Test System & Game Options
Our review will be focusing on only the PC version of the game as Techreaction.net focuses more on PC then consoles (No disrespect to console players). That being said the game’s recommended PC specs are:
- Windows XP / Vista / Windows 7 OS
- A 2.4 Intel Core 2 Duo processor or higher / AMD Equivalent (translation: AMD Athlon X2)
- 2 GB of Ram for XP / 4 GB of Ram for Vista or Win 7
- 15 GB of free hard drive space
- AMD / ATI Radeon HD 4850 video card or higher / Nvidia GeForce 9800 GT or higher
- Windows 7 64 bit SP1
- Intel i7 W3520 Processor
- Asus P6T6 WS Revolution Motherboard
- Evga Nvidia GTX 480 (Drivers: 301.24 beta /296.10 WHQL / 295.73 WHQL )
- G-Skill Trident 2000hz 6GB (3×1) RAM (running at 1700hz, Timings: 8-8-8-21, t1)
- Creative Titanium X-Fi Sound Card
- Asus 27 in VG278H 3D Display
The system specs of the test system we used for our review is as follows:
Game Options
Compared to other PC games, the menu options, in terms of visuals, are a bit scare overall which would make some think the game is a console port. Veterans of the Mass Effect franchise however will be familiar with the menu options, and not be so quick to scream port.
There are two ways to access the game’s options. The first, and most simple, is to launch the game, and go into the game’s settings which can be found under the “Extras” selection in the main menu. From there you then go to the “Options” selection where you will find options to change the difficulty of the game, brightness, basic video, and audio settings.
The second way, and the way we would recommend to anyone wanting a more in depth selection of video options, is to launch the game’s Config Launcher. To do this first locate your Origin Games folder on your PC (since the game can only be obtained, and accessed via Origin). After locating the aforementioned folder you then go: Mass Effect 3 Folder->Binaries Folder-> MassEffect3Config.exe. From there you can change the game’s video, and audio options.
The video options you are given are: Windowed (Full Screen, Window Mode, Borderless, Normal, Default), Aspect Ratio, Resolution, Anti Aliasing (On/ Off. Level of AA is not given as a choice), Motion Blur (On/Off), Dynamic Shadows (On/Off), Number of Cinematic Lights (Default, 1, 2, or 3), Use Spherical Harmonic Lighting (Default, On/Off), and Anisotrophic Filtering (Default, On, 2x, 4x, 8x, 16x). V-sync by default is enabled, and there is no option within the in game settings, or Config Launcher to disable it. To many frame rate whores this will be a turn off. No worries though. If you want to disable V-sync, and aren’t afraid to tweak a few things in the game’s settings files, you can go to C:\Users\YourUsername\Documents\BioWare\Mass Effect 3\BIOGame\Config\GamerSettings.ini, and add useVsync=False and SmoothFramerate=False to the bottom of the [SystemSettings] section. It is recommended that you save the original GamerSettings.ini somwhere handy just in case a screw up while editing happens and you need the original. There was a rumor that doing any kind of editing to the game’s files would result in a ban of you playing any games on Origin. In reality this is BS. You won’t get banned by doing this file edit.
