BioWare's latest sci-fi epic will be one journey that you'll find hard to forget.
Mass Effect is the BEST acted and animated game of all time, without a doubt. The entire time you play, you'll feel you're playing a, at least, 25 hour long movie. The entire cast of actors gives a commanding performance that surpasses most movies this day in age. I played the Paragon route and ended up with the 'best' ending, for lack of a better term. This definately made ME into the most epic and touching adventure I've ever seen. No gamer should pass this beautiful space opera up. No one. It's just too finely acted. I must say this is Seth Green's finest work. Who'd have thought Oz would one day be leading a whole armada of ships into battle?
The combat can either be played fast-paced a la Gears of War or Halo, charging in and obliterating any targets in your way, or you can take a more thoughtful route, taking your time to survey the current situation and act accordingly, playing it more like a game of chess.
The game does come with BioWare's almost signature little glitches here and there. But by now, fans have come to love this I suppose, I know I have... Where once the issues were the framerate (KotOR) or clipping (Jade Empire), ME seems to have some issues with popping textures.
Whenver you enter a new area, it takes a couple more seconds than you woulld probably like for the game to load the textures, but this hardly gets in the way of the game's enjoyment factor.
All in all, this is not a game to be passed up. The conversations flow beautifully, and the ME universe has such believeable feel to it, it made me think this just might be humanity's future. Not a lot of sci-fi takes the time to talk about WWII, Christianity, or even Santa Claus...(Yeah, that was unexpected...).
By far, ME is one my favorite stories I ever experienced. By now, I'm sure most people know this is a trilogy, so I'll just say it has just the right amount of closure to make it a self-contained story on it's own, but leaves just that bigger threat looming in the shadows open for the sequel. Mass Effect is only gonna get bigger and more epic from here. Let's see what the Reapers hold in store for Commander Shepard and crew in the second installment of the ME trilogy.