Luke727's Journal: Mass Effect 3

I'm not exactly sure how far I'm into the game, but based on the missions I've completed I'd wager I'm at about 80 to 85 percent complete. I'm doing all the side missions as well, so I've sunk about 23 hours or so into it so far; this is at a moderate pace on normal difficulty. I'm just going to go over some likes and dislikes in no particular order.

Likes:

• Good amount of jokes about Garrus and his calibrations
• Speaking of Garrus, he is still mah nigga; there is a great scene where you spend some down time with him on the Citadel.
• The evolution of EDI
• Pretty good job of incorporating most (if not all?) of the characters from the previous games, including DLC; some have more minor roles, but there's a lot of ground to cover and only so much time for everyone.

Dislikes:

• Previously Reapers were only the huge machines; now the term is used in general to refer to any enemy acting on their behalf.
• You do see actual Reapers in battle on occasion, but mostly they are part of the background; kind of takes away from the tension.
• Like ME2, here most of the game is spent rallying your allies rather than actually fighting the enemy. Granted the ante is upped this go around, but it still feels like a lot of bitch work (especially since there is a lot of political maneuvering). It seems odd since the Reapers are in the process of destroying civilizations and I'm worried about making sure the Salarians and Krogans are on the same page. But hey, at least nobody thinks I'm making this shit up anymore.
• More of a discrepancy than a dislike, but in the previous two games Shepard could only run for 10 feet before getting winded; now he can run, roll, and dive like a motherfucker a la Gears of War. I actually like the improved agility, but it seems out of place given the previous games.
• Planet scanning is much improved, but it still seems rather pointless.

I've read that there is sort of a controversy over the ending, though I've done my absolute best to avoid any spoilers. I'll hold my judgement until I've played it for myself. There was also some controversy over the day-one DLC. In the grand scheme of things it is somewhat silly, but the character is so well woven into the story that I now have my doubts that it was developed independently. Maybe they just did an excellent job, but their DLC integration in the previous games was nowhere near this level; leads me to believe they withheld it from the full game, but I'm not going to go crazy like a lot of people. Sadly that's just the direction the industry is headed; nothing can be done about it.