Looks like there will be a Mass Effect 4. I'm planning on boycotting it, unless it gets me super excited, which I doubt. I'm not boycotting ME4 because I'm sick of shooters (like everyone else thinks about people boycotting ME products). On the contrary, 3rd person shooter are among some of my favorite games. I'm boycotting it to punish Bioware for the problems in Mass Effect 3 (including the shitastic ending), and for their reactions to the fans disappointments (which was basically "go fuck yourselves"). It's been two yeas since ME3 came out and I hadn't touched any of the games again till now. Only because I still need to do the Renshep play through for ME3. Looking, back I see that three of my favorite 3rd person shooter series have now become trilogies. Let's see how each one stacks up:
MASS EFFECT 3
The Good For the most part, this was a great game. It did a lot of what I was hoping for. You cured the Genophage, brokered peace between the Geth and Quarians, and got the Quarians homeworld back. There was some pretty good dialogue between the chars too, and you could get EDI as a teammate. Nice touch, I especially like when EDI revealed that she had been watching Shepard and Tali doing it. Oh and you you get some bonus N7 armor in Dead Space 3 if you have an ME3 save file.
The Bad There's a few gripes I have that didn't effect the game so much, just me personally. Like why is Shepard on trial in the beginning? Depending on your choices, he was reinstated as a spectre and given permission to be on the Cerberus mission. And as soon as it was over, he promptly returned to the Alliance and handed over the Normandy. Also, making it so Anderson stepped down from the council and Udina take over rendered your choice in ME1 useless, so what the hell? And the scene at the the end of the Quarian homeworld? They had the perfect setup for Tali to finally reveal her face but the cut away without showing us. I have never had bigger blue balls in my life after that one. Then later they give us a shitty half-assed photoshop stock picture of her, thanks Bioware. Oh and there was errors importing your characters face from ME2. Biowares response was "just remake the face you whining bastards." And also, they didn't have a final boss, which violates one of my sacred rules when making a video game. You should always have a final boss (depending on the nature of the game). ME1 and ME2 had final boss, why not this one?
The Ugly I won't go into the godawful ending. There are plenty of vids and articles on that already. I'll just say that it ruined the story and concept of making your own choices in the first 3 games. My only other real beef with this game was the attitude of the chars. Shepard watches this kid get killed and it gives him PTSD for the rest of the game. Doesn't seem like something that would bother him, especially since one of his back stories you could choose was watching his family die. There's one part where a Cerberus agent gets the better of Shepard and he gets so depressed he can't look anyone else in the face. WTF? This isn't my Sheperd! And towards the end of the game, things get desperate and things look bad for our heroes. Okay! That's good, some desperation before the storm makes the gamers (and their hero avatars) resolve stronger. Too bad the writers didn't catch that. All the characters, even Shepard, start going all doom-and-gloom. They talk about how they hope they go to heaven when they die soon and what they're going to do when they meet each other in the afterlife. What. The. Fuck! Combine that with the not-so-rewarding ending and you get a recipe for not wanting to play the game again.
DEAD SPACE 3
The Good Out of the games on the list, this one disappointed me the least. The story was catching enough for me to play through the game without getting bored, and they had a final boss. The final boss was pretty cool. I was hoping for a giant Necromorph, and I thought it would be the planet's core, but the moon worked too. And you kill it by flinging Markers at it, very epic.
The Bad Well, I think the creators must have caught some flak about the Necromorphs being naked in the previous games, cause most of them were clothed in this one. I guess that kind of makes sense, but it also takes away from they're ickyness and makes them look a little more human. Also, in the previous games, there were necro-infants, necro-toddlers, and necro-children. In DS3, the toddlers have been replaced with dogs, the infants have vanished, and the kids are now just scrawny adults. I guess the parents must have complained about how messed up it is shooting kids, probably the same parents letting their 12 year play this rated M game. Also, the game just seemed kind of long to me, which isn't so bad, more for my money. But the enviroments and the enemies don't change too much, so it can get tedious.
The Ugly The game boasted co-op story mode, which is cool in any game. One of the people I like to play games with is my sister and she loves her some co-op play. When I introduced her to DS Extraction, she loved it. So we both got excited about co-op in Dead Space 3. But it turns out, that it's online only and not split screen (she doesn't have a 360). Would it have been so hard to make a local split screen? Lost Planet 2 had it and that game was made to be played online. Of course they only did that because local co-op menas more gamers and less copies of the game. But online co-op means all players must have a copy. Cheapskates. My only other gripe with game was that it seemed hard, even on easy mode. To kill enemies, you have to strategically dismember them. And in the other games, the enemies in the beginning were easier and got harder later on. But in DS3, they all seem to stay around the same difficulty the whole game. So it actually gets easier later in the game, when you start to get the best upgrades for your weapons. I guess the figured that everyone would be playing online in story mode and swapping around high level parts from the beginning.
DEAD PLANET 3 (LOST PLANET 3)
The Good You ever buy a game that was hyped up and you thought would be awesome but it ended up being shit and you spend hours lamenting all the stuff you could have bought with $60? If there is only one good thing about this game is that it taught me a valuable lesson: Never buy a non-refundable, non-trade-able, non-sell-able digital download game unless you're beyond a shadow of a doubt that you will like it. I guess piloting the Rig was the only interesting part of this game but only in a fight (despite being mostly quicktime events) , most of the time it's just a slow lumbering way to get around the very small world this takes place in.
The Fugly A Lost Planet game that wants to be Dead Space, and it fails at both. It doesn't have the scale, action, or even the same engine as the other Lost Planet games. The whole game is almost a copy of the last third of Dead Space 3 and I swear they even used some of the same music. The Akrids aren't really that scary compared to the necromorphs, so trying to turn an action series into a horror series doesn't work. The game also seems to have some features that dont really do anything. There's supposed to be some ammo mods you can get by completing the "study akrid" sidequest but I never did it. You can also listen to music while piloting the rig, but I only found three songs and half the time, it turns the music off for the important events. It seems like something they were going to expand but didn't. The main character has occsional convos with his wife via space skype. Their baby is mentioned often but never showed. You would think a father would want to see his child. It also implies that Jim had an affair during the game. And lastly, the final boss. Kudos for having one game, but as some gamers have pointed out, it's dangerously similar to some of the Metal Gear boss fights. The game also implies that the whole planet core is an Akrid, but never calls it an Over G.
