Gamescom: Mass Effect 3 - The Highs of Hands-On

Gamescom represents the very first time we've gone hands-on with Mass Effect 3, and while doing so may not have revealed any shocking revelations, there are certainly some very cool changes that fans will appreciate.

For those keeping score, the section we were able to play through was shown at E3, and sees Shep trying to get Mordin Solus and a female Krogan off-world. The Krogan may hold the key to reversing the Genophage that left the Krogan race almost entirely sterile, but she's in quarantine, which means a series of steps to get her out. Naturally, the Commander meets some serious resistance along the way – from Cerberus in this case. You can see the sequence – as well as some incredible action set on Earth - in the video embedded further down the page.

Here are five things we loved during our hands-on session:

It's all very well to have a multi-purpose holographic device attached to your arm, but if you can't stab people with it, well, it's not that useful, now is it? Ladies and gentleman, forget the Omni-tool and welcome the Omni-blade, Shepard's latest toy. This orange holographic blade sits on his arm, and is one of the precision instruments with which he'll carve his revenge into the guts of his enemies.

Using it is simple – just get close to an enemy and stab. The camera moves in close and judders, giving the attack a really punchy feel. It also helps Shepard feel like more of a bad-ass at close range. Honestly, it can be a little clunky trying to take down moving enemies with traditional weaponry at close quarters, so the Omni-blade greatly simplifies things, letting Shep gouge a great big hole in his enemy's chest with one smooth motion.


Remember the upgrade system for powers in Mass Effect 2? You'd pump stat points into each power, upgrading them along a fixed path until the final upgrade would give you a choice of two variations on the power. It was cool, but for Mass Effect 3, BioWare is giving players more this or that choices. Take Liara's singularity power. You spend a point to purchase it, and each subsequent upgrade costs more points – much like the old system. The second upgrade increases its duration, the third its radius, then for the fourth, players have a choice between extra duration or wider radius, for the fifth it's a choice between increased damage and faster recharge speed and for the final upgrade it's another choice, between having a 50% larger size for the first ten seconds or having the ball of gravity collapse in on itself and explode when the power ends.

It means players will be able to customise every power they have in pretty cool ways – sometimes literally. In our hands-on we bumped our cryo ability way up, meaning that cryo ammo would often either cool and slow enemies or outright freeze them, opening them up to be shattered into a million pieces with any further damage. Weapons can also be modified, letting players upgrade different stats, like fire rate and clip size.


It may not sound glamorous, but the revamped cover system definitely makes combat in Mass Effect 3 more flowing. What's changed? Well, Shepard can now move from cover point to cover point, move around corners in cover and commando roll to evade fire/get to cover. And like the last game he can still vault low cover objects, but the system seems less clunky. The team has stated that the combat is going to be more challenging in this game, so ensuring players have the tools to smoothly and tactically use the battlefield can't be overstated. In short, we've used it and we like it.


Mass Effect players have always had a fair amount of control over the members of their squad. After all, at any time you can bring up the radial menu and tell your squad mates which enemies you'd like in the air/in giblets/frozen/concussed/etc, and they'll give it their full attention. That level of control has only increased for Mass Effect 3. We weren't able to test out the Kinect voice commands, which enable you to simply state what you want each squad member to do, but it is clear that the game is going to be pushing players to use their squad controls – in particular the waypoint system – more during battles. One moment in the hands-on has a couple of enemies holding up shields coming towards the player, and it's a simple matter to position one of your squad to draw their fire while you – or the other squad member – flanks around them. Mind you, it's even easier to command Liara to use her singularity power to suck them into a swirling ball of gravity. Gravity – is there anything it can't do?


…or destroying them, as the case may be. The end of the hands-on featured a battle against the Cerberus Atlas, a towering bi-pedal mech piloted by a Cerberus agent. Using squad members to draw its fire and avoid copping rockets in the face gave us the chance to get around behind it and dish out some damage to its shields. The team has demonstrated a couple of encounters with much larger enemies, so you can expect this to be a mini-boss that will likely pop up a number of times throughout the game. We hope so, because the team mentioned that if players can take out the pilot without destroying the mech, they'll be able to hop inside the cockpit themselves.



While the area we played was pretty contained, essentially featuring a number of mid-sized rooms, each with a number of cover objects, there are going to be some amazingly cinematic settings for the action and narrative. The sequence on Earth, for instance – which you can see in the video above - is staggering. The sheer scale of the Reaper invasion is truly intimidating and impactful. One thing's for sure – our hands-on today was just the first step down a road that has the potential to be one of the greatest gaming experiences of recent years.

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