Mass Effect - The Last Hour

Mass Effect CoverPlaying just the first hour of a game can be so boring! Take our last review, Okamiden! Ugh, text text text text text run twenty feet text text text blah blah blah. Who wants to play that? That’s right, nobody. So no more first hour reviews, instead, we’re going to jump right to the meat and just play THE LAST HOUR.

How did I not think of this before? In a typical game, where is all the fun? At the end. Where is all the action? At the end. When is boring exposition thrown out the window for actual exciting gameplay? At the end!

So no more tired examinations of pacing, snoozing through opening cutscenes, and waiting for something, anything to happen, we’re going to jump right to it. If you want to see the first hour of a game, go play it yourself. Real gamers don’t play the beginning of games, anyway.

So to reboot the site with the bang that it deserves, here’s the last hour of Mass Effect. One of the most epic, balls-to-the-outer-space-wall finales I could think of in the three minutes it took me to decide to throw away the last four years of this site in one fell swoop. BOOM!

Here be spoilers!

Minute by Minute

60 - Commander Badass Shepard, WREX the super mercenary, and the blue chick I had sex with all come flying out of a space portal riding in our space car at top speed. We roll over some robots and come to a skidding halt. No one is injured you fools.

59 - Oh, this is the Citadel. That place I had to spend no less than four hours at walking around aimlessly looking for the next event to trigger. Boring. Except this time it’s on fire! About time someone came to their senses. All the paths are blocked off too thanks to everything being destroyed.

58 - Some guys want to fight. Look, I haven’t traveled four trillion miles to be taken down by three husks.

57 - Now a computer wants to talk to me, they’re so obnoxious in this game. They won’t slyly flirt with me and we can’t end the conversation in a shootout to the death. Tap X to skip this.

56 - The only place we can go is up, so Shepard and his renegade heroes push their way into the elevator and slap the arrow.

Mass Effect Mako Crash Landing

55 - Cutscene... oooh, it’s Saren! He’s the bad guy and just casually walking around like he owns the place. I suppose I have to stop him but I do admire him for his utter callousness.

53 - More cutscene, this time showing some space fights as the giant Reaper ship cruises towards the middle of the Citadel. The arms of the space station are closing... but not in time! Sovereign is in the building.

51 -  Commander Badass Shepard lives up to both of his names and blasts the now stopped elevator open and leads his crew outside. Somehow we’re able to walk on side of the elevator shaft. This is awesome!

48 - After walking around for a bit, some geth show up for target practice. Shepard and Wrex blow them away with shotguns and assault rifles while Dr. Liara T’Sexy throws them into the air with her force powers. Woooooo!

46 - Yes, we get to fight krogan in zero-G! Wrex has no problem massacring his brethren but they get in close and cause issues. These guys are strong. Liara lifts one up and it just floats away! Hah!

43 - More geth, more destruction. Some of them have rockets and some of them are as big as krogan. Definitely a corridor of death here, if only geth could die.

Mass Effect Sovereign Citadel

42 - Finally, a real open field battle. Shepard and gang run out onto a large metallic plain when a dropship flies over and starts tossing out geth like a pinata. A nearby switch turns on a turret that starts blasting away at the ship with some big firepower. I decide to take advantage of the moment and get my pistol out to go for its Achievement.

39 - It’s still dropping bad guys and Liara is dead, guess I should go back to the assault rifle. Good news though, there’s also a medi-gel achievement!

37 - Another corridor gives me the chance to throw those hilarious grenades Mass Effect features. Somehow they fly straight out of your hand with the awkward touch of the Back/Select button and resist gravity the whole way. Plus their explosion radius isn’t obvious at all. Grenades suck!

35 - Well, they did just take down a geth juggernaut, so there’s that.

34 - What the... this area is huge and there are giant laser turrets blowing me away. I send Wrex and Liara off to the sides to distract the gunners, ha! Seems to work. Poor suckers are shouting how they’re almost dead, but it lets me flank the jerks and take them out.

29 - Finally! We’ve reached the Council Chambers where those bureaucratic punks tried to keep Commander B.A. Shepard down. Too bad they’re not around so I can blow them away myself. A couple of geth try to shoot me from the bushes but we mow them down.

Mass Effect Destiny Ascension

26 - We approach where the council’s holograms appears and a cutscene kicks off with Saren. Looks like his time has come. Man, this guy is crazy, he’s flying around on his hoverboard throwing crappy grenades at us. Stop being a little girl and fight!

25 - Looks like he wants to chat instead. He’s talking about the Reapers and Shepard is trying to convince him that he’s been indoctrinated and the Reapers have taken him over. Shepard’s super Renegade powers allow him to say some funny stuff to the Big Bad. Maybe Saren will join my team and we can rule the galaxy together!

23 - OR HE’LL JUST BLOW HIS OWN HEAD OFF.

22 - Yeah, that just happened, guess I pushed him too far, whoops.

21 - More cutscenes as we learn about the situation out in space, not looking good for the council ship, the Destiny Ascension. Joker comms in and tells us he’s sitting on the other side of one of those mass relays and can help out.

20 - Liara says we should ask Joker to save the Destiny Ascension, Wrex says let them burn. Even though Liara was great in the sack, Spectre Shepard HATES the council.

Mass Effect Sovereign Saren Husk Final Boss

19 - To add insult the injury, the Alliance fleet still comes through the mass relay and just WATCHES the Destiny Ascension get scorched earthed. Haha, Shepard smiles.

17 - “Make sure he’s dead,” Commander Badass Shepard tells his squad, as we know, Saren only shot his own brain into tiny chunks. But since this is a video game, he can’t be dead already, and some red lightning awakes him. Of course, Sovereign.

16 - His body goes crazy and all that is left of him is a creepy looking skeleton with red eyes and glowing torso. The dance of death begins.

14 - Geez, this guy hops around. Mass Effect isn’t exactly Borderlands and keeping up with bad guys can be a bit cumbersome. I feel bad for Wrex in this situation, nah, not really, he’s too awesome.

13 - Midway through the battle the game decides to flip back to a cutscene of the space battle. Some wussies want to retreat after spaceship Sovereign rips one Alliance ship in two with a laser. The admiral says to keep firing. YEAH! Back to Saren Sovereign.

10 - Yippee ki-yay! Saren Sovereign breaks up into dust and Commander Shepard has, once again, prevailed. Killing him makes spaceship Sovereign release its grip on the Citadel and it falls off, giving Joker in the Normandy a chance for some sweet revenge. In what are some way too fancy of moves for a cripple, Joker rips Sovereign a new one and he breaks up into some big chunks.

Mass Effect Sovereign Normandy Blow up

08 - Whoops, one of those chunks is heading right for where Shepard is... crash. What the?

07 - Keith David is on scene now and some guido jerk with half a visor finds Wrex and Liara. Where’s Shepard? WHERE’S SHEPARD?

06 - In Mass Effect’s Crowning Moment of Awesome, Shepard pulls himself out of the debris and stands triumphant on Sovereign’s broken off space dick. The music swells and so do I. Shepard smirks knowing he just saved the frakking galaxy.

04 - I suppose we need to tie up some loose ends as there’s a new conversation with Udina, the jerk human who Keith David laid out a few hours ago. But he’s got the great idea of forming a human only council so I appoint him to it. I guess Shepard has some sway in this new government.

01 - The screen fades to Shepard staring past the camera with a dark red Renegade planet behind him. The Normandy zooms past.

00 - Cue the credits, and let Faunts rock us out with M4 Part 2.