Mass Effect 3 sold 890K copies on day one in North America.

You are Commander Shepard, a human who has defended the galaxy from the Reapers, a massive robotic species that has existed from the beginning of time. Every 50,000 years, they commit mass genocide of the entire galaxy, because according to them, life is merely a mutation that shouldn’t have happened.

Unfortunately, due to Shepard’s attempts at stopping the Reaper invasion in the past two games, he has inadvertently caused them to emerge from their realm in deep space outside the galaxy with their first destination being Earth.

Mass Effect 3 starts off with a quick summary of how events have unfolded since first contact with other species in the galaxy. You are then treated with an in depth customization of how Commander Shepard looks. This is no surprise coming from a game made by Bioware. You can customize a plethora of facial features, including head shape, eyes, jaw structure and many more. After creating your appearance, you then get to choose Shepard’s fighting style.

Once you get to actually interacting with the game, you get the sense that something bad is coming. This game has a phenomenal atmosphere that conveys people’s fears of what is going to happen. Shepard, due to acts in Mass Effect 2, has lost his rank and is going to be held on trial for his crimes.

Before he is set on trial, the human council wishes to speak to him. Once you get to the council chambers, you can tell how bad things are. All the human leaders are turning towards you for guidance. At this point in the game you are given your first chance to shape your character by choosing what he says. Whatever choice, Shepard still tells the council all we can do is survive.

At this point, the meeting is interrupted by transmissions coming in showing that Earth is under attack. Before you can react, a massive Reaper descends from the skies and fires its massive energy beam, destroying half the building you are in. Thrown against the wall from the explosion, you slowly get up and work your way outside onto the edge of the building. From this point of view you can see the Reaper invasion in full effect: the massive crustacean and bug like robots that are Reapers are vaporizing the city with their weapons of mass destruction. All you can do is get to your ship. Once you finally work your way through the hordes of zombie-like creations called Husks, you take off of Earth to rally the other species in the galaxy. Before you can begin your journey, the admiral of the Human fleet orders you to investigate a research station on Mars. There is believed to be a weapon on the red planet, created by an ancient race that was destroyed by the Reapers, that can eliminate the Reaper threat.

Once you land, you can see a looming storm that looks like it could engulf Mars itself. With time not on your side, you and your crew mates hurry towards the research station. At the entrance, you find not Reapers nor Husks, but instead Cerberus, an extremist faction of humans that wishes to advance humanity by any means necessary.

Here, you can experience Mass Parris, my friend who was kind enough to let me experience the game, chose to order his squad to use their specific abilities to take down an unknowing Cerberus squad in less than 2 seconds. Nothing short of impressive. These kinds of choices are very welcome, especially since you get experience points for taking down enemies that you can use to update and personalize Shepard and his squad.

At this point, only an hour has past of playing through the game. What I have seen is very positive and exciting. This game is not without fault, however. With a main part of the game having to do with dialogue, you would expect facial animations to be well fleshed out. Instead they are almost expressionless. Another problem is that the graphics only feel slightly updated from the previous installment in the series.

Despite these flaws, the gameplay looks addicting with all the choices you can make to tackle a combat situation, and the story is very promising with its creativity. All I can say is that I can’t wait to start my own galactic adventure in the boots of Commander Shepard.

David King is a Staff Reporter for The Spartan Speaks