Mass Effect 3 Multiplayer Beta Review

"We are Mass Effect you love our game, we want you to play it longer, so we are gonna jump on the bandwagon and make a multiplayer, meeehhhhh!"

Not really, it's actually really good.


It's impressive to see a game like ME, a game that has been so based in its mission to create a really good single player game, come out with something so balanced like an awesome multiplayer. It's rare to find quality well rounded games now days. Either a game has an awesome multiplayer, but shoddy single player (I'm lookin' at you DICE) or a really good single player but a crap multi, a multi no one plays, or no multi at all.

Intro ME3 Beta. First off, BioWare did an awesome thing by letting all players get a taste of the Beta, even those without a Gold Membership, by granting you restricted and temporary Gold status upon downloading the demo. So even if you don't have XBL, you can still check out the beta.

So, you heard about the Single player, it's awesome and sad, Shepard is a bad ass, the reapers are literally douchteroids, time to save the fuckin' galaxy. Well forget all that, because the beta has nothing to do with any of it.

You're first choice is what class do you want to play?

Adept, Soldier, Engineer, Sentinel, Infiltrator, or Vanguard.
You should know by now what those mean, if not... well whatever. I don't care.
So, each class also has four races, Humans being able to take on any class, and then other classes breaking down from there. Each Race in each class has different abilities. E.G. Human Engineers have Incinerate, Overload, and Combat Drone; where Quarian Engineers have Incinerate, Cryo Blast, and Sentry Turret. Yay choices. (Note, Humans are the only race that can be each class. Check that link, every other race has only 2 class choices)

As you level one class, each race in that class also levels up. Following up on the Engineer example, if you level your Human to level 20(which is the cap, as far as we can tell), whenever you unlock the Quarian, she will also be level 20. All you have to do is decide where to put your points. However, each class levels up separately. So even if you have a level 20 Engineer, all of your other classes will remain un-leveled until you grind 'em up.

Then next choice you have to make (assuming that in choosing your character, you have established what powers you are going to use primarily) is what weapons are you going to run with. This can be changed at any point outside a match, but what weapons to use brings in some interesting things to consider.

This happens. Often. 

Each character has a certain amount of "strength" based on race and skill points. That strength contributes to how carrying weapons affect you. Allow me to explain... because this confused the balls off of all of us when we started this. The heavier the weapon(s) you have equipped, the slower your powers will recharge. in the case of a power hungry Adept, she may want to roll with only one pistol or an SMG. Adding heavier or more weapons is going to slow her recharge time significantly. A Krogan on the other hand, may not care, and have enough strength to dampen the reduction in recharge time. So he can roll with a Shotgun and an Assault Rifle. It adds more decisions for you to make on how you are going to play each and every character.

One last thing. In true EA fashion, the equipment upgrade, and item/character unlocking system is a random pack buying thingy. You play games, get points, and buy these packs. In these packs are usable in-game items (Medi-gels, missiles, quick-heals, ammo packs), item mods (scopes, magazines, stabilizers, etc.) weapons (Sniper, shotgun, assault rifle, SMG, pistol) and characters. You get six cards in each pack, 3 of which are consumables, the other 3 vary in rarity and such depending on the type of pack you buy. So yeah, that's neat. Unless you are as unlucky as I am, and have yet to see but 2 rare cards while your roommates sit on 7 different characters of differing races and you find your self secrelty plotting their death, in hopes their luck will bleed into you... then you remember that it's just the beta, and all this data will not be saved over to the real game (seriously. It won't).. that fact saves their lives

For Now.

So the game itself is very Horde/Firefight/DeadSpace ish. Waves of baddies come to mess you up, and you gotta win. However, sometimes the wave begins, and you and your team of four are given an objective that can range from defending a point, to taking out targeted enemies. The waves get harder, and on wave 11, you have to hold the LZ, and wait for extraction. Tons of fun. Fo Realz.

Here.



So that's the  info on the multi-player as of the beta and such. I, personally. and pretty excited to see the full game. See you online, on March 6th!