Great and long story that will keep you constantly playing. However the game has some glitches and the combat is meh.
System: Xbox 360
Reviewer: RoAFie
Review:
Well let's get things started on a positive note on Mass Effect (sorta). Mass Effect is a game to love and enjoy. However if Mass Effect takes a turn and decieds to betray your trust and buttrape you by slipping date rape drugs in your sprite don't blamez me. I'll start off with what Mass Effect does right. It's story is amazing. One thing I like about Mass Effect is that it finally gives you the option of truly being neutral as far as the whole good vs evil. A lot of games nowadays try and give choices between good and evil but all you can be is good or evil. Like Bioshock, fable, and KOTOR. Speaking about KOTOR Mass Effect does a great way of improving the dialog system. For one there is voice acting. Yay! For two there is an organized structure to it (top right = good people **** middle right = indecisive prick choices, bottom right = evil sadistic bastard child choices, left is for gathering more information). And for 3 there is a lot more personalities that you can sympathize with. Each character even the minor ones have a nice story. But for me I don't really give two ****s about characters too much so let's get into the main overall story. The story isn't the most orginal of pieces. The game is based upon preventing the human imprisonment and massacre that was brought on by machines *cough* Terminator *cough*. To be fair this horrible fate is brought about by a character that has been corrupted by a manipulative force and *SPOILER ALERTZORS* ultimately (can) kill himself to save everyone *END SPOILER ALERT*...*cough* star wars *cough*. Well let's start the game off from the beginning. From the start I got to choose my name. Unfortunately this doesn't make too much of a difference in the game because you are only allowed to choose your first name (since I sought out to be a complete **** to everyone I named my dude's first name "Bastard") and the last name is Shepard. The only thing this really thing for is saved screens and characters since most of them always call you by your last name (even your BFF's in the game). But w/e it was obviously meant to be used as multiple character thing and it's better than people calling you sir all the time. You can be male or a chick. Next comes one of the hardest choices I had to make in the game. Seriously. You have the choice to be a marine that joined the force at 18, a colonist, or an Earth born citizen. Naturally my finger started to linger toward Earthbound when I read what happened. Seriously it's a **** up choice. When you are a colonist your family is ded and when you are Earth born your never had a family and you had to escape gang life. Woah wtf. Well I didn't want to be a spacer b/c that wouldn't be very much like me and I couldn't chose Colonist b/c I'd feel weird like I was wishing my parents death so I choose Earth born. Later on I found out that this gave me Renegade Points (evil points) and choosing a Spacer would net me Paragon (good points). Now that's all fine and well since I was going to be an evil bastard anyway but to me it doesn't make since. When you are earth born you are escaping a life of crime and evil to try and do some good. When you are a spacer you're just joining cause your parents joined and you want to shoot stuff. WTF? And with the colonist your parents are ded b/c of attackers and you want to get revenge (*cough* Star wars *cough*). Now I'd think that Earth born would be good, spacer would be neutral, and Colonist would be evil. But like I said **** it. Then you get to chose how you respond to situations (working alone, being a dick, and helping others). I don't have any smart ass responses here. Then you get to customize your character. One of my complaints is that no matter what guy I make they always look ugly as hell. Normally I'd just choose the default character but I couldn't do it this time. So I ended up with some bald **** with a giant scar down the side of his face. I'd say the customization is a nice addition over all though. The only thing I'd improve on is the back stories and making the random selections better along with the overall customizer. After that you get the classes and there are three base regions you can specialize in which is combat (gun totting), tech (h4zoring and machine related attacks), and biotics (the force in starwars basically). You can also choose a combo of the two for less abilities and more diversity. Let's get things started off. The classes are not balanced. The biotics are definitely the choice to use if you want to really own at the game. For the most part tech is best used for other party members unless if you are going for achievements and with combat most of the time you'll only use one or two weapons. What I'd recommend is starting as a solider and playing through long enough to unlock the assault rifle achievement then create a Adept and have his bonus talent be assault rifle you will own. Every class has their own perk though. With a solider you get all weapons and heavy armor and has the combos you get an extra weapon (sniper for infiltrator and shotty for vanguard) and medium armor. Most of the time the armor doesn't make much of a difference if you use cover however. I'll get more into combat later though so skip ahead a paragraph if you want to see how well they work. A soldier will get you by most of the game if you're an FPS fan and an Adept is the bad ass if you are a bad ass. And a tech guy is for any haxzor or achievement goers. Righto. Into combat. I will say I'm not a big fan of combat in Mass Effect. It seems rather bland to me. It does have some good points. 4 example. In Mass Effect it uses a cover system which is fairly good. There are the rare instances when I press up against a wall and don't see jack. In which I just back up and shoot normally. The game also has a squad based system where you can move your team around. Most of the time ignore the system b/c unlike in tuff games like GoW or Rainbow 6 you can usually take more than a couple of shots until you die. The only time I ever really used the squad system is to get the annoying ally AI out of my ****ing way and shooting path. Speaking about AI the AI in this game can be really retarded or really ****ing annoying. It's mostly my own allied AI. Thank god you can't kill them. But I can't count how many time they have walked in front of me or they trap me in a doorway or some other stupid reason. Thx to the squad controls you can get them out of the way but A) It's still annoying and B) Most of the time squad control is overlooked. Another thing is that is good to mention in no point in the game did I ever feel the need to make use of my team partners as far as pure fire power is concerned. Oh sure they did help with biotics but I'm counting straight fire power. Not once did my teammates kill anything that didn't take two or more shots to take down (w/o my uber sniper rifle that kills in one shots). So most of my fights went down like having Wrex and Garrus spamming the enemy with biotic and tech abilities while I took out foes with my fricking pistol. Plus to make matters worse in Mass Effect the game has no in game tutorial on how to do all of the combat actions. Now I know what you all are thinking RoAFie you lazy bastard get off your ass and read the manual. The problem was when I first played the game I got it from Blockbuster and they stopped putting in the manuals at mine so the only way I figured out crap is hitting buttons. Seriously it took me two missions to figure out that I had powers when I was a solider =(
In some main missions and almost all of the the sidequests you get to pilot a vehicle called the Mako. A lot of people hated driving this thing. I however am not one of those people. However I can see where the critics have some problems. Probably because the thing is annoying as hell to drive and it takes a while to get used to combat in the thing. I loved this thing though b/c it reminded me back in the good old Star Fox days. I thought it fit like the old landmaster quite well and overall I liked driving it. However the enemies you fight in the thing basically stand still and let you own them. That and they don't differ much. The main tank things you fight stay that way the only upgrades they get is increased firepower and health but their main attacks don't change at all. Plus seriously all you have to do to fight them is drive straight into them and blast the crap out of them when they are on the ground. Again there is no tutorial on how to drive the damn thing so it's just a matter of hitting buttons (or looking in the game manual). Just a minor complaint that isn't really counting against the game but why do we only get one vehicle. Seriously you're in the most expensive spaceship that man has made and you only have one vehicle that you can use. Lame.
Let's talk about missions. Now the main missions themselves are pretty well distinct from each other. You have your straight shoot up missions where there is constant action going on, you have missions where you have to gather information and then kick ass, and you have a find this person mission. For the most part they work pretty well. The information mission isn't nearly as long as the spaceport city in KOTOR 2 or as tedious and it has the proper amount of asskickery. The manhunt can be long but you can look on the net and jump to the planet you need to go to if you don't feel like searching the 4 possible planets. The action bits can vary between evil robot dudes attacking you and zombies attacking you. It's all right. Not the worst not the best. Now when I first got Mass Effect it was right before I went down to my grandparents and I wanted to beat the game before I got there so I just blazed through the main story. Later I was saddened to find out I didn't miss too much as far as side quests go. There are the side quests on the citadel/other main planets which vary from long dialog, to more dialog and finding people , to scavenger hunts for messed up little alien dudes, to occasional combat. The citadel has by far the widest variation in sidequests. Here's a basic summary of almost all the other missions. Your spaceship flies in and drops you in a Mako, you drive around searching the planet's "important" spots, when you find a spot you land get out of your Mako and go into a building and kill all the thugs and either find something or leave. There are a couple you don't even have to go into a building you can just kill a giant tremor. There are other missions where you go around scaning planets for minerals and going on planets harvesting them and other related tasks but these for the most part are long boring and tedious even with a guide. Plus you don't need to do it for any achievement (unless you really want too).
Anyway by doing the missions and killing crap you get XP. This is used to level up (duh). When you level up you get to add farther customization to your character. For example if I was a solider and I wanted to specialize in Assault rifles and heavy armor I'd put my points into Armor and Assault Rifles. You then as you earn points unlock more areas of potential such as after a certain point in Assault Rifles you unlock Sniper Rifles. A thing I have to complain about like I always do is there isn't very many powers to use. I mean wtf is your favorite biotic power? The one where you throw a person back in the air and onto the floor leaving them helpless, the one were you freeze them and make them helpless (though they are immune to damage), the one where you lift them in the air and make them helpless, the one where you lift them in the air but this time they orbit around a little ball and make them helpless, or the one where you throw a barrier around you. Okay so they had one or two sort of different ones. The weapon ones are generic and not too creative (having unlimited ammo, increased accuracy and damage). The tech ones are for the most part focused on defense disabling attackers weapons and biotics with their abilities. There are ones where you can get machine buddies too. Overall I'd say there isn't enough powers and the ones they do have aren't very creative (*cough* KOTOR *cough*). Despite my complaints about the powers the game does have a very RPG feel too it with the choices you make with your character's design and stuff. Also throughout your missions you gain money. And with money you can get weapons, armor and armor/biotic/tech/weapons upgrades. Now in the beginning of the game you get very little money and by the middle of the game you'll have all of the best weapons and armor and still have enough to build a raft of gold. By the end of the game the raft becomes a pirate ship...with golden monkeys...and cake. There are 4 main weapons you can use. Pistols all classes can use and are accurate. Assault rifles fire fast and are horrible inaccurate (in the beginning of the game) and can only be used by the Solider class until you unlock the Assault rifle expert achievement. Shotguns are beasts at close range or against knocked down foes and are used by Vanguards and Soldiers (and others if you get the achievement). And finally snipers are used for long distances and hard to handle (in the beginning again) and are used by Infiltrators and Soldiers (and others if you got the achievement). You can also get armor. Light armor is for full tech and biotic specialty members. Medium for mixes of combat and tech/biotic. Heavy for soldiers. Armor is kind of pointless since most the time you'll be hiding behind cover taking potshots at baddies although it is mandatory for surviving larger more powerful enemy encounters. Plus having more shields never hurts. Upgrades I think are one of the coolest feature in the game. You can customize how your armor acts. For example if you have light armor to make up for the lack of protection you can get an upgrade for extra padding. Also you can customize your weapons for chemical and heat damage along with basic things like doing more damage to machines. Then you can upgrade your biotic and tech abilities with omni tools and amps which basically make your tech and biotics more powerful.
The game is also notorious at least for me with glitches and more bugs than an abandoned picnic. There are glitches where you can't move and you have to turn off your 360 and restart it. Normally this would just be an annoying occurrence that you would just get over with because of an autosave system. Well Mass Effect has an auto-save system that is spastic as all hell. Seriously at times it will save your progress everytime you move into a sort of new area. Then at others it refuses to autosave until you go through a main enemy base, then fight a boss, then after you defeat the boss it decides to autosave...how about f'n saving before I fight the boss EH?!!! So you'll become accustomed to saving every chance you get in order to avoid this.
Graphics: Again I really don't care too much about graphics to the point where I'll hinder a games overall score on it. What I will say though the characters are beautifully made (except for whatever reason when I try and make a character). The planets have a nice variety of looks. It's not the best game 's graphics but they are pretty damn close. One thing that creeps me out though is one of my squad mates Ashely Williams has this weird thing like I saw on Seinfield. One minute I look at her and she's hawt and the next she's ugly. Seriously it's annoying. I should fly over to that cafe and talk to her there in that corner. Sound: Soundwise the game outdoes itself. Amazing voice acting and music make the game an awesome experience. Plus the music at time can really match the mood of the situation. For example something extremely tragic happened (that cost me an achievement) and in the background reflected that. Guns and action are alright. The combat dialog has a tendency of constantly looping the same stuff but w/e it does it's job.
Achievements: Achievements are based off of for the most part specialization in certain areas (weapons and biotic/tech abilities), story progress, and good vs evil based achievements. There are also kill based achievements and finding all of the codex entries. Also some of the more annoying achievements are "completing a majority of the game with *insert ally here*". Now when I first read this I thought I had to just keep 2 characters with me the whole game as I blew through the story. But no of course not. You have to do almost all the sidequests with them. In fact more than you have to do with the completionist achievement (beat a majority of the game). That's bull. One thing I like that Mass Effect added is when you unlock certain achievements you get added bonuses. So if you get a bunch of dough you unlock some of the best weapons in the game for purchase. I think that's awesome and a nice touch.
Playability: Now the question for Mass Effect "is the game worth the money". Most definitely. The game lasted me a good 20 hours the first run and another 10 off of the sidequests that I did my second run. Plus if you are an achievement freak then you'll definitely get your money's worth. The game has a good (even if overused) story along with well played out dialog. If you are looking for combat you'll probably like me be disappointed and the whole RPG building your character up went out midway through the game where I had so much money I could get anything I wanted. FINAL REVIEW:
Story: 9.5: Awesome story with in dept characters and personal stories. However the main story has been done before if you watch any popular movies
Gameplay: 7.5: Combat is meh and the game seems shipped a bit too early. Most of the glitches can be fixed with a patch but it still is annoying. Also once the game gets going it is really easy to obtain all of the things that should be difficult. Lack of variety in sidequests make me sad. AI is retarded especially allied AI. Not too creative or new with the abilities or skills either. Game could have used another month or two to fix some of these problems. Autosave is t3h b0rked.
Graphics: 10: I'm not one for graphics but the characters and worlds are amazing. Even with Ashely...
Sound: 10: It's seriously breaking my nutz to give a game two 10's but the voice acting and sound is just awesome in this game.
Replayibility: 9: There's a lot to go back for if you can forgive the games shortcomings. Even if the sidequests are repetitive it's good to get them done at least once so you can get an achievement. Plus the different ways you can play the game lead into multiple ways you can play the game and see new reactions every time.
Achievements: 8: Not too creative and the description on some can be misleading. Though any game where you get an achievement for banging a chick (or dude if you are a chick but then he'd be banging you...virtually I guess...erm...sure) is a game to own =)
Score: 8.5
Overall:
The Good: Awesome long story. Good play time. Nice dialog system. Awesome graphics and voice acting. A lot of missions and customization to your character. Plus the mako reminds me of star fox and star fox owns XD
The Bad: A crappy autosave system. A bunch of glitches that can ruin some experiences. Combat is meh. Not too creative as a whole with combat abilities. Repetitive side quests. Very easy if you are playing on anything below insanity after the middle of the game.
Other words:
Did I mention star fox FTW?