Games Inbox: Is the Mass Effect trilogy overrated?

The Friday letters page is excited about the possibility of a new Castlevania game, as one reader is surprised by the mixed reviews for Civilization 7. To join in with the discussions yourself email gamecentral@metro.co.uk. Time effect. All the talk of BioWare and Dragon Age recently has seemed like good timing to me, because I’ve been working through the Mass Effect Legendary Edition recently, which I bought ages ago but never got round to. I haven’t finished 3 yet, so I haven’t got to the ending, but even so I have to say it’s not as good as I remembered.

I realise the games are old now, and back in the day you had to wait years between the games, but I don’t think they really hold up that well. The first one is really not a great game and while Mass Effect 2 is definitely the best one the story has little to do with the overall arc. You could skip it and really not have missed much. Because of that, Mass Effect 3 seems rushed and it doesn’t make use of the decisions you’ve made up to that point at all well. The combat is fine, but it gets very repetitive over the course of the game. The characters aren’t as much fun as I remember either, especially Liara who is just kind of emotionless most of the time. And EDI the fembot is just straight up embarrassing.

It’s probably just because other games have got better over the years but while I’d welcome a new Mass Effect I’m not sure the old ones are as good as people make out anymore. Nintendo exclusive. My hope for the Nintendo Direct is another exclusive GTA game. There’s been some mention of Chinatown Wars recently, which originally was a DS exclusive, and I’d love to see Rockstar do something like that again. Or just anything unique for Nintendo, who they seem to respect.

GTA 6 is never going to work on the Switch 2 – I’d be surprised if it worked well on the Xbox Series S – but Switch 2 is almost certainly going to be the biggest format of the generation, so wouldn’t you want to support it in some way? Even just as a way to direct people towards GTA 6 on other formats. I’d love to see a new top-down game or failing that some kind of spin-off, maybe based on the mini-games where you’re driving ambulances and taxis and so on. It could be like Crazy Taxi but set in the GTA universe. Probably not that likely, but that’s my idea.

Open goal. I really hope that rumour about a new Castlevania is true. It really is baffling to me that Konami went all in on Silent Hill, which has never been a big seller, and we’ve so far had nothing for Castlevania except a few retro compilations. It all seems backwards, given Metal Gear has only had the one remake announced, and again a few compilations. I’d have to go along with the majority and say that FromSoftware would be the perfect people for the job, but I assume they won’t make it, since they don’t own the IP or anything. Unless it turns out Hidetaka Miyazaki is a superfan that’s always wanted to work on it, but I don’t remember him ever mentioning it.

For me, there’s no point keeping it 2D. The early games were only 2D because the tech wasn’t there and unlike Metroid they went 3D as soon as they could. Not that they were ever great games, but the intention was there and I’d like to see it carried out by a better team with a bigger budget. It’s crazy how few big budget Metroidvanias there are, so this is a big chance to become the best out there and I would’ve thought Konami would jump at that chance.

Hammeriron. Email your comments to: gamecentral@metro.co.uk. Romantic viewing. I am always amazing by game publishers that manage to spoil their own secrets. How hard can it be to check the embargo date for a trailer before it goes up? And yet we see this mistake again and again. Oh well, at least we know that the State of Play must be very close, probably Valentine’s Day like the rumours say. Although I would imagine that if Metal Gear Solid Delta is going to be in the Direct then that means this rumour of Castlevania is not going to be revealed as well.

I do agree that seeing it at the Nintendo Direct in April seems very likely. I hope so, because a big budget new game is immensely overdue and I’d really like to see it. Even if the dream of FromSoftware doing it is almost certainly not going to happen. Mixed reception. Always interesting to see when a big name game doesn’t get universal praise but I will say I never expected Civilization 7 to be one of them. Not surprised to see GC and Eurogamer (who really hated it) being amongst the lowest but IGN is interesting too. I really do think they’ve become a lot more reliable in recent years and are nowhere near the laughing stock they used to be.