The box art, with Shepard, the male protagonist (as you can be a woman, too), in the centerDeveloper: BioWare
Publisher: Microsoft Game Studio
Genre: Action Role Playing GameIt seems to be that a number of RPGs of late have been playing out a lot like a choose your own adventure book – while you may want to go off adventuring, sacrificing the virgins also sounds pretty fun, too. Mass Effect, while without the sacrificial blessings of unholy gods, is another game following these tracks from the great developer BioWare, famous for such games as Jade Empire and that one Star Wars thing that everyone forgot to play. It’s safe to say that the old vets got it right, and they got it good.Firstly, the graphics are one thing that you’ll notice, and they are brilliant. The futuristic setting allows for some truly unique character and environment design, as well as some impressive special effects. The level of detail is also very great, with the weapons and characters almost springing to life, with Wrex in particular being fantastically well done. However, one may notice that non-story related environments are recycled, and that, as the graphics start out bad and get better to decrease loading times and lag, the textures may remain a little jarring for a bit, but that goes away in due time.Secondly, the sounds of the game is nice as well, mostly in that the voice acting is top-notch. Almost every person has a unique, or at least unique sounding, voice actor who brings personality to their character. Soundtracks all follow the same orchestral, sweeping suit, and serve their purpose well without being too memorable. Sound effects are very nice as well, with guns firing as realistic as sci-fi can get.
Saren, the main antagonist, standing in front of the Geth, evil robot doods that you kill a lot ofThe gameplay is the highlight of Mass Effect, thanks to a number of new features and an enjoyable combat system that always remains challenging without being too difficult.Your journey as either Sir or Ma’am Shepard begins with a mission to Eden Prime, an outstanding example of human prowess in a universe where humanity is loathed by many. What sounds like a normal mission quickly becomes complicated – you are to pick up a beacon from an ancient race whose creations, the Citadel and the Mass Relays, are still in use, 50,000 years after their death. Touching down, however, you find that the geth, the very race that wiped out the beacon’s creators, have come out of hiding and are now under command of the Spectre Saren who will stop at nothing to kill not only humanity, but all organic life.The introduction is great in that it quickly places you in control and gets you up to speed with almost ever feature of the game, including one of the most innovate features in Mass Effect and really of gaming general – real time conversation. When you engage someone in either friendly banter to aggressive interrogation, a wheel at the bottom appears with up to six choices for you to choose. Each one of these will have your character say something along those lines.For example, choosing “Yes†may make Shepard say “We’ll do our best, Admiral,†while choosing “I’ve got an idea†may make you pistolwhip someone. Once you figure out the contexts of the choices, it’s easy to decide if you want to be the nice guy or become infamous. The multiple options that each conversation features means that there are a number of ways to work things out, even beyond that of saying yes or no. You can twist people against each other, barging for a better deal, or simply choose to waste someone – it’s these choices that make you the player the main character and not some puppet, immersing you into the world wherein you are held responsible for your actions. It’s a feature that is sure to get you engrossed with the game.
An example of the conversation options - left options expand on the current topic, while the options on the right progress towards the end, with the responses being positive at the top and negative at the bottomAnother of the great features of the game is the strategic blend of real time combat and thoughtful decisions that have made other BioWare games so popular. While controlling Shepard in third person, firing your gun, you can pause combat to command your party to perform actions or to switch weapons, or even to just think things out for a moment. Like this, you could turn this game into a pseudo turn-based game, or just keep it a simple shooter. By combining these two playstyles, you’re sure to ensure that you can keep the gunplay while utilizing your powers and intelligence to its fullest.In combat, you must choose how you are going to kill your foes, as not doing so usually has some side effects. Thanks to one of six classes, three specializing in either gunplay, magic called ‘biotics’ or in engineering, and three classes that blend these styles together, you have a number of ways to take out your foes. While the guns are fun, biotics and engineering take the cake for being the most interesting – with biotics, you can throw and pick up people, or even create a singularity, while with engineering, you can hack storage containers or throw mines that shut down barriers, guns, and abilities.After killing a number of enemies, you’ll gain enough experience to level up your party. For every class and character, there are a number of different talents that you can invest points in to find new abilities and augment preexisting ones. It’s a lot of fun to play around with the new abilities and ways to build up your characters, though it is next to impossible to form a character who has no barrier or insane amounts of health, as they will die in the end game. It’s not a big issue, but it may screw those over who did not invest points in these skills early enough in defensive abilities later – make sure to buff those barriers!Unfortunately, a lot of the other elements are not as well polished as the combat and the conversations. One of the single most annoying elements is the Mako and everything associated with it. When dropped off on an unexplored planet, you take control of the Mako, a six-wheeled, all-terrain vehicle that, while having the ability to scale mountains, cannot fire more than 5 degrees off of zero. Due to this and the gratuitous amounts of fights you will have to fight in it, you will have to attack from level ground, level ground which is typically only available five feet away from the target. This leads to a lot failed attacks and a lot of anger – why, in the future, is a turret, mounted on a car that can withstand many times that of our own pressure and temperature extremes that can scale mountains, limited to a single, level plane? Seriously, that’s a real “WTF!?†there.
Looking at the Earth from the Moon, one of the most amazing sights in the game - if only if it wasn't from the seat of the [expletive]ing MakoAnother is the whole ‘hacking’ scene. You’ll come across another of files or objects that are sealed and must be decrypted or hacked in order to access them. To do this, you will either have to spend precious omni-gel, a multi-use substance that must be obtained from found items, or hack them via a Simon-Says-esque mini-game. It’s really just an annoyance that, while adding interactivity to the process, quickly gets annoying after hours of playing and hundreds of hackings later.Yet another issue is the menu navigation in that it is extremely clumsy and simply annoying. The radial menus combined with constant button changes, small text (at least on my relatively small, no HD display), and the fact that, when converting upgrades to omni-gel, the menu sends you back up to the top every. Single. Time, forcing to you slowly scroll back down to another item over and over again. It’s extremely aggravating, especially once you’ve reached you item limit and need to get rid of forty items.Another few issues are worth mentioning, albeit minor ones; the camera, when driving in the Mako especially, has a tendency to fly about and oftentimes inside of the character; a lot of the sidequests recycle the same environments, locations and scenarios; elevator rides are abundant, extremely long and relatively unnecessary; level design is extremely repetitive and oftentimes hard to navigate, with doors easy to miss; so much as glancing at a computer screen will dump pages of useless info in your codex and journal which is a pain to go through; thresher maw battles happen occasionally and, while breaking the flow of things, are pointless, annoying , and cheap in that they can instantly kill you or spawn in/on you; slowdown is very frequent, some being seemingly random or attributed to weather effects.The story is one of the more interesting things to talk about, because it is good while being bad at the same time. On one page, you have some interesting plotlines, relationships and twists that allow you to choose your own path and become one with the world, but, on the second page, it doesn’t seem all that interesting as a whole or very original. And, unfortunately, a lot of the twists are supposed to be moments that are memorable, yet they, for some reason, do not seem all that engaging, and, for some, some feel just like you’re selecting options and not actually there. There are highs and lows for the story, and what are defined as highs and lows are to be determined by the player – I personally found the important moments to be lows, but you may very well find other moments to be of a lesser quality.
A scene wherein you choose if the person on the left or right dies, as if it really mattered in the first place - note the fantastic water effects and ship in the background. Pay more attention to thatI think that the story may have been underwhelming, at least for me, due to that none of the characters seem dynamic or realistic. Over the course of the story, you don’t find yourself getting attached to the characters, leaving you to feel absolutely nothing for them beyond their usefulness in battle. There are, thankfully, three people whom you can build a relationship with, but, even at this point, it only serves to build up a bit of the backstory or explain a few references throughout the game, such as the stance on God in the universe or the Asari’s lack of a sex. In a few events, the life of a party member rests on your decisions, and, rather than being hard pressed to sacrifice someone, I simply dumped the person who I never used, not because I couldn’t bring myself to leaving the other to die, but only because there was nothing for me to consider for them, other than future battles. For an epic, this is an epic failure.All in all, Mass Effect is a great game. Between the interesting designs, the innovative conversation wheel and the addictive combat, you’re sure to be playing for a long while. However, a number of issues, from the Mako to a host of minor issues, make the otherwise great gameplay a little rough. Thankfully, the quality of the great outweighs the quantity of the bad, so you can be rest assured that Mass Effect will not be money wasted. It is definitely worth playing, but a host of issues that will hopefully be fixed in the two sequels make it a bit hard to recommend at full price.Oh, and if all of that doesn’t sell you on the game, there is ‘sex’ in it. Have fun with that.Presentation, 7/10: Some clunky menu design and constant button changes make navigating menus a chore, and the constant influx of wonton information will ensure that your codex will forever be marked with new content, and that it will never be read.
Graphics, 9/10: Between the fantastic designs and great detail, Mass Effect is a truly beautiful game. However, a number of recycled environments and rough-to-start textures mar it's otherwise perfect artwork.
Sound, 9/10: Great sound effects combined with a boatload of professional voice acting make this a great game to listen to. However, the music outside of cutscenes is not too memorable, but serves its purpose well.
Gameplay, 8/10: A tricky score in that the story may be debatable. Still though, the gameplay mechanics make fighting a smooth, fun experience, so long as its outside of the Mako, and the innovative conversation options make even simple side quests play out like a pop-up book. It's only unfortunate that the characters are not as dynamic as one would have hoped.
Lasting Appeal, 7/10: Once you've beat the game, you may want to play it once through again as another class, being a good or bad guy. However, after this, there is nothing really left to do, and you may not find yourself picking up this game ever again.Total Score, 40/50: Mass Effect is a great RPG in that, between great design, fun combat and an innovate way to deal with conversations, brings the genre into a new age. However, an abundance of issues, including the horrid Mako and an underwhelming story, make this a game that, while worth playing, isn't all that it's cracked up to be. Thankfully, as there are two planned sequels, the issues that plague this edition will fixed.
The driving with the bloody thing is so bad, getting stuck like this or being dropped off in a place where your squad can't move out of is a normal and gamebreaking occurrence. My hate for this thing is like a truck, and it's about to plow into a crib. I hate driving in the Mako with a passion. I'd insert the best quote of the game here, but I can't remember anything in it besides the joy of pistolwhipping an annoying interviewer. So, I'll put that."*Pistolwhip*"