Zero Punctuation: Mass Effect 3

[FFHAuthor]

And trees and shrubs from his dreams, which weren't there before the blackout, mysteriously appeared in the middle of the field of destruction.

Wait...what? I've never heard THAT Point brought up in the Indoctrination theory...

 

[Abedeus]

And trees and shrubs from his dreams, which weren't there before the blackout, mysteriously appeared in the middle of the field of destruction.

Wait...what? I've never heard THAT Point brought up in the Indoctrination theory...

And the vehicle that lies next to where Shepard wakes up looks like a dead-ringer of Mako, only flipped upside down.

But look around Shepard when you get to ending scene, you can clearly see same scenery as during dream sequences.

Also - if Harbinger wanted to kill Shepard, why did he fly away when Shapard got hit? And Hackett telling everyone to retreat, didn't he see Shepard and Anderson making it to the beam?

And THEN after everything Hackett somehow knows Shepard is in the control room... PLOTHOLES.

Not to mention, why was Normandy flying away from combat, already traveling through Relay even though the explosion was not forewarned by anything, relay is too far from Earth to reach in a split second, and he was JUST FIGHTING THE REAPERS. Sounds like mutiny or desertion.

 

[Dfskelleton]

ZP and Mass Effect 3? Well, Escapist, say good by to your servers because this will cause some trouble.

Yep, it's time to retreat to the fallout shelters. I give it 20 minutes until the thread is 100 comments long, 80 of them complaining about how he didn't trash the ending as much as they wanted him to (which he will probably do in Extra Punctuation), 10 of them complaining about the people complaining, 7 people actually trying to talk about the video, two spambots, and a brony in a pear tree.

Should be fun. I'll get the popcorn.

You're just now getting out the popcorn? I've already gone through like three bowls throughout this entire ending freakout ordeal! Oh well, could you grab me some too? I guess my love of popcorn has it's merits.
Amusing review, as always.

 

[Something Amyss]

Surprised you didn't go into how batshit insane the ending was. For someone who espouses video game writing as being an important factor in a good video game, not highlighting the staggering failures in basic narrative structure seems like an oversight.

But then how would he sneak in a shot at fanboys in the credits?

It does amaze me how mercurial Bioware seems to be, though. I was one of the people who hated the MAKO, but I liked the idea. It's just the handling and terrain and that crap were awful. I expected them to fix it or something, not go "fine, you don't like our stupid and half-realised ideas? We'll get rid of them and replace them with NEW stupid and half-realised ideas!"

It's funny that people would go crazy defending Super Smash Bros Brawl but when it comes to one of the most excitingly anticipated game made by a company people have been throwing roses at the feet of for years everyone is like who cares.

Quite possibly because the Nintendo fanboy lacks the faculty to admit a Nintendo product sucks. If Bioware fans are like Star Wars fans, Nintendo fans are like radical terrorists who froth madly at cartoon depictions of Shigeru Miyamoto (pbuh)

 

[Arcane Azmadi]

Gotta admit I like the Mako in ME1. It makes the galaxy feel like it's full of stuff, gives you a lot to go around and see other than on scan results, adds a different kind of shooting action (albeit a simple, rather easy one) and to be honest I found the crazy bouncy control a lot more fun than smooth, precise steering would be- it's like navigating on a space hopper and do you remember what space hoppers are? That's right, they're not transportation, they're TOYS- and fun.

Mind you, I still haven't even beaten ME1 yet, let alone ME2, so ME3 doesn't exactly mean much to me at the moment. And since the PC version requires Origin to play, I honestly don't give much of a fuck about it right now anyway. Fucking EA.

 

[Something Amyss]

Ah, I was waiting for this. I needed this laugh about ME3.

Captcha: Face the music.

I feel like captcha has been reading my mind lately.

You've been indoctrinated. It's just a matter of time now.

 

[irishda]

I say all trilogy bashing is proven wrong simply by mentioning Toy Story, but outside of that if it's really so near impossibly hard to keep up a series past the first story, how do you explain TV shows, comics, and books then?

Lord of the Rings. The second film was the worst, first the best overall, and the third was the most emotional.

Extended edition makes the second one way better. I'd rank it slightly above the third one, if only because there's far less Frodo crying in number 2.

 

[endtherapture]

I say all trilogy bashing is proven wrong simply by mentioning Toy Story, but outside of that if it's really so near impossibly hard to keep up a series past the first story, how do you explain TV shows, comics, and books then?

Lord of the Rings. The second film was the worst, first the best overall, and the third was the most emotional.

Extended edition makes the second one way better. I'd rank it slightly above the third one, if only because there's far less Frodo crying in number 2.

Perhaps the Mass Effect 3 Extended Edition might be better than ME2.

It was really really good, maybe even my favourite Mass Effect game, until the Cerberus base which just started to gradually ruin everything. Point of no return was when I got to the Citadel

 

[Labcoat Samurai]

Again - it's a freaking beam made of molten metal traveling with, if I check codex

Estimates put its destructive power anywhere from 132 to 454 kilotons of TNT.

Even if he was hit by a shockwave of 132 kilotons... that's 131 kilotons too many to survive, even with kinetic barriers and armor.

Eh. There are a lot of places where the gameplay doesn't match up with the codex. The Hiroshima bomb was at most 18 kilotons. So if Harbinger's beam released that kind of energy, every single time it fired, it would obliterate everything within sight. That would not only invalidate the entire ending push to the Citadel beam, but it would also invalidate the earlier fight with the Destroyer on Rannoch.

The Reaper beam is as strong as the plot demands that it be. People who try to logically reason from this that what we're shown at the end isn't what happened, let's be charitable... are really reaching.

 

[irishda]

Lord of the Rings. The second film was the worst, first the best overall, and the third was the most emotional.

Extended edition makes the second one way better. I'd rank it slightly above the third one, if only because there's far less Frodo crying in number 2.

Perhaps the Mass Effect 3 Extended Edition might be better than ME2.

It was really really good, maybe even my favourite Mass Effect game, until the Cerberus base which just started to gradually ruin everything. Point of no return was when I got to the Citadel[/quote]

I wouldn't know. I only played the first Mass Effect a long time ago. Bioware games aren't really my cup of tea, or I just rent them. The stories are kind of interesting, but they're all sort of samey, especially in terms of gameplay.

 

[Geisterkarle]

Hm, Yahtzee seems to be talking to much ... or too fast ... lately! Strange sounding voice... or I'm just a little bit hooked on old episodes, because I currently review every episode! ... but I lost my thoughts...

MASS EFFECT 3
yeah well it wasn't completely bashing but seem to be like some "ah, ok game, nothing new here, go along" and forget it in three weeks!

 

[firas333]

Huh. I would have expected more about the ending due to how Yahtzee thought about Deus Ex:HR,
seeing as the ending of me3 was extremely similar and even worse than it at closure.
I think the ME3 ending lacked very much and introduced some new stuff wayyyyy too late to be a constructive addition(the catalyst)
There is even some stuff about how bioware had to make a new ending because the other got leaked, unfortunately if this is true it detracted alot of the buildup.

Though the *diehard* fans are going slightly overboard(returning copies because the ending sucked??).

Bioware is doing their PR dance of distraction and obtuse talk, which is probably one of the main reasons fans are so mad.

 

[pearcinator]

I had a feeling he wouldn't be hating on the endings...probably cos he was never really a fan. However, I still think the indoctrination theory is true so yeah I don't really hate on it either (because they aren't real to me)

 

[maninahat]

Finally, someone who doesn't instantly hate the ending!

And I agree that the Mako was the most interesting way to do the 'exploration' aspect. Although it did have a rocket jump yahtzee.

I still think the first is my favorite, but at least the third one has multiplayer (which is actually fun!)

It reminded me of a blander version of good old Monster Truck Madness. If they put some more scenery and foliage in the land roving sections, I could have easily spent hours driving around (not that I wasn't already doing that).

 

[satsugaikaze]

You know something is up when Yahtzee, of all people, takes up a more reasonable response to the game than the squawking fanbase of the series.

 

[Meatstorm]

Yeah the ending could have been worse, Maybe after you have chosen there would be nothing at all. Just credits.. And then the game would crash.

 

[praetor_alpha]

I missed the Mako. Once you got the hang of it's counter-intuitive controls, it was a laugh. I liked the pioneer feeling of being on a world that was nearly empty or even never visited by humans before.

++.

I adore the brightness and "get out there and explore" feeling of ME1 that the others are simply lacking. It's the reason I like ME1 the best.

(driving along) ******! THRESHER MAW!!!

 

[zehydra]

Well I'm surprised about the fact that he didn't mention that not playing MP directly affects you in SP.

He doesn't usually play multiplayer in games with a single player (which is more or less why he always bashes multiplayer-oriented games which have an additional single-player campaign, like a number of fps's)

 

[Shamanic Rhythm]

Everything I've read/heard about Mass Effect 3 screams 'Matrix Revolutions' all over again. That movie left me completely unimpressed with its cheap attempts to evoke gravitas by killing old characters, holding the stakes as 'the fate of all humanity' and having a rather pathetic ending - and pretty much all of that seems to have been jammed into Mass Effect 3, and all the non-Yahtzee reviewers have eagerly gobbled it up and regurgitated it as 'an epic conclusion to the saga'. At least Zero Punctuation isn't blind to the kind of shallow emotional manipulation that passes for 'compelling narrative' in modern games.

 

[cmdrmonkey]

The ending was a bit lame, but it was nothing to have a crybaby meltdown over. Plenty of other highly regarded games have equally bad or worse endings. Bioshock, Deus Ex Human Revolution, and Fallout 3 prior to the expansions all come to mind. Even the venerable Half-Life 2 had an ending that would have been pretty damn depressing if they hadn't come along later with the episodes to elaborate on what happened. Yahtzee nailed it when he said "I've seen worse."

The ending of Mass Effect 3 is a symptom of a more general problem of writers these days knowing how to build hype, but not really knowing how to write a good ending. There are so many examples of this, like the Matrix Trilogy, the Battlestar remake, or Lost, where there's so much build up and everything just fizzles out at the end.

And for what it's worth, I still enjoyed the game itself. In some ways, I thought it was the best in the series. The shooting mechanics were much improved, and I'm glad all of the tedious inventory micromanagement from ME1 and the tedious planet scanning from ME2 are gone. In fact, my only big complaint was that I wanted to see the Mako tank make a return. I loved that thing and never understood all of the hate. But then again, I also played ME1 on PC where the controls are substantially better than on the consoles.