Mass Effect 3: Earth

More shiny new toys from the Mass Effect 3 multiplayer team, all absolutely free. Three new maps, six new characters, three new weapons plus new weapon mods (Onmi blade attachment for ARs!) and consumables. Only pain is you have to grind to earn the credits to unlock this stuff (but most regulars will have spent the week before its release earning several million). New classes are excellent and lots of fun, very devastating - many turn the tables between the player and the enemy's one-hit-killers... in short, essential.

Mass Effect comes from a company whose games I enjoy. I enjoy the games they have made in the past, though now this and one other, Dragon Age, fortunately represent a departure from the norm, or so I would hope. I read the ESRB rating for this game and the other I mentioned and was shocked. I could go on at length about why this is a permanent deterrent, but I think what might be of more interest would be my overall impression of the franchise. Ever since KotOR so many years ago, the developers have been distinguishing themselves with signature features, veritable hallmarks of their craft. One thing I noticed about KotOR was their flare for conversation cinematic sequences and their ethic-centrism as pertains to the player choices. I must say that although I tolerated the character and, inevitably, the curious little tropes that became evident I immediately identified a specific character in the conversations. What was a quirk at first became a rash of repeated patterns, conversations being little more than debates or conflicts where the player plays a casual moderator. When I watched the trailers and previews of the first Mass Effect, I was disgusted to find that those same tropes were awaiting in this 'new' title, and how much worse when I heard the same voice acting all over again. I could literally have closed my eyes and but for a little voice modulation could as well have been hearing a conversation in KotOR or NWN 2. It was at that point that I thought that the game must not have anything to offer as if the rating wasn't reason enough. And so on the topic of the rating, I asked myself why this series could justify its rating when KotOR scored only a Teen. When the details came out, thanks to the near-Inquisition depth of ESRB rating, I understood that the game, meaning the plot, the mechanics or any other viable features of the game were just a medium for adult material. With that unsavory revelation in mind, I regard this franchise with an even deeper disdain. What RPG elements or other enjoyable features there might have been in the game I must surely have discovered in the brief preview I had seen of the first title years ago. Now that I have seen the good and been advised of the bad, I can't offer any praise at all to the game. Quite frankly I have played too many games that I would without reservation have attributed excellence which kept their work clean to even consider this piece of media.