When it was leaked that Bioware would be adding multiplayer to Mass Effect 3 everyone seemed to freak out and I was right there with them. Mass Effect is a single player experience. I didn't want a poorly implemented multiplayer mucking up my epic space RPG/shooter hybrid. Without even playing it, I had resigned myself to the fact that I wouldn't like it. I could have just ignored its existence, but they had to find a way to have it invade the single player experience as well. I was down on the whole thing.
This past Friday the multiplayer portion of the Mass Effect 3 demo was unlocked for everyone and it managed to shatter all of my preconceived notions. I am no longer upset now that I have played the multiplayer for an extended period of time. Contrary to my previous belief it's actually quite fun and I don't think I'll mind playing more of it when Mass Effect 3 drops in March.
The experience of the Mass Effect 3 multiplayer is most similar to horde mode from Gears of War. This type of thing is becoming more and more popular, so it's only natural for Bioware to capitalize on it. The goal is to fight wave after wave of foes in a group of up to four people with your chosen character.
Character Creation and Customization
What type of character you bring into battle is up to you. Just like the main game there are six classes to choose from. They are adept, soldier, engineer, infiltrator, and vanguard. Unlike the main game other races are finally playable. Each class can be a male or female human, or two other races. There is quite a wide selection of races. Asari, drell, krogans, turians, quarians, and salarians are all available to play. At the beginning there is only one usable type of each class and they are all human. The others must all be unlocked.
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| The character select screen kindly displays all of the characters you can unlock. |
All the character models are set in stone, but there are ways to differentiate them from everyone else. Only the color of their armor can be changed at first and you must unlock the other ways. Patterns can be added to the armor as well as the lights on the characters backs. I personally haven't unlocked any patterns, but I saw a few people who did and they actually looked pretty cool. The characters all look similar in the beginning, but over time you can make them look fairly unique.
The cosmetic customization is decent, but the gun customization is what most people will be concerned with. That's right, gun customization is actually in this part of the demo. Only two guns can be carried into battle, but they can be any two guns you want. All the gun types from the single player at your disposal, except for the heavy weapons. Each gun has two slots open for weapon attachments, which grant various bonuses to the weapon. These bonuses range from faster reload speeds to adding a scope. It's nothing huge, but it's more customization than the last game had.
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| The gun customization page isn't fancy, but it gets the job done. |
To round off the customization each character has a skill set, where points can be allocated to certain abilities. These are mostly the same as the single player skills, but there are a few minor differences. Experience is gained through play depending on how well you do. The max level for each character is twenty, so you won't be able to max out all six skills.
Finding Lobbies and How They Work
Once your character is customized it's time to head into battle. Having a party of four players is ideal, but that's easier said than done in this demo. The matchmaking doesn't exactly work as well as it could. More often than not the lobbies I got into would only get two people. There were several occasions when we would start the match and would be added to another game that already had two people, but it didn't happen enough. Other than that I like the way lobbies are done. It's exceedingly simple to view the load-outs of the other party members.
Searching for lobbies is also easy. What map do you want to play, who do you want to fight against, and what difficulty do you want it to be. In the demo there are only two maps and you can only fight against Cerberus. The final version of the game will obviously have much more available. I've seen screenshots of people fighting against the Geth, which may be why you can't play as them.
The three difficulty levels bronze, silver, and gold vary greatly in difficulty. The higher you go, the more health and armor the enemies have. Bronze is easy, especially if you have four people. Silver is manageable, but it's pretty tough at lower levels, and almost impossible if you have two people. Then you have gold, which is bananas. Enemies take a ton of shots, but you'll go down in one. If your group doesn't stay together you're not going to live for more than a few minutes.
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| Lobbies can be searched for based on mission settings. |
Gameplay
It may come as a shock, but the gameplay of the multiplayer is almost identical to the gameplay of the single player. The main difference is that you can revive fallen teammates by standing over there bodies while holding x for a few moments. When shot down there is a limited amount of time for a teammate to revive you. Mashing x will keep you alive longer, but if the timer runs out then you will be dead until the next wave. Even though it plays almost exactly the same it feels a lot different, because you're working with up to three other human players.
The AI of the squadmates in Mass Effect is less than ideal. Telling them where to go and what to do doesn't always work out the way it should. This problem can be eliminated in the multiplayer by using a headset. Everything goes a whole lot smoother when you can tell the people you're playing with that they're being flanked, or that they need to help out with something.
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| Human controlled squad members enhance the experience. |
Since this is almost like a horde mode you'll be facing wave after wave of enemies. The shuttle will drop you off and then it's time to start shooting fools. They'll start easy, but gradually get more difficult as new enemy types are introduced. Most waves consist of killing all the enemies, but there are some objectives thrown in like killing specific enemies, hacking a computer, or disarming transmitters.
In the demo there are only eleven waves, but that may be different in the final release. Once the tenth wave is wiped out extraction begins. In order to be extracted you have to run back to the shuttle, where a timer will start. If you hold out for the duration of the timer the mission is complete.
Players are awarded with experience points and credits upon clearing a mission. Any experience or credits earned will also be awarded upon failing a mission. You'll get absolutely nothing if you lose connection to the EA servers, which happened to me far too frequently. The experience goes towards leveling, while the credits are used to buy packs. These packs are the only way to unlock guns, mods, powerups, customizations, and characters.
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| Getting upgrades from packs is exciting and frustrating at the same time. |
Packs are are like packs of trading cards. You never know what you're going to get, but you hope it's awesome. In the demo there are only three types of packs. The beginner pack is available the first time you go to the shop for free, so that you can get a sense of what everything is about. The two remaining packs cost credits. You can get the recruit pack for 5,000 credits or the veteran pack for 20,000 credits. The more a pack costs the higher the chance it has of getting a rare item. In the final game there are supposedly two packs that cost more.
Final Thoughts
In short, I like the multiplayer. It's not ground breaking, but it's surprisingly fun. The final value of the multiplayer will be how well it's integrated into the single player. I'm still not quite clear on how exactly war assets will be implemented. I just hope it's not integral to the experience.
As of right now you have to get a character to level 20 in order to send them as a war asset. It takes a decent amount of time to get a character to level 20 and I don't know if I'd want to get someone up to that level more than a few times.
It's definitely entertaining to play, but I don't know how long it will hold appeal (for me at least). Multiplayer is generally added to established franchises to bring in new players and I think that's working well for Bioware in this case. Most of the people I spoke with in the demo had never played a Mass Effect game before, but they found the multiplayer to be entertaining.
I'm just glad the multiplayer doesn't suck. Let's hope it doesn't detract from the single player experience.
-Manny
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