Mass Effect 3 Single Player Demo Impressions

Stories of Mass Effect 3 have been flying around the internet for months. A demo was accidentally leaked to Xbox live dashboard previewers back in November. It was quickly taken down, but not fast enough. Files were extracted from the demo that detailed much of the story for the game and fans were not pleased with what was found. I have not taken a look at anything related to the leaked story, so I can't speak to the quality of what was found.

It's now Valentine's Day and the previously leaked demo is available to the general public. I played the demo on the PS3. As of now I've only gotten a chance to play the single player portion, because the multiplayer is currently unavailable. Here's my experience.

Part One

The Demo opens on Earth just before the Reaper invasion. I'm not positive, but this sequence seems like it's the very beginning of the game or quite close to it. Freddy Prince Jr. voiced James Vega, a tough marine, has come to fetch Shepard. The Council believes that the Reapers are coming, so Anderson wants Shepard to come and see if he can identify them.

Prior to starting the demo there is a prompt to choose whether Ashley or Kaiden was lost in combat during Mass Effect 1. I chose Kaiden, so Ashley showed up on the way to the council. She looks way different than she did before. She's been sexed up a bit, which doesn't make much sense. Why change her look for the final game in a trilogy? She was supposed to be a tomboy and that's what she was established as for two games prior to this one.

I found this handy picture to show the change in Ashley...

Anderson comes to rescue Shepard from his conversation with Ashley and takes him to the Council. Shepard argues with them for a bit and then surprise, the Reapers invade Earth. Without a visual reference everything I've described so far, bar Ashley, might sound pretty cool. Much to my dismay, it wasn't.

The player controls nothing prior to the Reaper Invasion with the exception of conversations. Everything outside of the conversations looks a bit...off. The character models look fine, but the textures on their clothes were straight up bad. There were multiple instances where the texture of Shepard's shirt didn't load at all. On top of that all of the movement looked super stilted, because the frame rate wasn't holding up.

The frame rate problem and stilted movement completely disappeared each time the game waited for me to select from the dialogue wheel. The textures looked a whole lot better too, which I found to be odd.

After the Reapers invade the player is given control of Shepard as he follows Anderson to the Normandy. Running across rooftops, while seeing the Reapers destroy everything is cool, but the frame rate can't hold up. The stilted movement I mentioned before becomes even more apparent when controlling Shepard. There were even points when Anderson's model would warp past obstacles, which I hope is fixed in the final game.

A tutorial of combat and movement takes place as the two run over buildings and rubble. Everything works more or less the same as it did in Mass Effect 2. Shepard run and gun or take cover in order to fight the husks that the Reapers are sending after him. The shooting felt poor, because of the stuttering frame rate. The main difference in the combat is that Shepard can now use his Omni-tool as a blade to melee enemies. It's attacks feel powerful, because Shepard takes a while to crank his arm back before he strikes. The impact is enough to kill most enemies, which is pretty satisfying.

Jackin' fools with the Omni-blade is satisfying.

Part 2

Once Shepard reaches the Normandy the demo moves to a later portion of the game. I have no idea why, but everything in the second portion of the demo seemed better. Everyone was in their N7 armor and the textures looked fine. On top of that the frame rate was totally fine.

The second scenario is exactly what I wanted to see out of this demo. Shepard, Wrex, Liara, and Garrus have arrived on the Solarian home world in order to rescue a female Korgan from the clutches of Cerberus. This portion of the demo is meant to show off the more action oriented sequences and it does a great job.

Wrex stays back, while Shepard, Liara, and Garrus kick some Cerberus ass. Shortly after control of Shepard is given back to the player he comes across Mordin, who is locked in a containment cell with a female Krogan. Your goal is to take out all of the soldiers around you so that you can send the cell to the next level, which will eventually make its way to Wrex. 

Prior to any combat the demo prompts you to level up the squads skills. Everyone is level 12, so they have a fair number of skill points to allocate. The skills are the same ones you could choose from in Mass Effect 2, but now there is much more customization. The first three levels of a skill are pre-set, but after that they branch off. The 4th through 6th progressions of a skill each have two choices. This allows for a deeper level of customization than was previously available in Mass Effect 2. How you choose to level the skills will depend on your play style. In the demo there was an option to undo a previously made upgrade, which may allow for the player to respect.

The new skill trees offer more customization.

Shepard is given one of each type of gun for the sake of this demo, and most of them are new. They all handle well and feel different than the guns I remember from the previous game. It's a shame that the gun customization didn't come into play, or if it did I wasn't able to access it. I did find an assault rifle scope, so I assume that in the final game you'll be able to add parts to your guns on the fly. 

Final Thoughts

The second section of the demo felt worlds ahead of the first. I hope that the first section of the demo was an older build of the game, while the second portion was newer. It's entirely possible that the problems I had were specific to the PS3. I am going to download the 360 version to test that theory and I will update this post with my findings. If anyone played this on PS3 and didn't experience these problems I'd like to hear about it.

People talking about the leaked demo and story elements got me a bit worried about Mass Effect 3. After playing the demo I am no longer worried. While the first section of the game may not have looked or played the best I liked what was going on. Everything is coming to a head and it looks like this will be an exciting conclusion to the story of Commander Shepard.

All of the gameplay in this demo (When it's working properly) is on par with Mass Effect 2. The improved skill tree shows that Bioware is at least trying to put some of the RPG elements back into this series. Sadly the weapon customization wasn't available, but I'm going to assume that it will be fine. 

Mass Effect 3 seems like it's shaping up to be a great game. This demo was certainly entertaining and I recommend that you play it. I'm still skeptical on the whole multiplayer mode. I'll post my thoughts on that in another post, so look out for that.

UPDATE: The multiplayer is only accessible right now for people who have played Battlefield 3 online. Since I do not have Battlefield I will have to wait until Friday for access to the multiplayer.

     -Manny