OK, so the Mass Effect 3 live wallpaper wasn’t exactly a star-studded Android debut for Bioware’s massively popular sci-fi RPG franchise. But now Android gamers can finally get their hands on Mass Effect: Infiltrator, the mobile prequel to Mass Effect 3. The EA game is available now on the Google Play Store for $6.99… just ten weeks after it was released on iOS. Hooray!
Infiltrator is a prequel to Mass Effect 3 with an original character not featured in any of the previous games. You play Randall Ezno, an agent for the shadowy Cerberus organization led by Martin Sheen the Illusive Man. (Sorry folks, no FemShep or Liara action here.) You’re assigned to collect various alien organisms and artifacts for Cerberus experiments combining human technology with the terrifying Reapers.
Go to interesting locales, meet fascinating alien species, then kill most of them! That’s the formula that Mass Effect has used thus far, and Infiltrator doesn’t disappoint. It adapts the cover-based third-person shooter gameplay of the main game into a tablet and smartphone form factor, using much of the same weapons, hacking and biotic (AKA The Force) techniques. You’ll need a pretty powerful device to play the game – probably Tegra 2 or better.
You might want to hold off on this one for a few days, gamers – reviews of the original iOS game were lukewarm at best, and Infiltrator is an expensive $6.99. It’s also pretty massive (yuk yuk) at over 450MB. Connecting Mass Effect: Infiltrator with your EA account can affect your Galaxy at War score in the main game, possibly changing the ending. Well, as much as the much-hated ending can be changed, anyway.
[via Android Police]
I hope everyone who considers buying any EA game on the Android platform does their due diligence to see how this company supports its products. EA has a history of releasing buggy games with very little product support, updates and service after the sale. I am still waiting for several EA games (all that I paid good money on) to actually WORK on my Transformer Prime. You can’t take advantage of the 15 minute refund policy that the Play store has either, because all EA games require huge downloads from servers that take forever and pass the 15 minute mark. Only after you go through the process do you find these games have issues. Then you wait for EA to update and fix them… and it never happens. They pretty much abandon games soon after launching.
I’d love it if my favourite Android sites stopped giving this company any publicity until they pull a 180 on how EA treats their customers and supports their products.
As a PC gamer, I’ve got plenty of reason to dislike EA as well – see this SlashGear article:
http://www.slashgear.com/minecraft-developer-says-ea-is-methodically-destroying-gaming-07226515/). That said, news is news, and I’m also a huge Mass Effect fan.
I wonder how long it will take before EA decides to disable it for everybody that bought it?