Mass Effect's weird hacking minigames are in a virtual museum now
They're rubbish, but I love them so
If you fancy having a go at Mass Effect's daft hacking minigames without loading up BioWare's big old space RPG, then look no further. Someone has made a virtual museum with recreations of the hacking puzzles from both Mass Effect 1 and Mass Effect 2. It's inspired by the virtual lock picking museum I reported on a few months back - a post in which I said the exact words: "I’d love to see a hacking museum with all the awful minigames from Mass Effect."
This is the second time I've managed to will Mass Effect news into existence, and at this point I'm scaring myself.
Like the lockpicking museum before it, the Museum Of Mass Effect Minigames is a virtual showcase of game mechanics. It was made by Phoebe Shalloway on Itch.io, and you can try it out for free right here.
I was actually surprised by the first hacking minigame on offer, because I've never actually played it. Truth is, my only experience with Mass Effect 1 is on console, and I had no idea the game had a specific hacking puzzle that was limited to PC. Alec Meer (RPS in peace) compared it to a rubbish version of Frogger in his worst hacking minigames post, which yep, that is indeed the best way to describe it. Check it out in the video below.
On console that Frogger-style game was replaced by a kind of "Simon Says" thing where you had to press a sequence of buttons to do the hack. It was equally daft. Why does anyone bother locking things with this stuff in the Mass Effect universe? They'd probably have fewer break-ins if they just used a lock and key.
The other minigames in the virtual museum are both from Mass Effect 2. You've got the hack where you have to match up segments of code - replicated here by matching nice pictures of trees and rocks. Then there's the bypass minigame where you have to match symbols to complete a circuit. The symbols here include things like eyes and sparkles, and it all looks a tiny bit occult. I dig the aesthetic, to be honest.
It's a pretty basic museum, but it's cool to see all the minigames in one place. Going through them all I can't help but wonder if we'll see more weird hacking puzzles in the next Mass Effect game, which BioWare revealed they were working on a few weeks ago. I just hope they don't bring back the weird sudoku Mass Effect: Andromeda made us do.
If you fancy checking out the Museum Of Mechanics: Lockpicking, that can also be found for free on Itch. It's had a few updates since last I tried it, adding minigames from the likes of The Testament of Sherlock Holmes and Splinter Cell.