All right, sorry it has taken me so long to say what I think of the game so far. I've been been watching a lot of football this weekend, and playing Mass Effect, of course.
The game starts up with you creating an I.D. for your character. You can choose to be a default character or create a custom male or female; I choose to create a custom male character, but the customisation seemed pretty limited. The class I decided was Infiltrator--do not really know why I picked it, just did.
The game starts you off on a mission that introduces you to the combat right away, which I am sure many people are wondering about. Personally, I feel as if the game's combat would have benefited from a more fps style a la Deus Ex, but that does not mean that it is bad. For being third person, it does work well. You are able to use different areas of the environment for cover like Gears of War, but it seems easier because you don't need to press a button to initiate this; it can be accomplished by just approaching the particular part you wish to take cover behind and as long as you press forward in the direction of it, your character will take cover behind it. It is just as simple to leave from the wall or object that is protecting you. And, as you can imagine, by pressing LT you can pop-out form cover to shoot. In combat, you will have control of a squad that consists of two other people along with your character. There are four basic commands that can be used to control your squad member, but I didn't find myself using them much. One nice feature is the ability you have of choosing how your squad members are upgraded and the ability of deciding what weapon they should wield for any particular moment. This is done by menus that are intuitive and easy to navigate. The weapons I could choose from involved different sniper rifles, assault rifles, pistols, and shotguns.
The visuals are fantastic. It is truly a beautiful game. Each species is well thought out, and I found checking out and talking to each of the species I encountered one of best aspects of the game so far. The only negative is some of the species lack variety within themselves, such as the volus and the hanar. The world you are in does feel as if it is quite large, especially when you reach the citadel. The game even emphasizes this as you can observe the vast area at a certain part of the citadel. The game does run smooth despite of this; although, it does pause the action to load at times, but the loading is brief and never happened at a time where I was under duress.
I have only played the game for approximately five hours, and I feel as if I have not accomplished much at all. That is not a negative, though. I'm sure anyone who has played a game like this knows that exploration is greatly encouraged. This game is no different. If you are like me, you want to try and visit every nook and cranny of the environment, which can be time consuming. There are many characters that you can interact with, with multiple choices of dialogue. These conversation can take up some time as well--especially if you wish to get as much information as you can. A lot of the story is revealed in more depth in these conversations. The story does appear to be very complex and, of course, veryinteresting fromwhat I have seen of it.
Lastly, I will talk of the sound. The voice acting for the most part very well done. I believe I heard Seth Green as a character at the beginning of the game. Many of you will recognise the Arbiter form Halo as Captain Anderson--Keith David is the actual name of the actor. He was in Requiem for a Dream if that helps anyone. Shepard's voice-work really is not anything special (his male voice, you could choose to be a women). The musical score is well above average. When at the Citadel, it reminded me of Howard Shore's work with the Lord of the Rings series. I'm not sure who did the score for this game, but it was well put together form what I have heard so far.
In closing the game has impressed me quite a bit so far. I am very interested in seeing how complex the game truly is. And, if anyone would like, I would be willing to post my thoughts after I have played more of this game. As of now, it definitely appears to be what everyone has been expecting--if not more.
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