Mass Effect 3 Collector's Edition - Playstation 3

First of all, there will be MAJOR spoilers, so stop reading if you haven't finished the game.Let me just say, the game is great. The game is fun, the story is interesting, it looks amazing, and at some points I found myself getting really emotional over it. Unfortunately, I found it lacking in comparison with its predecessor. Bioware said they went with fewer squad members in order to focus more on the character development or something to that effect. That did not happen, I felt much more connected to the characters in ME2. Who did we get in this game? James? The pseudo-Latino frat boy who came across as a total douche bag, I hated everything about him. EDI getting a body and joining in the fight was AWESOME, but that relationship was built in ME2. Having Ashley, Tali, Garrus, and Liara was nice, but again, old relationships. Javik was cool, and a great addition, but even so, the character development was just not present. I felt more connected to Zaeed in ME2 than I felt to Javik, and Zaeed was a hard pill to swallow. Why was Jack stuck in a support role? Who knows, makes no sense. Why did we not get either Wrex or Grunt as squad mates? Again, I can't call it.In addition to these complaints, the game was much more linear than ME2, I felt like I was being herded in the direction they wanted me to go. There were no random side missions to find as you scanned planets, they were all simply "you found this" and that was it, maybe take it back to someone on the Citadel. Also, the Citadel was the only place you could go, that kind of sucked, but at least I get that, there were Reapers all over the galaxy. Space exploration was not as much fun, I read a lot of people disliked the scanning from ME2, and I admit it got tedious, but compared to this, it was not so bad. From what I could tell, any system that had a plotline mission had no resources to find, and the Reapers wouldn't chase you out of those systems. Any other system, where there were actually resources to find, the Reapers would chase you away after a couple of scans. I quit exploring immediately upon completing "Lost and Found". Essentially, the game did not have the same "open world" feel as ME2, which again, I understand, Earth is under attack, you don't need to be off exploring the galaxy, but as a gamer, it just wasn't as much fun to me.The end of ME2 was extremely satisfying. All the decisions I made during the game paid off, we beat the Reapers and every one of my crew survived. It was awesome, the best ending probably of any game I've played. Now, this isn't the start of a rant against the ending of ME3, which will come later, but my dissatisfaction with how my friends from ME2 were treated. Thane dies, his son is there and it's emotional, I get it, I liked Thane's end, it was fitting and noble. Same for Mordin, he sacrifices himself to end the Genophage, he rules. Legion's death seemed forced; it made no sense. Play it and see if you agree. This collective consciousness all the sudden must leave its body to go give the other Geth souls??? WTF?Now for the characters that didn't die (at least I think they didn't, who knows? But I'll get to that later) Wrex, Grunt, Jacob, Jack, Zaeed, Samara, and Miranda. Urdnot Wrex kicks ass, and he saves his people, brings the Krogan into the Alliance and leads them into the Battle of London, and they... well, we don't know what happens. Grunt leads an elite Krogan force that discovers the secret of the Reaper Ravagers, his force is wiped out, but he singlehandedly takes on an overwhelming force of Rachni to save Shepard and he lives!! He stumbles out of the caves drenched in blood and they take him with them to lead a force in the final battle and he... oh yeah, no idea. Miranda has a pretty big role, her dad and Cerberus are working together, Sanctuary is a terrible place, they experiment on humans, it's totally awful, they save Miranda's sister, she finally kills her dad, whatever, turns out the Illusive man was right, so the horror of Sanctuary is lessened in hindsight, and Miranda joins your fight in the final battle, but we have no idea what becomes of her (starting to see a pattern develop?) Samara helps you discover the origins of the Banshees, more terrible things happen to her daughters, Shepard keeps her from offing herself, she joins the fight, no idea how she comes out of it. Jacob and Zaeed have minor roles that fit their characters well, no problems there. In fact, all of these were ok, I would have loved to have had either Zaeed or Jacob replace James as a squad member, and we should have had either Wrex or Grunt alongside us as well, but oh well.Now for Jack, my biggest source of contention. Jack rules, she was awesome in ME2, my Shepard's love interest, and a powerful and fun squad mate. In this game she's a teacher. Not bad, except for the fact that she's essentially a serial killer and a complete psycho. Yes, my Shepard loves her and saw through all that to find her gooey center, but whom in their right mind would put her in charge of a bunch of kids? Seriously, no matter how badass a biotic she is, her record alone should prohibit her from being within a hundred yards of a school. Jack should've been a squad mate plain and simple; having her in any other role diminishes her character. Also, she leads her students into the final battle, in a support role, but all we know for sure is that she doesn't get laid in the end. I know much of this stuff about the characters may be different in other games, but this is my review of my experience, so that's what you get.Finally, the ending. As of this morning, there are over 18,000 people who have "liked" the "Demand a Better Ending for Mass Effect 3" Facebook page. Let me just clarify, I would LOVE to have seen Shepard fight his way through, destroy the Reapers and go home, that didn't happen. I am ok with that, the happy ending doesn't always happen. Shepard dying is not ok with me, but I get it, makes things more dramatic, romantic, or whatever, blah, blah, blah. My big problem is the choices we are given. Both choices end with Shepard dead and all the Mass Relays destroyed. I call BS on that. The choice is either control the Reapers, thus proving your nemesis of the whole series, the evil Illusive Man, who has committed unspeakable atrocities was right all along OR you can destroy the Reapers along with all other synthetics, including the Geth (whom you have worked so hard to liberate and bring into acceptance, and who have helped you and the Alliance) and EDI. Either choice leads to the same dumb anticlimactic ending, with the Normandy getting destroyed by a Mass Relay (why was Joker piloting the Normandy into a Mass Relay during the battle anyway?) and crash landing on some wilderness planet. If you took control of the Reaper; Joker, Liara, and EDI walk out of the Normandy, if you destroyed the Reapers; Joker, Liara, and Javik walk out. What about Tali, James (not that I care), Garrus, Ashley, and EDI or Javik (depending on your choice)? Give me an Animal House montage if nothing else, and include ALL the characters. This is all followed by some stupid voice over of some kid and his or her Grandpa talking about "The Shepard" and when will I be able to go to the stars? This ending just rubs it in your face that all of your actions throughout the series meant nothing and essentially set the galaxy back thousands of years into a new Dark Age. Depressing anyone?Mass Effect 2 is probably my favorite game of all time (Red Dead and Borderlands right there with it) and I love the Mass Effect universe, I've read the novels, comics, etc. Why would they intentionally destroy everything with ME3? Most of my complaints are petty and easily overlooked; hell, if the scene at the end with Anderson and Shepard lying there dying together had been followed by all of the surviving squad members attending a memorial service for Shepard on the grounds of a rebuilt London, I would've been happy. But the ending they gave us was contrived, stupid, insulting, and it ruined the ME universe. The fact that five or ten minutes at the end of a 35 hour game can completely and utterly ruin a game is a strange feeling. No matter how much fun I had and how into the game I was, the ending made me forget all that and I just felt betrayed and disappointed.

I was in love with Mass Effect 1 and 2. The third installment was personally probably the most anticipated game of my life. I preordered the collectors edition (something I never do) and took the day off work. Once it arrived, I imported my save files from the previous games and went to town. In about 24 hours I had completed everything, made all my choices and geared up for the epic clash with the Reapers. And then it all fell apart.....The only thing that can be compared to the feeling you will have at the ending of this game is if you watched the TV series LOST from start to finish. Everything showed so much promise, developers promise your would shape your game and your decisions would greatly affect the outcome of this game. Well they lied. The ending is doesn't make sense, has plot holes, and is probably one of the worst game endings of all time, but amplified because the lead up was so great. It is so terrible, you will lose all desire to ever pick up the game again which makes their attempt at multiplayer negligible because you are so disgusted with their product.I warn you, it is better for you to not play this game if you game for story (the gameplay is standard cover-shooter but this is supposed to be a story driven game). The ending will leave you wondering why you invested your time and money in this game at all. I used to tell friends to play Mass Effect, now I feel like a jerk for putting them through this.

Okay game play is fun... Would have ended a solid trilogy, but alase the ending left three games and a few years of envistment on the players part like time wasted.I almost feel worst for the people who worked on these games to have such a poor game be released that tarnishes all their hard work.

The N7 Collector's Edition was good. It's my first time getting such a thing and it may be a bad or whatever thing for most people but I think it's good to me. The physical contents it had was interesting, I already knew what I was getting and I was also fully aware what I was paying for and I still don't have regrets. No buyer's remorse for me. The digital contents are pretty good as well. I had a problem getting the digital soundtrack but that was worked out from Bioware's site. Which I was relieved when they finally fixed it for all of us who had the problem of getting the soundtrack. The only downside was that all the tracks were in .WAV files. As if it was extracted from the PC sound files folder and just slap it in, making us think it's THE digital soundtrack. I love the artwork the collector's edition has. From the box to everything that's inside of it and its content, they look real nice.Okay, so let's review the game itself. First off, the graphics. They look really good, a good improvement from the PS3 version of Mass Effect 2. Everyone looks nicer than they were in ME2. However, there are things that are noticeable to me that were kinda appeal to me as lazy work or probably just couldn't handle much more detailed textures for the console but at least, make it look decent instead a ridiculous looking sprite. There's a problem about the game running the graphics and such. The problem is that there's no HDD install and so the game disc is constantly running. It's a problem because loading the game's content such as graphics, sounds, and all that stuff just to play the game takes awhile and the PS3's blu-ray drive tries its best to keep the game running well. There's a reason why PS3 games get an HDD install. We get an HDD install from the games because so that they can load faster and run well, if not smooth. I don't know why Bioware didn't do this for Mass Effect 3 and they sure didn't do it for Mass Effect 2. It makes you wonder if they ever care about us PS3 gamers. The gameplay for Mass Effect 3 is good. The aiming is a lot better than in ME2. The way you aim around with the right stick just feels right and to me, it's precisely smooth. What I was really happy about was the quicksave button. I don't think there's any game that I've played that has such a feature and the games that does have the feature is usually the PC games. I would just press select and the game would make a quicksave. So pretty much, you would have an autosave, quicksave, and the manual saves you've made in the game. I save a lot and tend to have more than one save, just in case I messed up or something. Oh and if anyone is wondering if you can import your ME2 PS3 save file to ME3, then the answer is yes absolutely.For multiplayer, I don't see the reason as to why it's in the game. To me, there's no point in having a multiplayer mode for a series that has been a single player since the first game. If anyone is wondering if you need the Galaxy at War rating to 100% then no, you really do not have to. Unless you miss a few, if not some missions in single player then you probably have to. Otherwise, a tip for ya, get as much war assets as you can in single player. Complete every mission and you won't have to worry about multiplayer. But then again, if you want to make sure like I did, then get Galaxy at War rating up to 100% before you finish the game and have at least one level 20 character promoted to add self as a war asset which makes a huge difference for your effective military strength. Yeah, not total, effective. Effective military strength, as far as I know, need to be over 5000. I got mine over 6000 but yeah the ending, a lot of people aren't happy about that.So, that's where I review about the game's story. It's all good from the beginning until, before the very end of the game. I know most people are mad about the ending but put myself in a closure for the game. I know, weird but I'm not gonna waste time about how the ending really is. I thought it was okay but yeah, it should have been better. I mean, this is a sci-fi action RPG (if it can still be considered as an action RPG, whatever) trilogy that should have ended with the greatest fireworks you have ever seen in your entire life so far. But, to me, I'm left with more questions and wondering more than ever. I enjoyed every moment when I was playing the game. I've even considered the whole game except the ending itself, as the ending, if you know what I mean. Overall, I got the game, still no regrets because it's a game. I liked it but still, the ending could have been better.