BioWare went with a more traditional cover shooter system, so they took out most of the RPG elements outside of adding stat points to one of your four or more powers based on your level. I chose to use any weapon type, but I couldn’t use sub-machine guns. I also had access to all ammo types, of which there are four. This actually came in handy when dealing with certain enemy types, as there are a wider variety of them. I used incendiary ammo for organic enemies, and for Geth and mechs, I used a disruptor ammo type. I felt the cryo was a bit useless, but I also had access to my two teammates’ powers, and I could command them to use them at will. You can acquire new weapons by discovering them around areas, as mission rewards, or sometimes at shops. There aren’t many weapons in the game, so just be aware of that. At least they feel more unique instead of just a statistic change in a massive pile of crap. Shepard also moves faster in this game, and the entire pace of the main missions and side missions is even faster and more streamlined.
Another huge change is the level design. In the first game, the only unique areas were during the story missions and side missions were a boring hodgepodge of empty hallways that led to empty square rooms. At least in this game, there are more worlds to land on, about three times as many, and there are about twice as many teammates to acquire so that means more unique areas as well. Each teammate is a mission in itself to acquire them and then they each have their own mission to gain their loyalty and this is used to advance your romantic relationship with them. There just aren’t more worlds, but they feel more lived in. Sure, they’re still small and linear and cramped, but the Citadel is what it was in ME1. You’re now just on three levels of the wards and the shops. There are aliens everywhere; the backdrops look gorgeous; there are more ambient sound effects; and it feels great—for the first visit. The game is still very static, and I wish alien positions would switch up or more random events would happen. Nothing ever changes, and every NPC is glued to that spot forever. It still feels good to be in these areas, and the extra detail everywhere is really noticeable.
Side missions are now acquired during main missions or other side missions. You might find a datapad that has a mission, or you will find messages on your personal terminal. The navigation of the galaxy map has greatly improved as well. All missions are now shown on the galaxy map, and there are bubbles on each nebula or cluster with the name of the mission. You can now directly control the ship on the map, but it’s honestly pointless and feels half-baked. You have fuel and probes now, and fuel is used to get across solar systems in a galaxy. You still need to use a mass relay to jump around the major clusters in the galaxy. The fuel feels stupid, as that’s all it’s used for, and probes are the answer to taking away the MAKO and finding resources.
Yes, the MAKO is gone! Hallelujah!, but now you are stuck with another mundane chore: scanning planets for resources. There are five resources needed for upgrades, with Element Zero being the rarest. Most of your Eezo is acquired on missions in containers rather than planets. What you have to do is hold down a button to scan the planet, and a bar graph will spike high when there’s a strong amount of an element in that spot. It’s incredibly tedious and feels like a chore, and there’s zero fun in it. Sure, you can acquire a better scanner later, as each crew member you recruit has a major upgrade to offer the Normandy, but it doesn’t make things better. What’s more annoying are the limited probes. Why? I can only get more at a fuel depot, and those are only near mass relays. So, if I’m in a system that has no depot, I have to travel back on the map and fuel up. Just give me unlimited fuel and probes! This limit makes no sense. I also don’t like how there’s no zoomed-in view of each planet like there was in the first game. It’s just a small ball on a screen. At least each planet has a unique description.
While the galaxy map is slightly improved, it introduces new issues, and the dialogue system hasn’t changed a bit. Shepard is a little less of an ass in the Renegade options, but the binary moral system is really crippling as the game tries so hard to be extreme on either end. There are now some quick-time events during certain scenes that allow you to perform a Paragon or Renegade action that can boost that meter, but at least the smaller choices in conversations now add a little bit too. The top, middle, and bottom responses are good to evil in their respective order, and you will get maybe two points for responding nicely even in parts of the conversations that don’t matter. Sometimes you can win an entire dialog-driven scene by having your morals polarized more on one side, but I will give BioWare credit for its continuity. Every action you take in the first game reflects whether it’s a crew member who died on a small side mission and you just get a message about it later. I noticed every action I took in the first game unfold and take hold here, and these actions also had dire consequences.
The main story is still really short, with only maybe half a dozen missions or so. The last three crew members are optional, and there are a couple of crew members attached to DLC. Sadly, these crew members don’t have any dialog trees, and their characters aren’t expanded upon enough. With that said, the new characters are really likable, memorable, and well-written. The expanded lore and world feel grand despite the game’s actual limited scope. I felt I had more control over the dialog, but the binary moral system is constricting in itself and is one of the main issues I have with the whole series. The game is about as long as the first, but it feels more satisfying as you aren’t spending 10+ hours driving around in a boring MAKO. I finished almost everything in about 35 hours, and it feels solid and thorough. Less filler was scrapped for more actual content.
The Legendary Edition upgrades are mostly visual, and they look great. The game is several steps up from the first game visually, and the voice acting has improved a bit. There are more scripted events, cut-scenes, and animations. But the same 3-second sprint still exists, which is annoying. Overall, Mass Effect 2 is so much better than the first in every way. The story feels grander, and the Collector’s are a new formidable enemy. More questions are answered that you actually care about, but also more questions are raised, and the game ends on a cliffhanger. I liked having to choose teammates to do certain things on the final suicide mission, as some might die, but you don’t know in what situation or how. Sometimes it’s not even the team member you actually pick who might die, but yes, team members die at the end, no matter what you do; it’s just a matter of who. I loved every minute I was in the game and couldn’t put it down.
Mass Effect was a big part of my teen years growing up. It was a massive sci-fi odyssey that let you explore planets, and BioWare created a giant world with lore that could rival Star Wars. Alien species with in-depth military and political backgrounds, and the amount of detail spread across the whole game that fully incorporated the lore and detail. Being able to talk to numerous species, such as the Elcor, Hanar, Volus, or Asari, about their individual lives or more galactic issues. It was fascinating and ground-breaking at the time. The facial animations, the graphics, and the sheer scope of the game were unheard of. Fast forward over a decade later, and it’s still impressive, but video games have evolved, as have action RPGs. The flaws are big red scores on the game, but it’s still fun to play through.
The game starts out like any other BioWare or Western RPG. You create a character and pick a class and a background. Mass Effect’s character customization was never grand, and LE’s improved version helps a bit, but it’s still not very detailed. You can choose a pre-made character, but I chose to create it from scratch. I picked a class that balances biotics and weapons and is female. Biotics are powers you can use in the game (and it describes how humans become biotics in fascinating detail), and you’re off. You start out right off the bat learning that dialogue is a huge part of the game here. In fact, every choice you make shapes the ending and the outcomes of missions that carry across all three games. You can be a paragon or a renegade based on how you respond. There are usually three different levels. Nice, mean, and down the middle. One major complaint players had was that the Renegade path was Shepard just being a complete asshole and nothing in between. It also doesn’t serve you to be neutral through the whole game either. This path can unlock dialogue options for either side that can change the tide of the entire game, including making missions easier or harder.
Once you learn the ropes and get into your first mission, you will learn how to play with the combat and shooting in the game. Mass Effect never had amazing combat, but the shooting here is slightly improved and is more enjoyable than it was before. You can move into cover, peek around ledges, sprint, and throw grenades. You can carry four weapons. Assault rifles, pistols, shotguns, and sniper rifles. Throughout the game, you can acquire crap tons of loot that allow you to mod the weapons in various ways as well as acquire new weapons and armor. This is essential to staying alive, and you also need to manage your crew’s armor as well. Over the course of the game, you will meet various characters, such as Wrex the Krogan, Liara the Asari, and Garrus the Turian. These characters are quite memorable, and some even offer missions. I didn’t particularly care for Kaiden or Ashley, as they were just boring humans, honestly, and there is nothing exciting about their personalities, and you only learn about their past through optional dialogue when visiting them on the Normandy (your ship) after each main story mission.
One of the major hub areas of the game is the Citadel. A giant spacecraft that trillions of aliens live on. There are various parts you can visit and can easily get around through a fast travel system. There are about a dozen missions to complete on the citadel, as well as vendors to visit. Some missions are given to you here to complete in space, but overall, the Citadel isn’t a very enjoyable place to explore. Most of Mass Effect suffers from slow exploration, linear corridors, and various other problems. It’s a flaw of the times, as the Xbox 360 wasn’t powerful enough for the vast open worlds we have now, and there were also time constraints for development. Honestly, exploring in Mass Effect isn’t very enjoyable. I only really liked the main story missions. Side missions are a borefest with nothing truly gained outside of cash and loot, and there’s too much of it. The game is so short that you will end up with millions of credits with nothing to spend them on. About halfway through, I acquired the best gear just by completing missions and opening crates.
It’s a very unbalanced game, difficulty-wise. I found the game very easy early on, as acquiring loot so fast and quickly means you can kill everything in a couple of shots. This also led to me never really venturing outside of my pistol, as my class specialized in that weapon. I nearly maxed out my level by the end of the game, and there are so many different things to put points into that it feels unnecessary due to the short length of the game. All these biotic powers, weapons, mods, and classes for a game that can be finished in less than 20 hours? I wound up finishing everything in the game in about 33 hours. While it sounds strange that there would be so much RPG stuff in a short RPG, the game mostly just runs itself. I micromanaged my inventory a lot, but the game is so easy that I never worried about trying to find the best stuff. It basically falls into your lap.
That’s also not the weirdest thing about the game. The MAKO driving sections are a notorious and infamous chore and borefest. The vehicle has a mounted turret and shoots grenades, but there’s not much reason to use it outside of main missions. The vehicle is floaty, and the worlds you drive on are insanely difficult to navigate. The terrain feels like it was made by a child who was given a terrain deformation editor, and they went nuts. Nothing makes sense; there’s no logic. Just look at the cliffs and mountains on every single planet that are a pain to drive on. You can go around and discover hidden anomalies and metal deposits (these are for credits), but it’s such a chore and it’s boring. The first few planets are interesting, and it’s fun to feel like you’re exploring planets in space, but they’re completely empty. There are no other colonies or cities to visit outside of the citadel itself. Just hours of empty driving and getting out to do a stupid puzzle to complete a few fetch quests.
Most side missions are given once you enter a new cluster on the Galaxy Map. You are looking at a solar system and can click on planets to get a zoomed-in view of them. These are actually quite awesome, and they are all different. You get information sheets on what type of planet it is, and that part is really more fun to explore than actually landing on planets. Most clusters have one planet you can land on, and once you enter a cluster that has a side mission, you will get an incoming message. Then you land, explore, find anomalies to complete the fetch quests, and find deposits for credits. Then you go into the same three generic interior buildings that are rotated to shoot something dead to complete the side mission. Maybe there’s one that involves dialogue to complete the mission. These interior levels are boring, with just a few hallways and open rooms.
With that said, what’s the point of completing side missions, then? Maybe completionists will want to for achievements, but it’s not needed to get the credits to buy weapons and armor. You end up getting all that stuff organically as you play anyway. The most enjoyable moments are the dialogue sections, though, and combat is fun for the most part. It’s just clunky, and most everything feels underutilized. However, the story is fantastic and the majority of characters are memorable, and that’s Mass Effect’s strongest point. The world-building, the lore, the characters, the story, the writing, and everything involved in that.
The game looks good, and the LE upgrade is definitely several steps up visually from the Xbox 360 original. There’s better lighting, higher-resolution textures, more detailed models, and everything in between. The music in the series is also fantastic, and the PC graphics options are decent. There’s ultrawide screen support, which is a huge plus in my book as well. Overall, Mass Effect 1 Legendary Edition improves mostly on the visuals, and that’s it. You can’t fix the core gameplay too much. They tried to add sprinting, but it’s only for three seconds, so why bother? You can skip elevator rides, but only some of them, and interesting dialog takes place here, so again, what’s the point there? I also had physics issues—stuttering, slowing down—and the game would randomly crash sometimes. Hopefully, this gets patched at some point.
If you can look past the awful MAKO missions, the clunky combat, the overly easy difficulty, and the unbalanced loot system, the game is worth playing. The main story is short, and the side missions aren’t worth investing time in unless you want to complete everything. The story, lore, characters, and dialogue are what make the game so great, but it really hasn’t aged well over the years and feels like a time capsule from two generations ago.
Dread X Collection games are a great concept. A horror house of mini-games that take 30–60 minutes to finish to unlock a larger narrative. The first game had a lot of duds and a few games that crashed and couldn’t be finished, and the same goes for this collection. There are far better games, but the duds are even worse this time around. At least there’s a larger hub world you can explore and get the games to require solving simple puzzles in a mansion you are locked in. It took me about 20 minutes to solve all the puzzles and find all twelve keys. It really doesn’t take much, with some barely even considered puzzles. Each game is on a VHS tape locked in a box in the main room. You put the tape in the VCR, and the game will pop up. It’s a neat concept and fun while it lasts, but you will spend the majority of your time with the smaller games. I will go through each one and let you know if they’re worth your time or not.
Charlotte’s Exile: A fun puzzle game based on H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu lore. You stand at a table and have a series of puzzles to solve while a giant eye constantly approaches you. You are standing in a library and you can see the eye every time you look up. It repeats a pattern in which every 3-4 minutes it will appear right in front of you and create a jump scare. It really got me the first couple of times as my skin literally crawled. However, this is all the game has in terms of scares. There is an alphabet you must decipher by reading passages in a book. Then there is a lockbox that has good ending hints and a puzzle box that requires pressing squares in a certain order. It was fun to solve and took around 45 minutes, but having to constantly look up was novel at first then just became annoying because I knew the jump scare was coming. Play.
Squirrel Stapler: A mock on Deer Hunter. The game has PS1-style graphics and you walk around a large forest hunting squirrels. There are five days and with each day a new beast must be hunted. You then staple your squirrels to your “loved one”. This is another Cthulhu mythos story. The actual hunting part is slow and gets boring fast. You have to crouch and stay still for squirrels to appear, but sometimes several minutes would go by with nothing. You can collect bullets and health, but the ending isn’t worth the pay-off. Pass.
The Diving Bell: The graphics are hideous with ugly textures and models, but the atmosphere is creepy. Another Cthulhu mythos game where you play as a crew member of a diving team that is sent to research under the sea. You then mash your keyboard to type up a report and as the days go on, you’ll slowly lose your sanity. As you hallucinate you must take anti-anxiety pills to keep your heart rate down and look away from them. The research facility constantly malfunctions and doors lock so you must find other shortcuts and take long routes around the area. It’s not very fun and the best part was reading the logs and watching yourself slowly go mad. The ending was a poor pay-off and overall it was mostly boring and took nearly an hour to finish. Pass.
Touched By An Outer God: A Doom clone that has you fighting Cthulhu mythos monsters using your hands. When you kill enemies you get parts that can be used to upgrade your hands. This game goes fast and you can finish the entire thing in about 20 minutes. You can’t acquire all upgrades in the first playthrough but the ending was a bad pay-off and after you get halfway through the game is super easy as you quickly become overpowering. The visuals upgrades are nice to see and it’s very fast-paced and fun. Due to the short length, it’s not bad. Play.
To the End of Days: A terrible first-person shooter that kept crashing on me every five minutes. You use your shotgun to kill enemies, and that’s it. The game looks awful despite starting out with a fun atmosphere. It’s the end of the world, and nuclear weapons are raining down everywhere. The animation is awful, the sound is bad, and the overall shooting is just amateur at best. I didn’t expect crysis, but this isn’t it, plus the terrible stability issues. Pass.
The Toy Shop: Another game with awful visuals, terrible controls, and super floaty platforming. You play as a toy soldier who is trying to escape a toy shop. You walk around talking to people, pulling levers, escaping enemies, and in the end, you start fighting Terminator-type characters. The shooting is horrendous, worst than the last game, and I couldn’t finish the final boss due to the awful level design and terrible controls. Pass.
Undiscovered: A lost footage game that’s all atmosphere. You are filming your wife in the 1950s as you just discovered a tomb in Spain. The game is super blocky and terrible looking but that’s part of the charm. It’s a silent film so it’s in black and white and there’s lots of static and you just mostly hear the clicking of the camera rolling. As you go deeper into the ruins you only have a torch and pickaxe at your disposal. You can easily dodge enemies by walking around them, but the game has a super creepy atmosphere. It’s another Cthulhu mythos-style game. The collision detection and camera are awful, but I finished it in under 20 minutes and it was pretty cool. Play.
Another Late Night: Not really a game, just a text-based “desktop” simulator. You click around, read messages and articles that are supposed to be happening during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the game is basically a self-aware mystery where you are seeing through the eyes of the developer of the game. It’s over in about 15 minutes, but it’s fun, as I love desktop simulator games. Play.
Arcadletra: This was the first game I played in this collection. It’s a super weird haunted arcade adventure game. You basically click around on things that have electricity around them and it’s a Layers of Fear-style haunted funhouse. There’s a good and bad ending, but honestly, the short story makes zero sense and I only enjoyed the auditorial atmosphere the game had. It was over in about 15 minutes. Play.
Sucker for Love: This one is super neat. It’s a Japanese visual novel where you summon a female Cthulhu character, but you are in your apartment and have a book of love. Your goal is to try and kiss her before she ends the world and it’s actually quite creepy in spots. Think Corpse Party type creepy. You follow the instructions on each page by clicking on things in the apartment that correspond to them like turning out lights, wearing certain items, etc. It’s over in about 20 minutes, but it was a lot of fun and I wanted it to last longer. Play.
The Thing in the Lake: This is an 8-bit PC-style adventure game where each chapter is super short-lasting maybe a few minutes, but I hated this one a lot. You can run around the screens trying to figure out where to go and there are two killers on the loose. You can’t walk through dry grass and after a few seconds, a killer gorilla comes onto screen kind of like Mr. X in Resident Evil 2. You can collect letters throughout the game, but the issue is figuring out where to go and constantly dying from the killers. I repeated each chapter a dozen times before figuring out what to do next. It just felt like a chore with little pay-off. Pass.
Solipsis: This is a short and sweet game. You play as an astronaut from a top-down perspective, walking across the moon. You must find a lava tube using a tool, but halfway through the game, your partner crashes onto the moon, and you must still find the lava tube. You then walk down a long staircase and see parts of a creature. Without spoiling it too much, the game ends once you get to the bottom. It’s over in about 15 minutes, but it’s disturbing. Play.
There are not as many duds this time around, but the bad ones are super bad and not even worth grudging through. Sadly, this means that without finishing all the games, you can’t finish the main narrative in the hub, but for the asking price, there’s still a few hours of good entertainment here.
This is actually my third time trying to finish Overlord, believe it or not. I rented this game back when it came out on Xbox 360 and didn’t get very far. A second time on PC, and now my third on PC. This is the furthest I’ve gotten in the game, about 2/3 of the way, but as time goes on, the game ages more poorly than the last time I remember it. It was an early next-gen game for Xbox 360, so all eyes were on it, and it was graphically impressive. It still looks great today and, surprisingly, runs amazingly well on PC without needing any fixes, but the game has a lot of issues.
Firstly, the game is incredibly tedious, and the game has some very poor level design. There’s no map, no objective marker, and the levels are very linear, so even one of these things would have been so helpful. You blindly wander around these areas that all start to look the same, trying to finish objectives. Now, the objectives can all be completed in any order for any area. Your main hub is a tower that you can customize and upgrade over time as you complete the game, and from here you can fast-travel to any level you have visited. The main gameplay mechanic is using the right analog stick and controlling your horde of minions to do your deeds for you, such as carrying items around and combating. You’re very weak comparatively, so entering combat isn’t suggested unless you really need it. Again, not the worst problem.
What really starts to bore me is that sweeping your minions around works well enough, minus some control issues when you have a straggler. The game favors the majority of the horde you end up controlling, and stragglers sometimes won’t join their brethren, making things frustrating. You end up controlling four different minions. Reds, Blues, Greens, and Browns. Browns are your main grunt, do the most combat damage, and have the most defense. Blues can enter the water but can also revive minions. Reds can throw fireballs at a distance and put out fires. Greens can be sneaky and climb up larger enemies, and they are also immune to gases and poisons. You end up spending almost half the game acquiring the three hives needed for the minions to open up new areas in each level. I constantly ran into roadblocks, requiring me to backtrack and wander around a level until I ran into a new area I hadn’t discovered. When I say the level design is bad, I mean piss poor. There are no memorable landmarks, just linear pathways that loop around, and turning around can literally look like two other directions you came from.
While navigation is a serious chore, the use of minions is limited. There are no puzzles to be solved; just destroy everything in their path, and make sure you use certain colors for certain enemies if need be. There are boss fights that are quite challenging, but then another major issue cropped up. You must horde and resource orbs to summon these minions; they aren’t free. Certain enemy types will give you different orbs, but browns are the most needed. I constantly had to go back to a level or two that had easy-to-mine sheep that gave me yellow orbs. I then had to exit the level and reload for the sheep to respawn, just to get enough Browns to defeat a boss. If you’re left in an area with no minions left, you’re pretty much screwed. You are never powerful enough to take out tough enemies alone, and some bosses can only be defeated by minions. There are mana and health fonts you can sacrifice minions into, but they are far and few between, so you really have to watch your health. Minions can loot stuff and find potions to help out a little, and this is the best way to acquire gold in the game to upgrade your weapons and armor.
Once you get used to the controls and gameplay loop, you will really start to see how much aimless wandering you do when you aren’t doing anything at all. I had to always keep a mental note of where a certain area was blocked and by what element, so I could go back and progress and complete another mission. Progressing was somewhat satisfying, but I spent 75% of my playtime wandering around these levels, trying to remember where to go and figure out what part I hadn’t discovered yet. Another issue I would run into is not having the right minions, so I would then need to backtrack back to a spawn hole and get the right minion, but it doesn’t end there. Let’s say you have 20 Browns but now need 5 Blues because an object is in water. I would backtrack to a blue spawn point, I remember, but you can’t send back Browns to a blue spawn point. I then had to go all the way back to the beginning of the area just to send the Browns back. This is stupid and tedious, and there are so many quality-of-life issues that could have improved the game. Let me send back any minion to any spawn point. Also, why spawn points? They’re so far and few between; let me just summon them from the ground, anywhere. I already have a limited amount based on the orbs I collect.
All said, the game might be worth a look if you really love the humor in games like Fable or from the mid-2000s fantasy era. I also felt that despite the game-toting being evil, I never felt truly evil. You can save people for rewards or kill them, but it doesn’t seem evil. The game never went above and beyond this, so I just felt like a misunderstood good guy the entire way. What? The visuals hold up, the control is cumbersome but doable, and the gameplay is unique, but the constant aimless wandering, lack of a map or compass, and poor level design lead to tedium and make the game just plain boring.
Small indie games can usually have better content than large AAA budget games these days due to their smaller scope and lower financial risk. Some of these games still rarely stand out and become huge, massive success stories. Raji is a game I wish could become a success story that blows up like Journey, Braid, Limbo, or Inside, but it feels like it’s missing something to bring it to that level. For starters, the story is rather dull and uninteresting and mostly focuses on teaching the player about Asian-Indian mythology. You play Raji, who is determined to rescue her brother, Golu, from an evil demon. The story mostly focuses on mythology, but Raji and Golu aren’t very exciting characters. They feel very one-note.
The game’s main focus is combat and platforming. Combat is surprisingly deep, with acrobatics and various moves that make it feel like Prince of Persia. Raji can do backflips off walls and pole spins, and each of the three weapons you acquire has a special attack: light and heavy. You start out with a staff, and this weapon is great for reaching; the second weapon is a bow; and the third is a sword, whip, and shield. You will end up switching weapons based on which enemies you are fighting. The enemy designs represent Asian-Indian mythology, look cool, and are a challenge to fight. The game might seem easy at first, but there were sections where I did it numerous times, and the boss fights are a great deal more difficult as well. However, there are difficulty spikes throughout the game. You will breeze through a few fights and then keep dying on just one that either has an unfair amount of enemies or multiple waves. You can heal by doing finishing moves, but that’s the only way in combat.
You can acquire skill points to add various elements that can damage enemies passively. These are mostly hidden in the game and require venturing off on different paths, but I didn’t make too much of an effort as the game is so short with only three large levels. Platforming is actually the most enjoyable part of the game, but the game focuses more on combat. While combat looks good and controls well, it just doesn’t have that oomph that other games like this have, like Prince of Persia or even God of War. It feels like there’s no response from enemies when you hit them; there’s no weight to her movements. There’s momentum, but no feeling behind her, which I feel would have taken the already detailed combat one step further. Platforming works well with wall runs, double jumps, shimmying, and hopping across poles.
The game adds puzzles, if you can call them that, as they aren’t really puzzles. You have to spin things to match them up, but it’s not like a typical puzzle. You can just rotate the rings until everything matches up. No puzzles here, really. This is probably the weakest part of the game, including the areas in level two where you have to throw out lilypads in the water to hop across. What’s the point? This doesn’t add a challenge to the game but just feels like a useless element that takes focus away from something else. At least the game looks amazing, with epic vistas, good lighting effects, and lots of detail. It’s clear that a lot of care went into the game, but it needed more time for some polishing. I even ran into some game-breaking bugs with enemies disappearing or not appearing and getting stuck on ledges.
Overall, Raji is a great action platformer that has some faults. It focuses too much on mythology and less on our heroine; combat controls well and looks fancy, but has no weight or feeling behind it; and platforming is the best part because it is focused on less over combat. The puzzles aren’t even puzzles, and the overall experience is only a few hours long. I haven’t played an indie game quite this fun in ages, and even with huge difficulty spikes, the game has a lot to offer.
I remember Mafia back in the early days of the PS2 era. I also remember not really understanding it because I was 12 years old and probably shouldn’t have been playing a Mafia game. I also remember the game being as hard as nails, but that’s about it. 18 years later, Mafia is a classic and a surprising choice for a full-on remake. The game takes you through a story of the 1930s mafia motif as you follow Don Salieri’s family and, particularly, the story of Tommy Angelo. A simple cab driver just happens to be in the right, or wrong, place at the right time and gets inducted into the family. You and your pals Sam and Paulie go through the ebb and flow of a Don losing turf in a fantastical Chicago, Lost Heaven, and trying to gain the turf back from a rival mafia family.
The story and characters are the best part of the game and, honestly, the only reason to stick around. While the game looks and feels like 2020, it’s still structured like 2002. You see a cut scene, play out a mission, and that repeats about 15 times. The missions are at least somewhat varied, from running on foot to long shootouts to being a getaway driver. Sometimes there’s stealth involved with sabotage, espionage, and subterfuge. I was entertained throughout the entire game, but I kept feeling like I was playing an old game with a new coat of pain. While the controls work, the animations are fine, and the cover shooting is awesome, it just feels like an older game in the way it’s structured. I also felt the large open world of Lost Heaven was wasted, as the game is linear in design despite this open city. There are zero side missions or activities to complete, and the open city just acts as a living, breathing hub for you to drive around in during missions. It’s honestly a huge waste, as side missions could have been added in.
When it comes to driving, the game feels great. There are simulation and arcade modes with automatic and manual transmissions, and you also must drive on the road and follow the rules or get pulled over and cited. This was a super awesome concept back in 2002, but today it feels pointless as you can speed if you don’t see a blue blip on your map nearby. Until I understood that I got pulled over only twice early on and used my speed limiter, Once you figure all of this out, the whole “traffic law simulation” gimmick is completely out the window. You can get wanted rating stars and lose the cops like in any open-world crime game as well, but that’s literally it for the world. Shooting feels fine with a decent cover system, and peeking over and blind fire all work well, but the shooting feels loose and ancient. It has this wonky feel to it that I can’t quite put my finger on, but it still retains the stench of a 2002 third-person shooter, and while not game-breaking by any means, it’s still noticeable and just feels a bit off. The PS2-era difficulty spikes are also present, as more than a few shots will kill you. You can find pills laying around sometimes, but overall, you have to use the cover and play whack-a-mole or you will die fast.
My biggest gripe is these difficulty spikes. I will play a few fun missions, and then I get thrown into a huge shootout level with wave after wave of enemies, and I will die numerous times. The same goes for overly long chase scenes. One crash, and I would lose my chase and have to start all over again. This is more of that 2002 stench that just lingers in the air around all the 2020 glitz and glamour. Sneaking is fine as well, as you can perform takedown moves, and those missions weren’t insanely long and the levels were easy to navigate. This simple mission structure is also a piece of 2002 that Hanger 13 just couldn’t shake. I would have loved a whole new shooting system and some more stuff to do in Lost Heaven. See, the issue here lies in absolutely zero reasons to go back. There’s a “free ride” mode, but you just drive around doing nothing in the city. Again, that was fun and exciting in 2002, but today it’s a snooze fest.
Overall, the visuals are fantastic, with great lighting effects, animations, and terrific voice acting. Lost Heaven looks like a living, breathing world, but you’re just shuffled from mission to mission, unfolding a well-written story with likable characters, only to have zero reason to go back afterward. With nothing to do inside the open world and having silly collectibles distract you from mission objectives, as well as lingering issues from the original game, there’s just too much 2002 mixing with the 2020 stuff that makes things connect weird. It’s a fun ride the first time around, but after that, there’s no reason to revisit.
Mirror’s Edge is actually one of my favorite games of all time. It didn’t sell well, hence the near-decade hiatus, and a lot of gamers just didn’t get the game. It also had a lot of flaws, such as linear-level design, a paper-thin story, and awful combat. While Catalyst improves upon a lot of weaknesses from the first game, it also never addresses some as well. EA DICE really tried pushing the story further by showing us more of Faith’s past and how she’s tied to the KrugerSec conglomerate that’s brainwashing the entire country. Faith, along with the help of friends, must stop this evil police state and try to free the people. While this is good and all, the problem is that the world itself is sterile and boring, as are the characters. There’s no reason to really care outside of the somewhat entertaining story missions thrown at us. Icarus, Plastic, Noah, and various other characters just feel like cookie-cutter generic fill-ins for something that could be more.
This also goes for learning about the world. The majority of the game is actually filled with side missions, time trial runs, collecting things, and audio recordings. Here’s the problem with all of this: I just do not care one iota to do any of these. I spent a good ten hours trying to complete every mission as I went on, and then I just gave up. I don’t care about this world enough to bother spending more than the 8–10 hours the story missions give me. While the art style is faithful to the original with vibrant reds, blues, whites, and oranges, running around the city on top of glass just isn’t interesting. I’m glad there’s an open world here rather than linear-level design, but if it’s filled with boring filler content, just give me a better linear story mode. I don’t want to hack billboards to put my “ghost” on them for other players to see. I don’t want to create my own run trials for others to play. I have never cared less for an open world than in Catalyst. You pretty much see the entire city during the story missions, but after collecting the 100th chip, the 150th blue orb, and finishing at least two dozen trial runs and side missions, I just stopped caring. There’s no real reward for finishing all of these outside of “drops,” but you get to customize your ghost for players to see online.
Here’s something else to consider. I had this game installed on my PC for four years before finally finishing it. I wanted to complete the game as much as possible, but every time I booted it up and saw the dozens and dozens of icons on the maps and finished a few side missions, I turned it off. I have never had a game installed on my PC for that long without making frequent progress. I had a kid, went through three GPU generations, built two whole PCs, became a nurse, moved states, lost my father, and had a second kid on the way. All that happened between the release and finishing the game. The world is just plain boring, and the story isn’t interesting enough to warrant sticking around for most gamers. I really like Faith, as she’s a well-designed character, but her personality is very one-note, and she feels generic as well.
Let’s talk about what you can actually do in the game. The entire appeal of Mirror’s Edge is the parkour system. The first-person parkour system is a lot of fun and, honestly, the only saving grace for the entire franchise. You can run, jump, slide, double jump, zipline, and propel yourself around the buildings with grace. The new runner’s vision is a must, as this is a red line you follow, and the objects you need to use turn red. While running around and jumping around buildings is exciting, after 15 hours, you grow tired of it sometimes. Only the story missions provide something new to climb on or new environments to be in, as well as scripted events. The controls work for the most part, but it’s the combat that hasn’t improved much and is a real pain. I honestly wish they just nixed combat together for the series. You can do heavy and light attacks, but also while jumping off walls, off ledges onto enemies, and sliding into their legs. If they’re stunned, you can do quick three-hit combos, dodge and kick from behind, and all that jazz. It works, but it’s very frustrating when you confront more than two enemies at a time, and it’s not fun when you aren’t on the move. Most of the time, you can avoid enemies, and only a few instances require me to take them down, but combat isn’t fun at all. The guns are gone in this game, but the combat just feels clunky, heavy, slow, and cumbersome.
That’s pretty much all there is in the game. It looks fantastic as it pushed the Nvidia 10xx series cards to their limits when this game came out, and I remember my GTX 970 couldn’t run the game on Hyper settings at 60FPS. It just looks so good, but again, it is very sterile and boring to actually be in. The main missions provide entertainment for about 8–10 hours, but the extra side stuff is a pointless borefest. The parkour system combined with an open world just isn’t interesting enough to justify spending 50+ hours completing everything. Every area pretty much looks the same, and the characters are boring and generic. I feel the series needs a complete overhaul, if it even gets one. Due to poor sales of this game, we may be seeing the end of Faith. Stay for the story, and then don’t bother after that.
thebinarymessiah.com 
Try multiplayer. A lot of fun !