Mass Effect 3 demo out today, also gives free Xbox Live Gold upgrade for a few days

Also going to pre-order this weekend - the collector's edition no less. I wants that bad-ass art book and swag.

The multiplayer part of the demo is now accessible, gonna check it out.

Hereticus, boycott playing Mass Effect 3 multiplayer with Sketch until he buys The Old Republic.

Also, Razer has some deal with EA/Bioware to make peripherals. Like with SWTOR, they've made some ME3 ones. The 360 gamepad actually looks friggin' awesome.

Okay been playing the multiplayer part of the demo for the last hour or so.

It's good. Really really good. It's like an objective based Horde mode, which means teamwork is far more integral to a good outing than your Horde 2.0 in GOW3.
You can customise your character even more so than you could with your Spartan in Reach, and the best thing is that as you play you can unlock new races to play as, who actually have different abilities even if you're the same class. For example, a Krogan soldier seems to have attacks that a Human soldier doesn't. Plus you can specialise your weapons to your tailoring, choose your gun loadout... it's great. It really can make you unique.

More customization than Halo? Granted Halo has never been known for customizations, but that's pretty cool.

At the start you can choose your base colour, and then a tint to your armor. So you can just be a flat green or a green with a yellow metallic. Then you can unlock patterns and decals (fatigue, stripes) on your armor which you can also edit the colours of. And of course, you dictate your race.

Then you have the weapons - your character has 5 available slots on their body to hold weapons but at lower levels you'll only have the weight capacity to hold 2 weapons. But there's numerous models of each type of weapons. For example I've got two different sniper rifles now which handle differently: one can take more shots without having to reload but does less damage, while my other can only take one shot before it needs a reload, but if I get a headhsot it'll knock an unshielded enemy down to 10% health in one shot.
And then you can unlock customisations for each weapon type on top of that to tinker with them, such as a bayonet I can attatch on the end of a shotgun to increase my melee attacks.

Getting to checkpoints in the missions (level 5 and level 10 are the ones that seem to pay out) gives you credits to buy these weapons caches which will give you random goods; from one-and-done boosts like special ammo, rockets or a med kit you can heal yourself with in a game, to new weapons or even a race unlock.

It makes me curious if in the full game you'll be even able to mess with your actual armor type.

You should check out Gotham City Imposters too. Pretty decent customization there as well, especially for an XBLA game (Cowls, Capes, Batman symbol, gloves, Bodytype (Each bodytype has pros/cons (Speed, health, etc.)).

EDIT: Just played the demo. Still need to learn the controls (Couldn't switch between weapons very easily). It was fun, we made it to wave 10 then got crushed before the hack was complete.

Do you get to keep bonus stuff with the demo, or do you lose it? I ask because I was playing with a level 65 person. Seems like a waste of his time if otherwise.

The card pack thing is cool, it's the same with Gotham City Imposters, only instead of buying cards you earn them in multiplayer. It didn't seem like customization was that much, other than the different races.

Yeah I'm not sure why you can't pull up a real time power wheel to change weapons or map powers, but I got used to it quickly enough.

Holding X switches your weapons, and since I'm only using 2 at the moment it's not a problem, though I imagine if you get to a weight capacity to hold more cycling through them is going to a bitch. I haven't found a more direct way to select a weapon though, you?

I don't think you'll get to hold whatever you've unlocked in the demo or your level.
As for the customisation, there's a lot you can unlock.

Do you earn credits for card packs in-game or just in multi?

Anyway, I thought you were gonna hop on to play ME3 multi with me? I mean, I woulda ignored you and continued playing Gotham City Imposters. . .But it's the thought that counts.

Finally, backup has arrived.

How have you been finding the multiplayer?

For sure

I need to learn the weapon equipment system for multi. Seems like it could have been made TONS more intuitive then whatever the fuck it currently is?

Like why do I have 2 mod slots but can only use 1 mod at a time? Is it a level thing?

People keep saying the customization is huge, am I missing something? All I see is:

Class > Race > Armor Color > Armor Pattern

Is there some sub panels I'm overlooking? Can I pick a different helmet, shoulder pads, etc?

Jimmy you're such a bad.