Mass Effect 3 Preview

The latest hands-on preview for BioWare’s sci-fi action-RPG Mass Effect 3 comes from the folks at G4, who offer a brief but decently informative piece. Here’s a sampling:

Before I get into how it was to play, it’s worth noting that from what I saw here in Cologne, albeit an unfinished build, the visual discrepancy between the console and PC versions has widened even further since Mass Effect 2. The high-end PC version I saw someone else play had such smoothness in its frame rate and texturing, and it was leagues apart from the Xbox 360 version I myself played.

Still, there’s a long way to go until release and maybe that discrepancy will be less noticeable when the game hits, so let’s focus on the play. For the demo, I hook up with the Sentinel class, this giving me unique access to a mixture of biotic and tech powers. A quick scan of my powers shows that BioWare is still keeping quiet about what that class’s new exclusive power for Mass Effect 3 will be. In a demonstration earlier, I saw what we believe to be the Soldier class’s exclusive power, namely frag grenades. They sound fairly basic on their own, but it’s in combination with other powers that they get interesting, like using the tech power Overload to disable an enemy’ shields then tossing in the grenade to get the job done.

Even with the difficulty dialed down to Casual and despite what the developers are saying about run-and-gun play being a valid option, it’s clear that the smartest strategy in Mass Effect 3 will be to use cover whenever possible. I do, though, agree with BioWare about Shepard feeling more mobile with things like the commando roll and in particular the inclusion of directional arrows for indicating cover-to-cover switches. The first Mass Effect felt like an RPG pretending to be a shooter, the sequel got much closer to the real thing, and Mass Effect 3 is taking even more steps to validate the action side of its action-RPG experience.