The third installment of Electronic Arts (EA) 7 Bioware’s game series — Mass Effect 3 — is now out! The release date is today — March 6, 2012. Check out the demo if you haven’t yet!

This role-playing (RPG), action game is just as fantastic as Mass Effect 2 and Mass Effect 1. In fact, there’s a lot of familiarity that is easily recognized by fans who have played the previous two games in the trilogy as Commander Shepard. This game is available on Windows PC computers, as well as Xbox (X360) and PlayStation 3 (PS3) consoles. The multiplayer co-op is a nice feature too through PSN (PlayStation Network) and XBL (Xbox Live). On Xbox, you can even use Kinect.

Also available is the From Ashes DLC that’s included with the Collector’s Edition of the game. It includes an extra character, mission, and outfits for your Mass Effect III.

If you preordered the game, you can get the M55 Argus Assault Rifle and N7 Warfare Gear. If you don’t have it yet, get it through Steam (when/if available) or Origin. Something cool that is seen in this version are the Reinforcement packs — or supplies that drop as you earn them for multiplayer matches. They include weapons, health, etc. Also available is the Deluxe Edition.

There are Mass Effect 3 errors. When a patch or several patches come out, they’ll likely fix a lot of your issues, but until then, follow our Mass Effect 3 game fixes guide to help you troubleshoot and solve all your game problems.

Multiplayer Not Working

If you can’t connect to play multiplayer, then it may not necessarily be the game’s fault. If you use a firewall, then be sure to ALLOW the game’s EXE to connect to the internet. When in doubt, temporarily disable the firewall to see if the connection is possible then. Another problem of course could be that your router (if you use one) has the ports blocked or simply not opened. Be sure to open the required ports for both inbound and outbound traffic — TCP and UDP ports 3659 and 6000. UPNP (universal plug and play) also must be enabled on your router (this is true for not only the PC version of the game, but also the Xbox 360 and PS3 versions too). Note that the PlayStation version also uses ports 3659 and 6000. You can use port forwarding too.

Mass Effect 3 Lagging

Do you have lag or stuttering? There can be significant drops in the frame rate and overall frames per second (FPS) in this game resulting in a choppy framerate, especially in the busier scenes. The obvious solution is to lower your game settings (Anti-Aliasing / AA, Resolution, etc). Disabling VSYNC is generally helpful, as well as upgrading your video card drivers. These updated drivers often not only include bug fixes, but allow for an increased framerate and overall performance improvement.

Mass Effect 3 Crashes / Mass Effect Freezing

Some users experience more crashes with older video card drivers so try updating them to the newest version. Note that some applications also cause complications with games so try exiting and disabling what is unnecessary. The typical Affinity hacks are available (load Task Manager and set the Mass Effect process Affinity to Core 0 and Core 1 — or just Core 0) but as usual I don’t recommend them.

Mass Effect 3 No Sound

Have no audio or music while playing the game? This is an issue most commonly associated with surround sound headphones / headsets (the microphone will likely not work too in this case) or a 7.1 or 5.1 speaker setup or configuration. Set your setup to 2.1. If that doesn’t help, then try the following:

Go to My Computer > Control Panel > Sounds & Audio Devices > Volume > Speaker Settings > Advanced > Performance.

Here, lower your Sample Rate Conversion Quality in order to turn off Hardware Acceleration for sound.

You can also turn off Hardware Sound Acceleration through Start > Run — type in “DXDIAG” (without quotes). Go to the “DirectX Features” tab and turn off the acceleration.

Game Controller Not Working Mass Effect 3

Be sure to plugin your USB game controller BEFORE you open the game rather than after.

Black Screen / Failure to Launch

If your game fails to launch, crashes, or shows a black screen after you open it, then try…
— Lower your resolution
— If using multiple monitors, disable all but one
— Set the game’s compatibility mode to Windows XP (right click the game’s EXE -> properties -> compatibility mode tab)
— Launch the game’s EXE directly instead of through the shortcut that was created

Mass Effect 3 Fails to Activate

As we all know, the game will not activate until the date of release. Sometimes, especially depending on your timezone, this may not be possible until a little later passed the release date. Be patient and allow up to a couple of days for it to activate. This should in fact solve the activiation problem.

Can’t Import Mass Effect 2 Saved Data

Mass Effect 3 may not be detecting the location of your save files correctly (and may not recognize your character’s face construction properly). Try putting them directly into the root of the saves folder OR try making a new directory for your saved data within the saved folder.

You can also try going to:
C:\\Users\\USERNAME\\Documents\\BioWare\\Mass Effect 3\\BIOGame\\Config\\

Using notepad or whatever editor you’d like, open the file gamersettings.ini and locate the following text:

[SaveGames]
Location=

After “Location=” put the path to your Mass Effect 2 save folder.

Change Mass Effect 3 Field of Vision (FoV)

Want to alter the FoV of Mass Effect 3? The following file will let you change your Field of Vision, but certain FoV’s make cut scenes make look a bit glitched.
You can use this modified Coalesced.bin to toggle between different FoV’s through the numpad keys.
Place the file in \\Origin\\Mass Effect 3\\BIOGame\\CookedPCConsole\\
Thanks 64fanatic

Load Mass Effect 2 Xbox 360 Saved Data On To PC

You can actually get the Mass Effect 2 saved data from your Xbox 360 console and load it on to the PC, which is useful if you beat Mass Effect 2 on your console, but decided to get Mass Effect 3 on the PC. Rather than reinvent the wheel here, I recommend taking a look at the following directions on transferring your saved data.

Hardware / System Requirements

Minimum Spec:
OS – Windows XP SP3/Vista SP1, Win 7
*Supported chipsets: NVIDIA 7900 or even better OR ATI X1800 +. NVIDIA GeForce 9300, 8500, 8400, and 8300 are below the minimum system requirements, as well as AMD/ATI Radeon HD3200, HD3300, and HD4350 graphics cards.

CPU – 1.8 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo (equivalent AMD CPU)
RAM – 1GB for XP / 2GB RAM for Vista/Win 7
Disc Drive – 1x speed
Hard Drive – 2.5 GB of free space
Video – 256 MB* (with Pixel Shader 3.0 support)
Sound – DirectX 9.0c compatible
DirectX – DirectX 9.0c August 2009 (included)

Recommended Spec:
OS – Windows XP SP3/Vista SP1, Win 7
CPU – 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo (equivalent AMD CPU)
RAM – 2GB for XP / 4GB RAM for Vista/Win 7
Disc Drive – 1x speed
Hard Drive – 2.5 GB of free space
Video – AMD/ATI Radeon HD 4850 512 MB or greater, NVidia GeForce 9800 GT 512 MB or greater
Sound – DirectX 9.0c compatible