Today's Hard|Forum Post
Today's Hard|Forum Post
Date:
Monday , March 26, 2012
Author:
Mark Warner
Editor:
Brent Justice
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Mass Effect 3 Gameplay Performance and IQ Review

The final installment in the Mass Effect saga has arrived to give gamers their sci-fi war and romance fixes. But does the game offer hardware enthusiasts anything? Does it have any cutting edge technology to make our high-dollar video cards worthwhile? Does it make us glad we spent our hard-earned dollars upgrading or does it leave us flat?

Introduction

Mass Effect 3 is the third and final installment in the saga of Commander Shepard of the Alliance Navy. Developed and published by BioWare and EA, it is a third-person shooter set in the not-so-distant future, as mankind and several other advanced intelligent species are locked in a battle for survival. It features single-player campaign mode and a co-operative multiplayer mode. In spite of its controversial ending, the PC version of Mass Effect 3 has earned a Metacritic Metascore of 90/100. Because of the ending, the user submitted review score is just 3.7 out of 10.

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Mass Effect 3

Mass Effect 3 is a science-fiction shooter set approximately 250 years in the future. It chronicles the exploits of Commander Shepard, a human navy officer as he defends humanity, as well as other allied alien races, from genocide perpetrated by an ancient race of sentient machines, known as Reapers. The fight takes Shepard across numerous star systems and planets, including the home worlds of the game's dominant alien species. ME3 makes extensive use of an in-game modification and upgrade system, allowing players to use their favorite weapons without fear of them becoming obsolete.

The game features a single-player campaign with 20-40 hours of playtime, depending on side-quests and available DLC. Multiplayer is co-operative only, but isn't a campaign. Players are dropped into battles against waves of AI-controlled enemies. Players can earn levels and upgrades, and can select skills from a skill tree. Players can also earn in-game credits which can be spent on kits, which contain random characters, weapons, and modifications.

Graphics Technology

ME3 is a DirectX 9 game powered by Unreal Engine 3. First unveiled in 2004, UE3 is an old game development platform and has been used to power dozens of games since it was released. Though UE3 supports DirectX 9, 10, and 11 features, Mass Effect 3 uses only DirectX 9, so there are no options to enable or force DX10 or DX11 specific graphics features. In-game, the only graphics options are Anti-Aliasing and Dynamic Shadows. In-game AA is accomplished through the use of NVIDIA's FXAA technology. From a technology standpoint, that's all there is to say. It's UE3 and they have enabled shader-based FXAA. It's a story-driven game, not a technology driven one, and it shows.