In Mass Effect, you are able to create your own character and make your own choices so it's not really about one specific person, it's more about yourself. The plot has more to do with you and your ragtag group of space explorers solving the problems of the universe, more specifically a problem that has the potential to wipe out the existence of all living organisms.
Gameplay
+ Time to lock and load - In Mass Effect, you are able to utilize guns and/or "biotics" which are essentially force/telekinetic powers. What you're able to use depends on your class though. There's a class for every play style; all guns, all biotics, defensive biotics with ranged weapons and offensive bitotics with short-range power-house guns.
The battles within the game are extremely short. Not in the way that there's not so much to kill but rather that the game seems to guide the battles down a more realistic path. Enemies don't really put up much resistance to your weapons and you don't either. At the very least, it's like that for the majority of the game especially at the beginning. When you first start playing, you're probably going to expect it to play out like Gears of War or some other third-person shooter where you're used to taking damage, shrugging it off and then moving into a more strategic location. This is not the case of Mass Effect. You need to make sure you know where the enemies are and you know where to go to take the least damage, for you and your teammates. Otherwise, you'll end up running into cover, aiming at someone and then you'll notice that for some reason, you're only one shot away from death.
That being said, it may be hard in the beginning to acclimate to the pace and style of firefights in Mass Effect but you'll get used to it and it'll help shape how you handle the rest of the game. Then every battle will be quick and decisive with all of the victories landing in your favor.
+ Hug a skill-tree - On to the RPG side of things. You got your basic skill trees. Every time you go up a level, you will be able to place points into a specific skill for your character. These skills range from hacking, biotic powers, being adept with specific weaponry, etc. As you raise in level, you are also given less points so you need to think about which skills to master and which skills to buffer. You can't have them all. On top of that, you can affect your character's stats with mods for your armor, weapons, etc.
= I can feel the power flowing through me... - Biotics are interesting. While there are even classes built around biotics, they can feel rather boring or useless. In the beginning of the game, as you will be putting your points into many other skills, biotics will come off as rather weak and ineffective compared to just killing the enemy as quickly as possible with your guns. They only become very useful when maxed out and by that time, you'll already be killing foes instantly with your insane weaponry. I forgot I even had biotics. If you choose to use them strategically though, they show a bit more use. You can use biotics to lift enemies from cover, push them away, cover yourself with kinetic shielding, and more. I only found a really good use for two of them and one of those only became useful at the very end of the game which would be the kinetic shield. It's a good thing I maxed it out or I would have been screwed. It's cool that they're there and it brings something different to the table but it just felt like it wasn't implemented very well. Unless you had more than one biotic user in your party. Then it's sheer chaos for all who oppose you! Except for when you're all waiting for a recharge on your biotics... Then you're screwed.
+ Make your choice - Mass Effect 2 is about choice and how your choices change and shape the future. Most of the game you'll be tasked with relatively small decisions such as if you want to bring so-and-so along with you on a certain quest, do you want be a jerk to this person, etc. As you progress though, you'll be tasked with larger and larger decisions; Do you want to let this person live? Do you want to wipe this race off the face of the universe? They gain much more weight and they tend to stray into the gray area. You will care a lot about the choices you make and what the outcome will be when you make that choice. The other side of your choices is that they are to stay with you as you move through the series. Mass Effect is supposed to be a trilogy and every choice you make determines what path you go down in the sequel and the finale. That's a lot of weight and pressure to put on someone. And from what it seems, they do carry a bit of weight. I guess we'll see in the review for the sequel but, wow, are the consequences of your actions heavy.
- Never have money when you need it... - Things are expensive in Mass Effect. And they're things that you REALLY need. When you see the prices at the start of the game, you are floored by how much armor and weapons cost. You have no idea how to get that much cash. Then you start to get large sums of money. And towards the end, you have ginormous amounts of cash. It was so unbalanced. You get shafted for the beginning of the game since you have to rely on your crappy skills and low-end armor and guns, then you automatically go straight to top-class and money becomes useless. It's a barrier that more casual players might have a hard time getting through, turning them off from the game early on.
- SAVE ME! - Most important advice you can get about playing this game: Save as often as you can. Remember that. Why that might be a hard thing to remember is because Mass Effect does have an auto-save feature. This will make you think that it's saving after every major event or so. It's not. It only saves when you go to a new world or other rare occurrences. Good job, you found new minerals and elements, you found 3 lost technologies, you fended off 2 ambushes that would have decimated any lesser being, you saved a planet and... Oh, you died? You say it took you an hour to do?... Oh, you didn't save... Have fun doing it again!
The other factor that makes saving often hard to do is the game's reluctance to let you save. It will choose the oddest places and times to not let you save. And it'll do it often. For an RPG where you could have a conversation with an NPC for 20 minutes and go up 2 levels while it advertises the fact that it has an auto-save feature, it better damn well be saving after every quest completed, every quest item collected and conversation completed. Or at least have the decency to let me save WHENEVER I want.
- I wanna hold your hand- Ew, it's sweaty! Nevermind.... - I don't necessarily like being held by the hand in a game meaning that I don't like it when the game makes everything I need to do so blatantly obvious that I don't need to think. In the case of Mass Effect, it just drops you in an entire universe filled with numerous galaxies with even more numerous solar systems filled with even more numerous planets. For them to tell me to go somewhere specific and then not even tell me that I made it to the correct location when I've arrived, you have no idea what the hell is going on when you first start the game. Eventually, you'll get used to navigating around the universe and finding your way around planets and such. It's just that when they finally turn you loose to all of these different destinations without guidance, it can almost halt your progress through the game if you can't persevere.
- You're boring and slow... - Mass Effect is work. I guess you could say that it falls into similar trappings of Assassin's Creed. Battles are exciting but it's hard to approach them differently each time so it begins to feel repetitive, not to mention that right when you start to enjoy the firefight, everyone's already dead and gone. Anytime you're given something to do, it could easily be finished within minute. Unfortunately, it's made longer just because everything is slow. Your walking speed is slow, your vehicle is slow, loading times take forever. The only reason why the game takes so many hours to beat is simply because everything just goes at such a slow pace and when you finally have something fun to do, it's done in the blink of an eye.
+ ...But man, do you know how to finish! - It needs to be said that the ending of Mass Effect is incredible. It's fun, it's fast paced, it's emotionally heavy, and then it sums up with a most awesome score at the credits. If Mass Effect had battles throughout the game like it did at the end, This would be one of those absolutely perfect games. I had so much fun, I felt so powerful, and I felt like everything and everyone was really relying on my success for their survival, it was such a rush! Here's to hoping Mass Effect 2 can capture this moment again. It makes for the most memorable of all gaming experiences.
Story and Presentation
+ While you were out... - Mass Effect takes place in 2165 I think? Pretty far in the future. In that 150+ years, a lot must happen right? Normally, you'd think that you'd never know about how things developed so much and you'd just put it aside. That's not Bioware's style. You've got question's, they have answers. There is so much information, you feel like you know about as much about what's gone on at this point and time as you do our own past and history. It goes into how we came into the current age, our relationships with other sentient beings and how we created those relationships, the history of those other alien races, wars that have gone on in the past, how certain technology was developed. They even go into detail about how weapons work. Not just who makes it and what it's used for but also why you don't need ammo and how the weapon legitimately functions. Even all of the planets you come across in these other galaxies, every planet has a description of what the planet is made of and what it's atmosphere is like down to the last scientific detail. Whenever someone briefly mentions the "First Contact War", you know exactly when it happened, where it occured and who was involved. The attention to detail is amazing.
+ Welcome to reality - The writing is so good in this game, almost every single person you come across, major or minor pertaining to plot relevance, feels like a legitimate person with their own background. They feel real when you talk to them. They're not some boring NPC that you only care about at the moment and forget later on. You care about them all the time. You care about the decisions you make and how others will view it. It adds to the weight of your decisions and the consequences of those decisions may wear down on you, make you feel like you made a legitimate sacrifice for the greater good or that you're a terrible person deserving of punishment. I know I felt it.
In the end, you don't play Mass Effect for the gameplay. If that's fun, it's just a plus. You play Mass Effect for it's story, background, characters and immersion. It's the real reason why you suffer out the slow pacing and load times. You want to continue your impact on this universe and you want to know more about these characters you interact with.
+ In the future... - Think of Star Trek, Star Wars, insert your favorite sci-fi series here and think for a second. What do you love about it? Have you ever wanted to be there? Have you ever wanted to go through a door that goes "whoosh?" How about walking around the ship and interacting with the crew? The graphics, the sound, the dialogue, the history, everything comes together in such a way that it brings your imagination to life. You are in the future. You are the captain of your own space crew and you have a personal relationship with each and every crew member. There's some wondrous design at work here and it's absolutely stunning.
Graphics
= It's all so beau-...Loading...-tiful! - The in game graphics are pretty and detailed. One of the best looking games I've played in a while. It's clear though that the engine's got some problems. You see a lot of textures popping in, there's lots of frame-rate slowdown. And then there's the fact that Bioware reuses a ton of their designs. They'll use the same rooms and buildings for everything. Same with planet layouts, they just color it differently and call it another name when it's exactly the same planet as another. There's also a lot of emptiness in the game so there's not much to look at. I'm hoping a good number of these things are fixed in the sequel.
Sound
+ Pew pew! Pew! - If you have a good setup for sound, you're in for a treat. Everything sounds just like it does in a sci-fi movie or series and it has the appropriate weight to it's sound; The weight of a door opening up, the blast of a gun, the explosion of a grenade. Nothing sounds like it's fake. Everything sounds tangible and real. It's attention to this level of detail that only makes immersion a more natural step. I suggest that if you're working off of normal TV speakers, go get a nice pair of headphones. It's just that worth it.
Should you buy it?
Rent it. While there's plenty here to make for a special game worth purchase, you really need to be interested in the story and background of things. It's how you get the most out of the experience and it's a LOT of reading to do. In other words, to invest yourself in what this game has to offer, it's a lot of work, work that rewards greatly mind you. If you were wanting a game for it's gameplay, I just don't think this is what you'd be looking for. It's another one of those games that relies on the experience it offers and the story it has to tell. Given how much you need to invest and how monotonous some aspect can be, this game is definitely not for everyone. When you rent it, it gives you a chance to see what you're getting yourself into. Choose whether to buy it or not from there. Otherwise, it does have a new game plus mode where you can continue to raise your character to the level cap, you can replay the game and choose different dialogue choices or make different decisions to see all of the outcomes of your actions, and then there's a couple of DLC packs available for it. To anyone who takes gives the effort to complete this game and invests the time to dive into it's grand history, I hope you really enjoy the experience. I know I did.
Mass Effect was developed by BioWare Corp. and published by Microsoft Game Studios. Played through Normal as a Paragon Vanguard clocking in at about 30+ hours after doing every sidequest available. Review based on Xbox360 version.
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