Mass Effect 3 Magazine Review and Gameplay Footage

There has been much to talk about BioWare’s conclusion to Commander Shepard’s trilogy, with a fairly heated controversy surrounding the day-1 From Ashes DLC, but in case you want an opinion on the vanilla package, the German magazine GameStar published the, to my knowledge, first review of the game, which BioWare Social users hagren and DenizYe summarize:

-15-20 hour-long main quest
-Around 40 hours playtime in total- side missions are vital to amass enough opposition to the Reaper threat

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-More than 100 scenes, conversations and/or events change depending on our choices- from something small like someone thanking us for completing a mission to bigger repercussions which would be to spoilerous to write down- you are definitely going to feel the consequences, and not always like them

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-The game gives you more opportunity to customize your Shepard. Each class has 8 talents with 6 levels each, and up from Level 4 there are two branches to choose from to level up each individual talent differently. Weapon customization is also a factor and noticeable, but the effects (which have both pros and cons) are only marginal
-Balancing isn’t optimal
-The game is noticeably more difficult up from ‘žMedium(, which makes using the correct weapon mods and talents integral to survive. Shepard also shoots more accurately in cover.

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-Graphically, the low polycount, lack of detail and low texture resolution disappoints- the characters are well animated and modeled however, and the overall look, despite its age, is quite moody
-Great dynamic soundtrack and sound-effects

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They gave ME3 a 9/10
here is their rating:
Sound 10/10
Quests/Plot 10/10
Charaters 10/10
Combat 8/10 (because of “stupid” AI)
And all other areas 9/10 (don’t know which areas they mean)

Additionally IGN is offering some footage of the new “galaxy exploration system” which replaces Mass Effect 2’s planet scanning.