Gateway Games

Mass Effect 3   After being happy to find out ME2 had aged well and is still a masterpiece, I was eager to see how the third act had fared being the black sheep out of the three. Back in 2012 the fan and critical reaction to Mass Effect 3’s ending was extraordinarily controversial. Criticisms were so loud that it actually forced EA and Bioware to add extra cut scenes to the ending (which I had never actually seen until replaying it recently) as free DLC, but nevertheless the controversy has stained ME3’s reputation ever since (more on the ending later though.)   Mass Effect 3 starts of on a drastically urgent note with an army of Reaper dreadnoughts invading Earth, blowing up evacuation shuttles, buildings and people right in front of Shepard. It gets increasingly effective with a solemn piano theme swelling up as an escaping Shepard looks down at a dying child he failed to save. It sets the tone for the entire game, and just like the las...

Mass Effect 2 (2010)   To be honest, throughout my replay of the first Mass Effect I was mostly just excited to move onto the sequel. In my memory ME2 was always the standout in the trilogy and its rare metacritic score of 96 certainly supports this. But after the first game’s poor aging I was slightly worried about how ME2 would fare 8 years later.   Immediately the improvements made to ME2’s combat are most evident. ME2 feels much more like a third-person shooter then the original did. Even though initial criticisms stemmed from the game dumbing down the more RPG elements of its predecessor, in hindsight it wasn’t ‘dumbing down’ as much as it was just trimming the fat. Guns have more of a kick to them, and aren’t as clumsy to use as they use to be. Movement has also been streamlined to feel more responsive and moving into cover is as snappy as it should be.   What’s perhaps most impressive about ME2’s gameplay enhancements isn’t just that...

 The Mass Effect trilogy is undoubtably one of the most important series in modern gaming, as well as being acclaimed developer Bioware's defining work. The trilogy reached universal acclaim for it's unprecedented approach to interactive storytelling. Having meaningful player choices effect the story in a game was nothing new by 2007's first Mass Effect, this was a gameplay mechanic Bioware actually pioneered with their early console RPGs; giving players big and small decisions that in some way had consequences effecting the overall experience. What made Mass Effect unique was that these decisions would have consequences following you for the next three games. It was a massive undertaking and not a concept that even Bioware have tried to tackle since 2012's Mass Effect 3 wrapped up their trilogy. So after coming across a disc of one of my personal favourite games, Mass Effect 2, this led me to wonder how successful Bioware's space opera was. Was the Mass Effec...