Bioware just released the Mass Effect 3 demo last Valentine’s Day and the multiplayer feature went online on February 17, 2012. Many players were not happy on the announcement of Mass Effect 3 will be having a multiplayer feature as some felt that it would destroy the context of the game and some think that Bioware wanted to follow the multiplayer success of Gears of War 3’s Horde mode.

We tried playing the mulitplayer mode in the demo to see if the game still retains the same gameplay feel that from the single player mode.

At first we are also unsure if this new feature to the game will have a great effect to it. If you have played the multiplayer Horde mode of Gears of War 3 or maybe the Survival mode of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, the objective is to survive more than ten waves of enemy assault against you and your team, as each wave you progress, the difficulty gets harder. at a certain wave, there will be mission objectives that you need to accomplish, ranging from eliminate a specific target to hacking a computer terminal up to escaping to the extraction point.

Another interesting part here is the character development, after successful missions, you will earn experience points for your character where you can improve their abilities, this is a good concept to keep the players on playing, how well you performed during the mission will determine the amount of experience you will earn, from number of kills, assists, headshots and even number of revives to your squadmates. Another part that I like with the multiplayer is that not all races have the same skill set in a specific character class; for example, there are skills that will be available for the Asari Vanguard that from the Drell Vanguard and Human Vanguard, this gives the players more options to choose on their preferred role. You will also earn credits that you can use in purchasing item packs, these are like booster packs in card games where each pack will give you a specific number of random items, the more expensive the pack is, the better your chance in landing a good quality item, these items ranges from powerups that will be enhanced your abilities and stats for a single mission, consumable items like medigels where you can revive yourself when killed during the mission and weapon add-ons where you can ehance your weapons from improved damage, additional ammo and zoomed aiming.

And of course one of the main aspect of the multiplayer is teamwork, playing with proper coordination will ensure victory to your missions, since every wave of enemies, the number increases as well as new enemy unit spawns in the map with different AI behaviors such as the Phantom unit that can become invisible and the Atlas; the giant bulky assault mech that takes times to pin down before it can wipe out your whole team.

After playing it for days, we really got hooked with the multiplayer mode, I’m quite impressed on how Bioware managed to keep the multiplayer faithful to the core gameplay of the singleplayer version. The concept for the multiplayer may not be that original, but they managed to keep it more entertaining that even some players who were not happy of having this in the game would give it a second chance and will eventually enjoy it. As for me, I’m quit satisfied that Bioware never disappoint their fans with this inclusion to their highly anticipated game.

The demo only has Cerberus as the selected enemies as well as two maps available for the multiplayer, and we are expecting that Bioware will surprise us with more maps and game modes available in the retail version.

Mass Effect 3 will be available for the PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 on March 6.