A demo download is now available via Xbox Live for everyone for the upcoming third and final Mass Effect game. Previously it was only available to a certain select group of testers.
I tried it out last night. As described by other sources, when you start the game you are given the choice between Action (skip the story and just get the missions), Story (fighting is kept to minimal difficulty) or RPG (get both story and fighting). This is a brilliant idea - one thing that really did my head in was replaying ME1 and ME2 and having to sit through storylines that I had already sat through umpteen times, when all I wanted to do was shoot some bad guys!
I picked a male standard John Shephard with biotic powers. The game starts with Shephard grounded on Earth after the events of ME2 downloadable content add on mission Arrival (even if you never bought it, the game assumes you played through the events and wiped out a planet of batarians to slow down the Reaper invasion). Shephard is called into a meeting with the head of Earth Alliance's military council. Along the way he meets the new squad member, James Vega, who looks like some sort of ridiculous steroid junky,
as well as an old face (either Aleiko or Williams, depending on who survived ME1). It's Captain Anderson who accompanies you. According to the Mass Effect wiki, it's during a tie-in novel (Mass Effect Retribution) that Anderson resigns from Citadel politics and returns to Earth military.
Shephard is asked if the force that is attacking Earth colonies is a Reaper invasion fleet. Shephard says yes. At that point, the invasion bypasses all Earth security systems, and Reapers start landing on the planet, along with meteor rocks falling from the skies and hatching all sorts of different Husks to wipe out human resistance. Shephard and Anderson form a squad who have to escape the wrecked HQ and get to the Normandy. The dialogue is pretty silly, the military heads all come across about as intellligent as a sack of potatoes.
The second part of the demo involves Shephard, Liara and Garrus landing on a Salarian base and trying to fight Cerberus forces to reach Mordin. Expect some tough battles, with enemies moving agressively forward rather than hanging around waiting for you to kill them, and several of them carrying defensive metal riot shields that protect them from fire (unlike energy shields or armour which you can just whittle down with appropriate weapons).
You also get to see the new skills system, where instead of following a linear path in increasing them, you have to pick one of two upgrades each time you spend experience points on a Power, allowing you to have a far greater fine tuning on whether you want your powers to increase in recharge efficiency, duration, power or range. Looks AWESOME!!!
There were also weapon customisable upgrades lying around.
All in all, I am very much psyched for this game, cannot wait for its arrival in March 2012.
