Mass Effect 3 cover-camping a no-no on Hardcore, Insanity

By Robert Purchese Published 31 January, 2012

"You'd better be doing everything well, or you'll die."

Apparently I'll need to do more when playing Mass Effect 3 on Hardcore or Insanity difficulties than cower behind cover and pop up every so often to fling a biotic ability or loose a round of ammo, safe in the knowledge that my Krogan ally-plus-one have taken care of everything else.

"On Normal you'll be able to power your way or shoot your way through the game. But when you try Hardcore or Insanity you're not going to be able to do that any more," lead designer Preston Watamaniuk warned OXM (via VG247).

"You really will have to think about each combat; who the enemies are, what kind of resistance you're presented with, and then strategise to take them down. I'm hoping that it'll feel like you made a mistake and the game called you on it, rather than, 'I thought I was playing well, and then I died.'

shepard

He was a good Shepard. Just saying.

"We've tried to make it so that it just feels like if you're working the problem - using all your squad, all your powers, picking the right guns - you're going to get through that combat.

"It's not going to be, 'I sat in cover and popped out five or six times to use powers and stuff.'"

What's more, the Insanity difficulty will be harder than in previous games.

Peer pressure, explained Watamaniuk: "I had a lead designer for another game write to say, 'Make Insanity harder!' And I was like, 'OK!' This was a really well-known and respected guy, so I was like, 'OK, I'll do my best.'"

I hope it wasn't Shigeru Miyamoto - he's supposed to be busy making Nintendo's next big hit! I wonder if it was Dark Souls' director Hidetaka Miyazaki, or Skyrim's game director Todd Howard?

"It's not going to be, 'I sat in cover and popped out five or six times to use powers and stuff.'"

Preston Watamaniuk, lead designer, Mass Effect 3

Watamaniuk went on: "You'll notice that if you play on Insanity, that sort of general rule of thumb is even harsher. You'd better be doing everything well, or you'll die."

As we've waffled-on about before, baddies in Mass Effect 3 come in more shapes and sizes - and with more tricks up their sleeves - than in they did in Mass Effect 2 or Mass Effect 1. Some of them even carry shields that block bullets! So you'll need to get up off your bottom and flank them if you're serious about saving Earth. And no it's not unfair, because you'll get more goodies with which to tackle them.

"There's all the cover mobility, there's increased mobility in and out of cover, like being able to Storm out of cover, roll into cover, roll out of cover - a lot more agility around that," explained Watamaniuk.

"We have more involved powers, power combos, mods and the mods interact with the powers. Being able to take a Claymore shotgun and put a Shredder mod that allows you to penetrate through enemies, and then you put Cryo ammo on top of that, and all of a sudden you can pull the trigger once and blow four husks away."

A Mass Effect 3 demo will be released on Valentine's Day - Tuesday, 14th February.

The classes you can pick from when playing Mass Effect 3's co-op multiplayer mode.

Picture of Robert.

About Robert Purchese

Bertie is Eurogamer's Senior Staff Writer. When he's not hunting down news stories he's often found playing with his kids or gabbling about fantasy games and strange online worlds. @Clert on Twitter.

Read more articles from Robert by visiting the Robert Purchese archive page.

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Comments (35) Latest comment 4 months ago

Comments for this article are now closed, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • Ahskay #1 4 months ago

    Sounds rather good actually.

  • WillyWongler #2 4 months ago

    Looking forward to this. I do like a hard game that isn't unreasonable. For example, the Call Of Duty Veteran modes were always about giving you paper bullets and hitting checkpoints rather than actual skill and tactical play.

  • Heitzu #3 4 months ago

    I realise this is for the hardest difficulty but if there's one thing that annoys me more than anything else in a cover based shooter, its a cover based shooter that hates you using cover...

    Also I just called Mass Effect a cover based shooter... :(

  • seeafish #4 4 months ago

    @WillyWongler CoD4 on veteran = FUUUUUUUUUUUUU-
    It wasn't challenging, it wasn't fun, it was just ridiculously buggy and unfair. I felt like shredding the disc once I beat it...

  • Bulbatron #5 4 months ago

    Anything to get rid of husks more easily would be welcome. They were a real pain in the arse in Mass Effect 2.

  • GiarcYekrub #6 4 months ago

    I did enjoy doing insanity ME1 and ME2(well appart from that annoying battle round the transmitter)

  • nickthegun #7 4 months ago

    If the levels are as narrow as ME2, the enemies are going to have a hard time flanking you out of cover, so presumably they are going to resort to being cheap instead.

  • Old_Books #8 4 months ago

    I seem to have inadvertently walked in on the Gears of Mass Effect article. Anyone know where the ME3 one has gone, you know, that RPG that was supossed to be getting released??:-)

  • GavinUK86 #9 4 months ago

    Never liked Hard difficulty modes in any game so that doesn't bother me but I like how the upgrade system seems to be more in depth this time around, ME1 system was much better than ME2 so im hoping ME3 is somewhere in between maybe.
    Edited by GavinUK86 at 31/01/12 @ 12:56

  • KKRT #10 4 months ago

    Better be hard, because Insanity in ME 3 was a joke.

    It would be even better if Insanity was balanced for NG+ characters.

  • KKRT #11 4 months ago

    Grr ME 2 of course*

  • Nico4 #12 4 months ago

    Great!

  • kangarootoo #13 4 months ago

    I am clearly getting old. "Insanity mode" for me is forgetting where I've left my car keys three times in one afternoon.

  • Cjail #14 4 months ago

    I loved ME 2, and I played it only at Hardcore and Insanity, but frankly there were moments at insanity in which frustration was inevitable because the squad AI was not very "helpful".
    Really no matter how much planning and thinking ahead you did there was always a moment in which one of you squad-mates did something unpredictably stupid: order Miranda to move to cover...and she walks right under the Praetorian and get smashed.

  • Dejinator #15 4 months ago

    I reckon it was Cliffy B.

  • kassmageant #16 4 months ago

    "You really will have to think about each combat; who the enemies are, what kind of resistance you're presented with, and then strategise to take them down. I'm hoping that it'll feel like you made a mistake and the game called you on it, rather than, 'I thought I was playing well, and then I died.' - aaaaand how is that any diffrent from ME2 on insanity? : p

  • WillyWongler #17 4 months ago

    @seeafish It was crazy wasn't it. It had nothing to do with good shooting. I had to approach it like I was figuring out puzzles in Braid. That Mile High Club achievement gave me the courage to tackle other ridiculously hard stuff in other games.

  • CFacto #18 4 months ago

    CoD World at War was harder than CoD 4 on Veteran. One level near the end has left me with permanent mental scars.

    I'm still not clear on how ME3 Insanity will be different. There were enemies who could blow you out of cover in ME2 with biotics or rockets, and I found it pretty damn hard except when playing as a Soldier and spamming Adrenaline Rush headshots.

  • Sonic_D #19 4 months ago

    ME2 on Insanity exposed clunky mechanics that were not really noticable on Normal. It also exposed stupid AI when there were enemies around that could one shot kill them. Hopefully they will sort out these issues as well as increasing the difficulty.

    IMO the game that dealt best with the camping behind cover issue is Vanquish where often enemies would have an attack that could go over cover or the cover itself would be whittled down or destroyed. It balanced this by giving you the jet slide and bulllet time mechanics. It reamins my fave 3rd person cover shooter.

  • MattEdWithCheese #20 4 months ago

    I'm don't think that our Lord and Saviour Jesus H Christ gets enough of a billing on this website, bless you Bertie!

    @CFacto The Treyarch CoD games are known for having areas with respawning enemies, I doubt that Bioware will do the same...

  • FarbrorBaku #21 4 months ago

    Wait what? Is there a cover system in mass effect?
    I was too busy beating everything too death with my vanguard to notice! *Smug*

  • CFacto #22 4 months ago

    @MattEdWithCheese Sorry my post was not written very clearly. The first paragraph was in response to the CoD discussion; the second paragraph was comparing ME3 to ME2. I agree that Bioware don't use respawning enemies to artifically increase difficulty. Thank God...

  • photoboy #23 4 months ago

    Insanity on ME2 wasn't too bad, but it did have a couple of ridiculous difficulty spikes. The last section of "rescuing" Jacob's father had one of those large robots and a bunch of guys hidden behind foliage that could still see you. It wouldn't have been too bad except there were only two cover positions and one of them was really awkward to aim around.

    The other bastard level was the one where you had to fight off Varrens and stop them eating an injured Quarian. On Insanity they just wouldn't go down quick enough and my team mates decided to be utterly useless. I did it in the end, but it took a lot of retries!

    As long as ME3's Insanity doesn't have any bits like that, it should be great!

  • guernican #24 4 months ago

    I only play everything on Insanity.

    It's the default setting here in Arkham.

  • Gecks #25 4 months ago

    i'm replaying mass effect 2 on insanity at the moment, and it has to be said that if they want to make the combat less reliant on cover-humping, they need to increase your HP/shields. currently if i'm out of cover for longer than a few seconds i'm dead, so there's no point doing anything other than.. launching a power.. wait for it recharge.. launching it again.. maybe shoot for a few seconds.. use tech armour :/

    also, it's annoying how ALL the enemies focus on you rather than your allies, making it impossible to do any flanking of your own :( plus none of your allies seem to be able to use the sniper rifle except at close range!?

    that said, i do really like the combat in ME2. it's hard, and makes you actually think about your options rather than just tank through everything. all they need to do is make you a bit more resilient, and make the enemies not just sit behind cover, or file towards you one by one.
    Edited by Gecks at 31/01/12 @ 14:12

  • phantasma #26 4 months ago

    @MattEdWithCheese:
    The Treyarch CoD games are known for having areas with respawning enemies, I doubt that Bioware will do the same...
    Bioware already did that, remember Dragon Age 2?

    Speaking of which, Mass Effect 3 is the first game i won't preorder, i'm not overly emotional about bad games but Dragon Age 2 really burnt my faith in Bioware.

  • superflyninja #27 4 months ago

    Im really saddened by the fact that the news dripfeed of ME3 is all about shooting. No harm in improving the mechanic sure but Im now quiet sceptical that ME3 will even be a proper RPG.

  • TwinPeaksBob #28 4 months ago

    @GiarcYekrub In a interview with Xbox World lastsummer, Casey Hudson said that the levels would be bigger. This is from a Kotaku article covering the interview: "3. Those worlds are going to be big.
    Reapers are big. In order to have accommodate fights with them, or even having them nearby means designing levels much larger than the usual spaceship corridors that make up a large portion of Mass Effect's locales. Many of levels will include more open spaces. BioWare plans to make the shift in a way a dramatic way, claiming that some levels that are not only larger than anything ever seen in a Mass Effect game, but larger than any game built with the Unreal Engine." Link: http://kotaku.com/5800972/five-new-mass-effect-3-details-you-might-want-to-hear

  • jetsetwillie #29 4 months ago

    @superflyninja and what is a proper RPG. does it need elves and swords. is that what your saying. and what the fuck does it matter if a game doesnt fall neatly into a 25 year old genre trope. things change. also long as the game is fun what does it matter
    Edited by jetsetwillie at 31/01/12 @ 14:47

  • CORIANA_SIX #30 4 months ago

    i shall be playing story mode...woosy style!

  • Chazmeister #31 4 months ago

    And so yet another developer jumps on the rapidly expanding "our game is hard too" bandwagon. Dark Souls has got a lot to answer for.

    Frankly I couldn't care less, I usually play on medium to medium hard. I just don't have the time or the patience to keep dying over and over again. That's just plain masochistic.

  • Bremenacht #32 4 months ago

    pew

  • Farzlepot #33 4 months ago

    There's only two ways developers can increase difficulty really. Vastly improved artificial intelligence, with enemies learning and adapting to your tactics with more speed and efficiency at each level. Or having them cheat with more hit points. The former is fantastic, the latter sucks, and most go for the latter. I hope Bioware aren't among them.

  • superflyninja #34 4 months ago

    @gotyourmoney sounds good to me!!! Id buy that for a dollar!

  • franco214 #35 4 months ago

    I am properly stoked for this game now! A sensible use and application of difficulty is rare, usually we are stuck with more enemies and ineffective bullets. Can't wait to see if they manage to pull it off.