Oh fans are angry about the ending, and they probably should be. But I'll get to the ending at the ending of this. There's a lot of really good in Mass Effect 3, and I think many are forgetting it, due to that ending.
My biggest question when starting ME3 was, "Did they get their Gears of War combat right? Did they make it fun?" And the answer is: "(Of the singleplayer) Almost. However this combat does provide a 'good,' memorable experience." I know this opinion sounds whacko, "Something that's supposed to be fun, and is not fun, is a 'good' experience." But hear this out; the environments are larger, tend to be outside, look far more interesting, sound interesting; and the levels have good pacing -- many battles get interrupted by a short turret section, or a boss fight, or interesting dialogue, or an incredible view, or a cinematic. Although almost every battle has a dominant strategy that you already know when a battle begins, although your chances of dying on normal difficulty are nearly zero (Play ME3 on a harder difficulty!), and even though you might as well play the vanguard class because the dominant strategy for the other classes is the same one you've experienced in other cover-based, 3rd person shooters, the story told within battles, by its characters, enemies and environments, is vivid enough that the 'okay' mechanics aren't a game-breaker. Although, it does lower the replay value. (For you who were disappointed with Mass Effect 2's gameplay, to put the "good" of ME3's singleplayer gameplay in perspective, note that: I remember almost nothing about the places I fought in in Mass Effect 2; in fact, I can't remember a lot of the places. However, of ME3, I remember almost all the places and a lot about them. It's also worth noting that I was drunk when I played Mass Effect 2.)
My favorite things about this game (ME3) are its bold, grim story (minus the very ending) and the tough choices it'll have you make. Not only are there the old, gamey "sacrifice five-point knight for nine-point queen" type of choice, but also the newer "sacrifice something you, after playing this series for many hours, now emotionally care about, in order to get something else arguably more important. Or don't make the sacrifice, and tell yourself that you're doing the right thing." A few decisions are even more complex than that. And it's very effective.
Unfortunately the same can't be said about Mass Effect's writing.
The final game's plot is strong (I'm still not talking about the end of the game). The problem is the general lack of wit, and the mishandled attempts at pathos, that often makes the writing ineffective at evoking anything from me, other than increased understanding of the Mass Effect universe and its characters. (Not to say the writing is always like this, but it almost always is).
Too many of Shepard's friends seem to exist only to talk about their boring selves, plus add an extra bit of (not really) diversity to your fire team. With the alien characters, this isn't a problem; each one of them represents a different species, so they're interesting. It's the boring human characters I don't like. They do have 'character arcs' and 'almost-unique' backgrounds, sure, but they're still boring. Some counter-critics could argue that not every real person who does interesting things says interesting things, so why care that main characters aren't interesting, to which I would replay: 1) Usually, in real life, people with interesting backgrounds say interesting things, and 2) That filthy counter-argument to my argument is pathetic. Mass Effect is supposed to be a vivid, interesting universe. Give its main characters interesting things to say. Fill them with intellect or emotion or whackiness. I don't like having my time wasted, especially by virtual people.
The second most jarring thing is the clumsiness of when things can be said, or a lack of attention to detail (which may explain that most jarring thing -- THE END -- which I'll get to). There are conversations that get repeated. There are fires in the Citadel that never get put out; it's weird seeing the smoke go up for what could be weeks after their ignitings. There are conversations in which a man will tell me how his family basically died, and then I'm given the option to ask, "How's da family?" And then he responds as if I'm not insane. There's the canned "I love you" instead of creative writing. The ineffective writing and inattention to detail makes me feel like Bioware's writers didn't have all of their hearts into this game.
Side quests are more interesting than those of previous games, but still half boring. There are two types of sidequest. One type has you fly around star systems, scanning them for useful things (such as, a capital ship, hiding away on a random planet). The other type is more shooting-based and either takes place on a multiplayer map or on a large, interesting level, full of conversation and intrigue and killing. The challenge in the scanning sidequests is that, if you scan too much, you'll get pursued by Reaper ships, and if you get caught, you lose; yet there's no risk in the challenge -- as the game autosaves every time you enter a star system, and as the Reaper Altertness Levels reset to zero after you play any shooty mission. As for the shooty sidequests: these can actually be compelling, since the environments and characters bring unique dramas and views and sounds. Although the combat in the sidequests isn't fun -- for the same reason the main quest combat isn't fun: you already know the strategy to win any firefight.
The game gives you an extra reason to do its sidequests: to boost your "Effective Military Strength," which is the amount of military force you'll have during your assault for Earth. Although if you're unwilling to suffer the boringness of scanning star systems (which can get even more boring as some found objects will need to be delivered to random NPCs on the Citadel, NPCs whose exact locations aren't highlighted in the Citadel elevators for some reason)...although if you can't take that boringness, you can play the fun coop multiplayer, which boosts something called "galactic readiness" up to 100%, which, by doing your main quests, can boost your Effective Military Strength bar to full, a full bar allowing you the "best" ending. (Note that the galactic readiness percentage drops a point every X number of hours.)
I've mentioned that the coop multiplayer is more fun than the singleplayer combat. This is mainly because the coop multiplayer isn't easily bested via dominant strategies. On the Silver and Gold difficulties (the harder ones) the enemies will come at you and your three team mates from many directions. And since it's a horde mode, they will come in increasing force. And it's not simply a horde mode of increasing baddieness; now and then your team will be tasked to stand near a certain area for a bit, or the game will require that someone hold a button for X amount of time in four locations, making it so the other players have to defend the button-holding player. And there is leveling up; and there's item acquirement, which you randomly acquire by spending credits you earn; and these RPG things won't turn a bad player into a good one. And team work really matters.
One of the problems with the multiplayer combat, though, is that, just as in the singleplayer, one button (in the XBOX 360's case, the "A" button) is used to do all of the following: get behind cover, run, jump, climb over or up something, and interact-with-an-object. There are so many things littered around the environments that it is easy to accidentally get behind cover when you don't want to, or get behind the wrong cover.
Another combat (multiplayer) problem is that teammates tend to be bad at teamwork. Maybe this is especially true on XBOX live, where team work is against the law. (If you get this game for its multiplayer, be sure to have friends who get this game for its multiplayer)
And then I have nitpick, which mostly has to do with singleplayer: don't play as the soldier. Not just because you'd basically be playing Gears of War, but also because the dominant strategy is so simple: stay behind cover and shoot until enemies are dead. The other classes are pretty much like this, too (except the vanguard, which has its own dominant strategy, but at least looks cooler doing it).
And now, that ending. In my game journalist opinion it isn't as horrible as the fans are saying it is. But it demonstrates an astonishing inattention to detail from Bioware. It is a bold, bad ending.
It is bad because of the final character you meet, a character who looks and sounds ridiculous, whose existence makes no sense, a character Bioware should have cut and thus made a much better ending. This character is bad not just because of how it's presented and what it's needlessly supposed to represent, but also because it tries to convince you that a certain theme from the series is suddenly the central focus of the entire Mass Effect conflict. It is a revelation that makes no sense given what you might witness earlier in ME3 that so well counter-argues this new central theme.
Again, it's not actually a terrible ending, but I imagine that, the people who made many characters to import from the first two games, will feel like idiots, because of the end.
And after it all, I think: despite the not-fun combat and boring humans (not all of them, but too many of them), I got a lot from the experience. I cared about Commander Shepard, some of his friends, and their galaxy by the end of three Mass Effect games. And I enjoyed the trilogy and the many White Russians.
★★★★☆
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