Mass Effect Infiltrator

Mass Effect: Infiltrator is a third-person shooter developed by IronMonkey Studios for mobile devices (iOS, Android, Windows Phone 8 and BlackBerry 10) set in the Mass Effect universe.

Released: 6 March 2012
Platforms: BlackBerry OS Windows Android iOS
Genres: Shooter Adventure
Developers: IronMonkey Studios
Publishers: Electronic Arts
Modes: Single-player
Perspective: Third person
Themes: Action Science fiction Thriller

About

Mass Effect Infiltrator was a third-person shooter video game developed by IronMonkey Studios, released on 6 March 2012 for iOS, 22 May 2012 for Android, and 13 June 2013 for BlackBerry 10.

›Story

Mass Effect: Infiltrator is set somewhere in the year 2186 CE and occurs during the events of Mass Effect 3. Players take on the role of Randall Ezno, a Cerberus operative who begins to learn that the organization is not as benevolent as it appears to be.

After completing a mission on an ice planet, Randall returns to the Barn, a Cerberus research space station. On his way to visit his advisor, Inali Renata, something goes wrong and turian soldiers begin attacking the facility. During the attack, Randall tries to contact Inali, but she's cut off by someone. Randall hurries to Inali's location to ensure she is safe.

After fighting past the turian invaders, Randall is shocked to find Inali suffering through horrific experiments at the behest of the Director of the Barn. Randall vows revenge and goes in search of the Director, now having to fight past the facility's Cerberus defenses.

While trying to escape, Randall is contacted by a mysterious voice via his earpiece. The voice claims to be a volus working with the Alliance. He tells Randall that if he can escape the facility and contact the Alliance, both he and Inali can be saved. Randall slowly makes his way toward the communications tower, fighting Cerberus troops, escaped test subjects, mechs, and X1, a massive, mutant krogan. Finally, he reaches the comm tower, signals the Alliance and heads to a nearby desert planet on a shuttle to await pickup.

After Randall arrives, Inali shows up, augmented beyond recognition, and starts to shoot Randall. After lowering her barrier and armor bars, the Director takes complete control of Inali for the remainder of the fight. In the end Randall either spares or kills Inali depending on the player's previous morality choices. He then vows to kill the Director for what he has done and leaves the planet.

Keywords

space

Media

The articlegameplay, story, development, reception

Gameplay

Mass Effect Infiltrator is a three-dimensional, third-person shooter which mimics many of the gameplay features and animations of the main Mass Effect games, including the use of cover and the combination of gunplay and biotic powers. The controls are simplified from the console games and adapted to fit a touchscreen interface; for example, there are no squadmates to control, and it is necessary to target enemies for biotic attacks by tapping directly on the screen.

The player is rewarded with credits over the course of the game, and these may be spent on upgraded weapons, armour and biotic abilities. The player also collects Intel, which can be exchanged for ingame credits or used to add to the player's Galactic Readiness score in Mass Effect 3. Upon the completion of the game, the player is rewarded with a new War Asset in their Mass Effect 3 game.

Story

The protagonist of Mass Effect Infiltrator is Cerberus operative Randall Ezno. At the opening of the game he is deployed to an ice planet, charged with bringing down a turian that Cerberus has marked for death. Upon returning to a Cerberus base known as The Barn, he is caught in a mass prisoner escape, and discovers that his advisor Inali is being horribly experimented on against her will. Randall must then battle his way across the installation, fighting Cerberus troops and escaped prisoners alike in order to rescue her and contact the Alliance to request a rescue.

Development

After releasing the first Mass Effect game, BioWare began prototyping a Mass Effect game influenced by the design Star Control, in parallel with the main Mass Effect trilogy. The concept evolved into Mass Effect: Corsair, a first-person spaceship game designed for the Nintendo DS. The story would have taken place in the Terminus Systems, featuring a Han Solo inspired character immersed in a pirate-controlled setting. However, Electronic Arts predicted low sales on the Nintendo DS, and the team was transitioned to developing Mass Effect Infiltrator for iOS, Android, and Blackberry.

Infiltrator was developed by IronMonkey Studios, after Bioware handed them the bulk of production and content creation. IronMonkey applied their experience from developing Dead Space for mobile platforms, allowing them to refine the game's engine and technical aspects. According to lead designer Jarrad Trudgen, the team "added post-processing and an advanced material system, giving our artists much more freedom to create variety and bigger, more open, and more detailed environments." The designers decided to focus on the action gameplay of the Mass Effect franchise, eschewing role-playing elements such as a dialog system.

Reception

Reviews of Mass Effect Infiltrator have generally been mixed, and the review aggregator Metacritic, which assigned scores as a weighted average of reviews, assigned Mass Effect Infiltrator a score of 68 based on 27 reviews. Slide To Play initially gave the game a poor review, criticizing the controls and noting that while the graphics are "detailed and highly impressive", the environments themselves were stale and repetitive. After the 1.0.3 update however, the review was updated to state that the game had "graduated from a clunky mess to a high-quality shooter." PCMag described it as "a decent enough game," praising the visuals but calling the combat repetitive and the controls tricky.