Special, but not always in the best way.
Cons: Genesis comic omits too many events, Audio and visual bugs, Missing content, Disconnected dialog sequences,
Mass Effect 3 originally launched in March 2012 to both critical acclaim and criticism. While praised for its gameplay and storytelling, fans lashed out at the controversial ending and day 1 DLC. Now, the conclusion to Bioware's epic trilogy finds its way to the Wii U, sporting the From Ashes, Resurgence, Rebellion, Earth, and Extended Cut DLC content on disc, along with Wii U specific functionality. Dubbed, the Special Edition, it marks the first time this series has appeared on a Nintendo console.
Mass Effect is known for its personalized character development that allows users to continue the story in the next game with all the choices you made in the previous. That said, players new to the series have some catching up to do in this version. Bioware has included the Genesis 2 interactive comic for players to make the critical choices that play a part in the final installment.
The problem is, this interactive comic doesn't work the way it should. Those who are completely new to the series won't notice some of the omissions, such as the mission to Feros to retrieve the Prothean Cypher, but there are missing decisions from Mass Effect 2 that have a significant impact and the mention of such decisions later in the game may come across as confusing to newcomers who have no idea who or what the other character is talking about. For example, Maelon's data is destroyed no matter what you choose and the character is never mentioned in the comic. So, when characters mention the destroyed data, which you have no control over or knowledge of, it can create unnecessary confusion. Worse, these pre-made and unavoidable circumstances detract from the sense of choice that the series is well known for.
Missing and premade choices aside, the single player experience is the same as what you would find on other consoles. You play as Commander Shepard on a mission to unite the galactic races and destroy the Reapers, a hyper-advanced machine race bent on destroying galactic civilization. Throughout the story, you'll be battling Reaper forces, rogue human organizations, bringing conclusions to series-long issues, and traversing the galaxy in the search of resources to help your war effort. The game does a brilliant job illustrating the scale of this conflict with its top-notch storytelling and overall production values.
Mass Effect 3, like its predecessors, implements a cover-based combat system in which you use firearms and squad powers to overcome your enemies. The weight of the weapons you equip impacts the length of time your powers take to recharge. This introduces a bit of strategy, in which you must balance squad powers and raw firepower depending on the strengths and weaknesses of your character and the two squadmates you take on each mission.
Whenever you're not in combat, you're usually engaged in some sort of character interaction – either voluntary or required. At times, the outcome of conversations can be determined by selecting a certain dialog wheel option or trigger event, while others produce the same result regardless of choice, but with different rhetoric. The dialog wheel gives you the opportunity to learn more about the characters you are interacting with, and mold the outcome of certain events.
This is assisted by Mass Effect's expert sound design and voice acting. Each character has a unique personality and motivations that bring them to life. Those who take the time to speak with these characters between missions will be rewarded with genuinely interesting dialog. I would check between each mission to see if characters had anything new to discuss, and more often than not, they had something to say. One could easily spend several hours over the course of the game simply talking to the crew.
Some of these conversations are, in a sense, detached. The character you attempt to speak with glances in the direction of the player and speaks their dialog – one track, no dialog wheel. They lack the personal touch that comes with close-up, dialog wheel conversations. There appears to be more crew dialog than in the previous games, but it's a shame that a good portion of it is executed in an impersonal manner.
The Wii U Gamepad displays a map of your current area, the position of enemies, and characters of interest. You can also map character powers to hotkey icons on the gamepad for quick access. This can give you quick access to 12 squad powers – 3 on physical buttons, 8 on the touch screen. Off-TV play is also supported, along with the Classic Controller Pro.
Mass Effect 3 for the Wii U is plagued with a number of bugs – both audio and visual. Sometimes a character's texture will fail to load and you'll see a black figure on the screen until the camera pans away from them for a moment, characters look off at some other object instead of the person/thing they're supposed to be focused on, objects disappear when passed between characters, and audio can play too quietly for anyone to hear at completely random moments. These are not issues that happen all the time or kill the gameplay experience, but you will notice them.
The troubling thing is, many of these issues were present in early versions of the initial release in March, but were corrected in later patches prior to this release. This may be due to the simple fact that the Wii U's hardware is significantly different to the other platforms and the engine isn't optimized well enough for this system to avoid these bugs yet. These problems can likely be fixed later on, but I can't help but feel that this could have used some more development time to fix these obvious issues.
Online multiplayer is the same experience that you would have on other platforms prior to the release of the Retaliation DLC. There are currently no plans to bring this or later DLC to the Wii U, either. This means that Wii U owners won't be able to participate in weekend challenges, earn achievements, fight additional enemies, enjoy new maps, or any of the later content that helps to make the multiplayer a better experience. You're left with a limited multiplayer experience that, while still fun, feels unnecessarily neglected.
Mass Effect 3: Special Edition is special with its Wii U-specific functionality and that it is the most complete version you can get out of the box. The problem lies in post-launch support that makes this feel more like a Neglected Edition. It doesn't perform as well on the Wii U as some would have hoped, nor does it have all the content other versions enjoy or allow players to make all the decisions they should in order to personalize their experience. If this is your only means of playing Mass Effect 3, by all means, get it. It is still a fantastic experience on the Wii U, despite its faults. However, if you can get this on another platform where you can experience other games in the series, you're better off skipping the Special Edition.