Prima Games eGuides Mass Effect 3 eGuide

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Mass Effect 3 eGuide Essentials Armaments and Armour

Attacking

Attacking

There are essentially three options you have when it comes to dealing with the enemy: using your guns, using your powers, and using your fists.

These are elements that are familiar to most series veterans, but there are some things that have changed that are worth going over here.

Guns, Guns, Guns

Using your weapons is as simple as pointing the camera where you want to shoot and pulling the trigger until the thermal clip needs to be ejected.

Guns can be fired with or without aiming down the sights, and there are actually good reasons to do either.

From the hip: While this is less accurate than aiming down the sights of a weapon, a major advantage is that you don’t lose foot speed, and recoil is not as severe.

Additionally, you don’t lose any situational awareness that comes from aiming down the sights; you retain a clearer picture of what is going on around you.

This is actually a solid engagement method at close range with any semiautomatic or fully automatic weapon.

Aiming down the sights: For medium- to long-range encounters, aiming down the sights of a weapon greatly increases your accuracy. If you’re trying to land headshots, this is how you’ll get the best results.

Sniper rifles in particular benefit from this with their high-powered scopes. Aiming down the sights does have its drawbacks.

You can’t sprint while doing this, and your walking speed is reduced, as is the speed with which you can move the camera to aim at new threats.

Recoil is more significant here, making sustained rapid-fire less accurate.

You also lose situational awareness as the camera zooms in closer to your intended victim; this is further compounded for the longer-ranged zooms available to a sniper rifle.

If the enemy is very close, avoid trying to sight in on them and either disengage and fall back or fire from the hip.

It’s important to know when to reload, when to switch to a new gun, and what gun to switch to. Generally, before any firefight, you want to have fully loaded weapons so you don’t get caught unprepared if you come across the enemy.