Friday, March 16, 2012

I have now played through every mission available to me in Mass Effect 3, accumulating allies for the big fight against the deadly galaxy-obliterating Reapers.

Unfortunately, due to really cheesy marketing ploys by Bioware or EA, I haven't actually "won" the game. To get a semi-happy ending, I have to boost my "galactic readiness." This can only be accomplished by:

a. Playing lots of battles in multiplayer mode. This requires a Gold membership in Xbox LIVE. Also, you have to use the online access code you get in the game box, which means if you kid wants to play on his profile, he has to buy another access code. And, of course, you have to like multiplayer. I don't.

b. Buy an iPad game called Infiltrator and play it lots. This costs $7, plus you have to have an iPad. And it's a pure shooter. If I wanted a pure shooter, I'd play CALL OF DUTY.

c. Play an iPad game called Datapad. Datapad is free, but boring. You send out missions and they complete in real-time, hours and hours later. Not a lot of work, but not a lot of fun, either. I figure it will take at least 10 days of attending to Datapad to get my galactic readiness up.

All of these methods require you to invest hours in them in order to get your galactic readiness anywhere near where it needs to be.

Boo, I say. If I buy a single player game, I don't want to have to play multiplayer. I don't want to play online. Bioware/EA are basically selling a broken single player game that can only be repaired by playing online. I feel betrayed and angry. Boo.

Labels: games, mass effect

9:30 PM

6 Comments:

that's a little bait and switchy.

By  jmulligan, at 12:12 AM  

BioWare keeps insisting it's possible to get the best ending without doing any of that (presumably by doing every single one of the little side missions and also importing a game with the choices that lead to the most bonuses, like having Wrex alive)--but multiplayer and the paid adgames are still the only way to increase Galactic Readiness, which is definitely misleading. I guess you win through sheer numbers? I haven't finished it yet, so I don't know if it takes into account your base strength vs. your effective (Readiness-modified) strength.

I didn't realize the multiplayer access was locked by profile, either. That's absurd.

By  circadianwolf, at 1:22 AM  

This 'Pay to Play Online' crap is spreading. I used to enjoy playing Warcraft with my brother via our LAN connection at home, but the new Starcraft II game only allows pay to play in their online version. Shitty.

By  sean, at 10:50 AM  

Pretty sure Bioware is lying about being able to get the best ending without playing online. Nor do I feel you should have to import a ME2 game. (For some reason, mine got deleted off the family Xbox, grrr.)

By  Alex Epstein, at 11:09 AM  

I'm just glad I got the game-breaking black hole glitch before I went in for that stupid online pass. To be honest, I paid for the points and was moments away from downloading it when my game broke. Four months later and there is still no fix. $70 in total wasted.

By  Unknown, at 2:06 PM  

Not only did EA gouge their fans, but the game has a bug that can lock it permanently on the startup screen. The only fix is 3rd party and involves hacking your gamer profile, or starting all over (from mass effect 1 if you want to not be crippled) on a new profile. All I can say if you do want to put in the cash is "Good luck."

By  Unknown, at 2:11 PM  

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