One of the hardest parts of being a gamer is the painstaking wait that we all have to face for our most anticipated games to be released. And I'm not talking about the not-so-agonising wait for the annual Call of Duty or FIFA games, either. Another tough thing about being a gamer is when you've waited over two years for a game, only for it to be largely disappointing and leave a sour taste on your thumb sticks.

The wait for Mass Effect 3 has definitely been one of the more difficult ones, especially if you loved the other two. Thankfully, it leaves no other taste on your thumb sticks than dried-up sweat and flavourings from the junk foods you've been eating while you couldn't put down the controller. Not that I tasted it or anything. Honest.

If you've played either of the first two games, chances are you're already pretty clued up on what to expect from this one. If you haven't, why the hell not?

The story picks up after the events of the final piece of Mass Effect 2 DLC, Arrival. Commander Shepard has been relieved from duty and detained on Earth after allowing for the destruction of an entire star system, wiping out all life within it. A large portion of the galaxy are still in denial that the rather ominous Reapers even exist, never mind about to launch a full scale attack. Those doubts are put to rest in the first five minutes though, as the invasion begins on Earth in one of the coolest and most shocking cutscenes you're ever likely to see.

It's here where you play through a mini-tutorial. You're forced to escape the Alliance headquarters with Admiral Anderson, while the Reapers effortlessly lay waste to your surroundings. At one point Anderson leads you onto some rooftops, and you get a full view of a burning, crumbling Vancouver being levelled by the gigantic Reapers. It's eerie in a story sense, but the immense level of detail is absolutely breathtaking to look at.

You're shown the basics of how to move, shoot, run and roll, as well as the new melee kills, which work incredibly well. However, you should notice a difference right away in how much combat has been refined and improved over that of Mass Effect 2. The cover system is much smoother now, allowing you to hop and slide over objects and right back into cover again. Simple things like blind-firing and grenades have also been implemented, giving you more ways to fight your way out of sticky situations. Situations which you'll find yourself in much more often thanks to the improved AI of your foes. You'll now be flanked if you stay in cover too long, and enemies will support each other and work in real teams. Luckily, you can now use Kinect voice commands to tell your squad members where to go and when to use their biotic powers. Alternatively, the D-pad still works for this. Typical run-and-gun techniques are still possible on lower difficulties, but opponents will make short work of your efforts on harder modes.

Where Mass Effect 3 really shines though is actually nothing to do with these changes. It is, once again, the incredible storytelling from Bioware that will make you fall in love with it and lose yourself when you probably should be doing something else.

In Mass Effect 2, you spent pretty much the entire game rallying up a team for yourself to stop the Collectors in preparation for a major battle at the end. This time, it's your job to rally the entire galaxy and convince them that they need to put old quarrels aside to stop the mutual threat of the Reapers. Your old team has now disbanded, moved on with their lives and are spread out across the galaxy. While a few old faces do have major roles in this game, you can expect a largely new team to be working with. Don't worry though, if you play the game thoroughly enough you'll still find out what happened to each and every person you've cared about in the series, assuming they're still alive.

What Bioware captures beautifully in Mass Effect 3 is the sense of despair and struggle amongst the citizens of the galaxy. There's a genuine threat, and there's not one character in the story who is confident of defeating the Reapers. The worlds you visit are in tatters, and are often under attack at the same time you go about your business there. There's a spooky feeling of doom throughout, and it honestly feels like a war that cannot be won. Too much can't be said for the sake of avoiding spoilers, but your main objective is to build an army as big as possible in the faint hopes of giving yourself a fighting a chance. As you'll know from previous games, the Mass Effect universe is full to the brim with lore and history. Certain species hate one another and refuse to work together, so it falls to Shepard to help them sort out their differences. In some cases this can involve making difficult decisions, because no matter what, you're going to upset people. This is why Bioware deserve all the credit they get for being brilliant storytellers, because you're basically forced to turn your back on old friends and partnerships for the sake of saving the galaxy, and it's almost always heartbreaking. It's also at these points that decisions you made in the previous games are likely to come back and haunt you.

As you form new partnerships and rally people to the cause, your Galactic Readiness meter slowly fills. How full or empty it is when you embark on the final mission to take back Earth will help define the type of ending you get. There are three main conclusions to the trilogy, but you'll have to play them all yourself to know what happens. However, I will say that all three left me feeling a little bit underwhelmed. During the final ten minutes, things get extremely confusing and you're left wondering exactly what happened. Bioware have since promised to expand on the ending in future DLC so things could possibly become clearer in time. It’s not a massive gripe, and it’s still guaranteed to blow you away.

Another minor complaint is the way in which you can pick up side missions. Often, you'll be wandering around the Citadel and realise you've overheard two people talking and picked up a new quest without even noticing. Sometimes you don't even notice until you check your mission log, by which time it could be too late. Most of these types of missions are simple and unimportant, but it can still be slightly off-putting.

New to Mass Effect 3 is the multiplayer mode, called Galaxy At War. It's essentially very similar to Horde mode from Gears of War 3, whereby four players battle constant waves of enemies. In this game, the player chooses a class and starts at level one, earning XP as they go along. There are ten waves and three difficulties to choose from, and XP varies depending how far you can get and how difficult you set it. When you reach level twenty, you can promote that character to join your campaign, raising your Galactic Readiness. It's not necessary to play the multiplayer, but it's extremely good fun, well executed and a welcome addition.

All in all, you can look to spend around 30-35 hours within Mass Effect 3 if you play through it how Bioware intended - by taking your time, exploring every corner and pacing yourself. That number can easily double if you decide to tackle the multiplayer.

At times, it seemed like it might be an impossible ask of Bioware to do a perfect job of closing and wrapping-up this massive trilogy. It's not perfect, but it's about as close as they could've got.

Overall: 9/10

by Rob Best

When something is 12 years in the making, it's quite normal for one to begin questioning whether or not it's actually going to be worth the wait. How can something that entered development at the turn of the millennium still be relevant and up to date with modern technology as it progresses at an ever-accelerating speed?

Often, a long wait is accompanied by increasing anticipation and high expectations. So high in fact, that it's impossible not to be disappointed in some capacity. We've seen it recently with films like Avatar and games like Duke Nukem Forever.

Thankfully, Diablo 3 has very few things to complain about.

Having entered development in 2001, the return to Sanctuary has been a long, long time coming. If you've been a Diablo fan since the last game, that is.

For many (including myself), Diablo 3 will be a completely new experience with much to discover and learn about. This is where everybody's in for a treat, because the game is full to the brim with stuff to do, none of which ever seem to get boring.

My first experience with Diablo 3 was only a few weeks before launch when I attempted to play the open beta, and admittedly, if it hadn't been brought to my attention by someone else that the open beta had started then I probably wouldn't have bothered. Unfortunately, the open beta wasn't a very smooth operation for anybody involved and I struggled to even get past the login screen for most of it.

It was enough to pluck my interest though, and upon release I managed to get hold of a trial code. Trial codes are found in all boxed copies of the game, so you can pass them to your friends if you bought a physical copy. It will allow the person to get to level 10 or play up to the end of Act I depending on which comes first - more than enough time to get a taste for the game.

I bought the game straight after and quickly realised that I'd be trading in the next few days of my actual life in order to live out a virtual one in Sanctuary. There are five available classes - Barbarian, Demon Hunter, Monk, Witch Doctor and Wizard. Each is fully voiced, has primary stats, unique powers and wields specific weapons, all of which you'd expect in a typical RPG. Nothing out of the ordinary. One small, yet early let-down was the inability to customise the look of your character, but that's really neither here nor there.

After choosing your class and giving it a hilariously geeky name, you'll find yourself in New Tristram, where the dead are rising like nobody's business. You're barely given a chance to walk five steps before you're slaughtering zombies and demons. In order to avoid spoilers, I won't say much other than what is obvious - you have to get to the bottom of the walking dead problem.

The first major speed-bump that I found myself struggling to get past was that Diablo 3 is not World of Warcraft. It's an RPG and it's made by Blizzard, but that's where the similarities stop. Having not known what to expect at first, it took me an hour or so to really get used to the feel of the game. Once you get comfortable with it though, it's a complete joy to play.

There are four acts to play through before completing the game, each with a final boss battle, and you'll move to a new area at the start of each act. Overall, my first play-through took around 18 hours of me taking my time to see everything the world had to offer me. For the less patient people out there, you can probably speed your way through the campaign in half that time - although that's not what Diablo 3 is about and I really don't recommend it.

Like other Diablo games, the fun doesn't stop after the first play-through. As a matter of fact, you've only just scratched the surface. The game offers you the chance to play the entire game again on Nightmare difficulty, with much tougher enemies and better loot to destroy them with. If you manage that, you'll still have the Hell and Inferno difficulties waiting for you - both with increasingly better loot and frustratingly powerful enemies. This is what will keep players coming back for the years to come. Better still, thanks to the random dungeon generator, no area will ever be the same twice. This means that each time you decide to play Diablo 3 again, the layout of many areas will be different, keeping everything fresh and new.

As is the case with most games, Diablo 3 is a hell of a lot more fun when you play with friends. The entire game is designed to be fully solo-able, but you're free to join a friend's game at any point and slay demons together, making the game a lot more interesting and adding a new dynamic to your play style. In addition, there's no need to worry about having to scramble for the best drops after a boss battle, since everyone gets different items and you'll only be able to see your own loot, meaning you can take some time to clear out inventory space if needed. Be warned though, anything you drop on the floor after picking up is seen by everybody, and they'll be free to take it.

Think of the multiplayer element as a drop-in/drop-out kind of mechanic. Although, you'll find yourself being put back a few quests if you attempt to join a friend at a point in the story that you've already passed yourself. This means that if you want to run through every act together then you couldn't play that character unless your buddy is online too. It can be frustrating, but it's easily preventable by simply having separate characters for solo and co-op purposes.

Graphically the game is very nice. Of course, it's not the most beautiful game in the world, but you wouldn't expect that from a PC/Mac only title. Even so, animations are brilliant, shadows look great and character models are nice and crisp. Much of the game has a very depressing feel to it. Areas are dark and dingy with blood stained stone floors, skeletons lying around and destruction everywhere. The environments are immersive and the sound effects are fantastic too. If you like to play with headphones and you have a decent pair, then Diablo 3 will definitely surprise you with it's sound effects. However, while explosions, spells, and the sound of killing demons is excellent, the dialogue is often extremely corny and cheesy. It doesn't take away from the game too much, but there were a few lines that were intended to be deadly serious but I had to have a little chuckle about.

The cutscenes in particular really did blow me away. I wasn't expecting much at all in terms of story development, but after each act you'll be treated to a 2-3 minute CGI cutscene to move things along, and they're visually and audibly incredible.

In summary, Diablo 3 surprised me in every way possible. Considering I hadn't given a single thought to picking it up until a few weeks before release, it's turned out to be one of my favourite games this year so far. The replay value is nothing short of immense, and Blizzard are highly likely to release expansions later on if previous Diablo games are anything to go by. If you're even remotely thinking about playing it then my advice would be to do so. Trial codes can be found online if you're lucky enough to find someone who still has one. Whatever you do though, don't form a final judgement on the game based on YouTube videos or indeed reviews like this one. They don't do justice to the level of fun you can have with the game, and you really have to experience it yourself. I've clocked over 30 hours on my wizard and over 10 with my barbarian and there's no end in sight for me yet. While there's a few issues with the game such as the delay in the real-money auction house, connection/latency problems and the disappearance of items when they don't sell in the auction house, Blizzard are on top of most bugs and are fixing them all fluidly. Regardless, none of the issues really take away from the game, but combined with the minor annoyances mentioned about playing with friends and dialogue are enough to leave the game just short of a perfect score.

There's a reason that Diablo 3 broke pre-order records and became the fastest selling PC game ever (3.5 million copies in 24 hours), and if there was ever a time to apply the phrase "don't knock it until you've tried it," then this is it.

Score: 9/10


by Rob Best