A nice console RPG.
You play as commander Shepard, a human military officer, who can be customized to you heart's content, as long as he or she remains a human and a commander Shepard. I'm not really a stock character king of guy, so I chose to explore the character creation options. Standard physical customization aside, there are a few interesting psychological profile choices here, which will alter certain dialogue as you play. It's a very cool gameplay touch, although the limited character combinations available (9) tend to remind us, once again, that Bioware now develops for consoles. Still, it's nice - and immersive - to hear NPCs refer to your character creation choices right off the bat.
The game play and combat in Mass Effect are reminiscent of KOTOR. You can choose up to two NPCs at a time to accompany you; you can pause combat and issue orders; your light and dark powers and light saber are replaced with tech and biotic powers and a selection of ranged weapons. You control the movement with a WASD, with the camera peering over the shoulder of your heroic pawn. Your companions seem to be smarter this time around. They aren't brilliant, mind you; they still tend to stare into walls and stand in the open absorbing all sorts of fire, but I like how they unload their powers on the enemy within the first five seconds of the fight and switch to preferred weapons from there on. They also can't die, they only get knocked out, so often I would just send them into a room full of bad guys to soft them up, then deal with what's left.
Non-combat interactions take place through cut scenes of spoken dialogue, which, for the most part, is just as good as KOTOR's. The characters you bring with you ashore will offer spontaneous lines during conversations, which I, thinking them to be character-specific, totally dug at first. Then I replayed a spot and had a 400-pound heavy-armor-clad killer-whale merc offer the same opinion I'd just heard from a gas-mask-wearing anorexic alien "engineeress," which marred my impression somewhat. Still, it's pretty cool the first time around. The story here is also strong, although it is very short. It's basically five missions long. Sure there are about a hundred side quests you can do in between these five main missions to make the game longer, but with the story repeatedly emphasizing urgency, going off in search of nickel deposits, while "every minute counts" seems a bit out of character and takes away from the otherwise immersive experience. Worse yet, the side quests do not affect your interaction with your crew in any way. You can spend a year running around uncharted planets together, but your party members will only have something new to say to you after you complete one of the main missions. And the crew interaction is crucial here, both for the story and game play. You will get emotionally attached to your companions, which will make certain choices later in the game real hard. This makes the side quests even more distracting. My advice, ignore the side quests on the first play-through. Maybe do a couple, like the Geth Incursions and one other, so that you could get your behind handed to you by a Thresher Maw. Otherwise just play through the main story missions, talk to your crew, make your choices, cry, cheer and enjoy the "partial nudity."
The romance, which is becoming a kind of a Bioware trademark, is handled better than in any other game I played this year. The payoff, of course, is still embarrassingly modest, but that's not really Bioware's fault. The imbecility of ERSB, responsible for the abovementioned pearl of wisdom, "partial nudity," cannot be circumvented. To Bioware's credit, they understand that the development of a romantic relationship can be just as interesting and stimulating as the realistic portrayal of human body the puritan idiots are so afraid of. The flirting dialogue is well done, although your choices are sadly limited. They are sort of tied in with the general good/bad alignment structure, and I would prefer the romantic dialogue to be a separate tree with meaningful branches. Oh well, maybe in Dragon Age, though I won't hold my breath.
If you saw the previews, you saw how good the game looks, and it really does. I did experience a few graphical glitches, most common being character blurring in elevators, but nothing major. On the whole, the game is gorgeous. My major annoyances resulting from sloppy porting mostly took place when I tried to get the game to play for the first time. First, the game would not start, crashing repeatedly on splash screen. After scouring forums for clues, I found out it's a common problem associated apparently with the sound software. Since the tips offered seemed like a lot of hassle (like turn off your sound process and then you can play with no sound, yeah!), I went into properties and selected "play as admin," which pretty much fixed the issue. I say "pretty much," because the game would run fine, but between clicking the executable and getting inside the game I had to close about a dozen error windows telling me that a dll was not found.
A few extra points to wrap up:
- The economic crisis seems to have affected recent game worlds as well. Developers feel that money must be present in games, but can't figure out a way to make it meaningful. Bioware tries, and it's a near miss.
- Mass Effect, with all its accomplishments, still feels like a console game. The UI, the inventory, even the combat, are a bit goofy as a result.
- I want a MAKO.
-This was the only game in recent memory which I started over immediately after finishing my first play-through. At this point I'm not sure if that was because the game is so awesome or so short.
- To add to the previous point, ME is very addictive. Almost Civilization-addictive.
-Theme music is awesome. The epic score evokes glorious military movie feel, with all the appropriate sad and happy moments.
-The game costs twenty bucks now. Buy it.