Mass Effect 3: Multiplayer is Important?

I know, I know, Mass Effect 3 is considered by and large as a complete and total failure by the gaming community – especially because of the lackluster ending.  I don’t really want to talk about that.  I want to talk about how and why I am still playing the multiplayer, Galaxy at War.  First off it’s almost unrelated to the campaign; in my review of ME3 I docked points because of this.  We were promised something a multiplayer with a story, and the only impact the multiplayer has is affects your readiness rating which coincides with what you earn in the single player ending!  Oh man. Full circle!

Just like the single player, you create a character from the six different types (Soldier, Adept, Engineer, Sentinel, Infiltrator, and Vanguard).  Within each of these different classes lie six different races to choose from.  This is sounding complicated already, but believe me it’s freaking awesome.  The best thing is that you get to play as races that you only get to see in passing or that you’ve fought before in earlier games.  This makes me geek out on levels that only Star Wars can accomplish.  Before jumping into the warzone, you choose your class, race, and abilities.  The races aren’t just different skins; they’re loaded up with abilities that distinguish themselves amongst the others of the same class. The great thing about it is there are all sorts of builds for your character, and it’s more than an incentive to try that character again. You equip your character with two weapons, two mods on each, three types of usable armor, and special gear.  A typical match has you and three other players survive against enemy Geth, Reaper, or Cerberus troops.  You’re thinking, this is just a rip-off of Horde mode!  It’s not; it can be similar, but it’s mostly different.  Every other round you are tasked with a mission: disarm four devices scattered throughout the map, assassinate key targets, hack a computer for a certain time (this plays out like you have to stay put in a certain area for allotted time, and it fills up quicker the more players are in it), retrieve items back to an area, and/or escort a drone back to an area (this one is similar to the hack; the more players near the escort the quicker it moves).  Those make the games interesting, and much, much more challenging.  Sometimes you’ll be yelling at your teammates to move their asses to the hack area because they’re just having fun killing everything SOMEWHERE ELSE.  It sounds more frustrating than fun, but there’s a payoff.  Most of those give you more money depending on how quickly you accomplish these tasks, so there’s an incentive to get them done quickly and effectively.  At the end of the 10 waves of enemies, your squad is rewarded with oodles of experience to upgrade your character and money.  Money plays an interesting role in this game.  I’ve never played a multiplayer game that dealt with currency this way; you spend your money on different packs.  There are four different types varying in price. Within each pack you receive a random assortment of goodies, varying from characters, weapons, mods, gear, and other goodies.  The game because completely addicting because you want to earn all those characters and weapons that you haven’t unlocked yet.  I can’t even begin to tell you how many hours I’ve sunk into this multiplayer this summer because I wanted to get all those new characters, and play with ‘em.

LOOT!!!!11!

Bioware has been unbelievably supportive, and has continually grabbed my interest in this game.  Every six weeks or so, since the release, they release six new characters (1 for each class), several new maps, several new weapons, and several new weapon mods FOR FREE.  It’s unbelievable!  This is coming from EA folks, and they are one of the biggest money grubbing video game publishers around.  Because of this free DLC, I keep coming back to this game.  Better yet, each round of dlc they put out more interesting characters.  

 Oh and I'll totally bro-up with ya on 360. Gamertag = bobwinkle12