Mass Effect crafts an exciting world for you to play in, but forgets to craft a compelling game to go with it.
The story itself is a worthy addition into the famed annals of space opera, on par with the classics of the genre. It's a fairly simple premise at first, as the player assumes the identity of an Alliance grunt simply known as Commander Shepard. Shepard is tasked with hunting down a rogue member of the elite Spectre unit, an alien called Saren Arterius. The beautiful thing about the story is how much it grows, especially as soon as you start hopping from planet to planet. Slowly but surely, the scope and intention of Saren's plan comes into focus and let me just say that it manages to evoke some strong feelings, especially towards the end. This is mainly thanks to Saren himself (and industry vet Fred Tatasciore, who voices Saren), as he is a delightfully ambigious character. The game builds him up as a traditional villain, but during the course of your journey you'll learn the motivation behind his betrayal and it just might make you understand the guy that much better. The emotional power Saren wields is even more impressive, considering his fairly limited screen time.
But what's even better about the actual story is the setting and world around it. Despite the fact that most of the locations are very drab and dull (more on this later), it is obvious that Bioware has spent a lot of time creating the lore and rules that make Mass Effect's universe such and interesting and, above all, believable place. A believable space opera you say? Indeed, Mass Effect is crammed so full of hard science fiction and seemingly unimportant bits of trivia that help flesh out the world, it's quite ridiculous. In a good way. Even though reading codex entries about the turian political hierarchy or the role of salarian females in society has no bearing on the story or gameplay, the history and fiction is so well written that you can't help but immerse yourself into this world and form opinions about its inhabitants.
Because Mass Effect makes such an impression with its story, characters and worldbuilding, it's heartbreaking to witness how mediocre of a game it really is in terms of gameplay. The first such offender is the combat system. It's clunky, unintuitive and lacks that vital "oomph" factor people look for in combat-oriented games. Admittedly, RPGs have never been at the forefront in cinematic, visceral combat. However, whilst playing the game it is painfully obvious to what lengths Bioware was willing to go to highlight combat in Mass Effect. In all honesty, about 99% of all quests, both main and side, boil down to shooting galleries. They all follow a common formula of traveling from point A to point B and killing anything and everything unlucky enough to be at point B when you show up. To highligh combat so much with such an underwhelming system is quite baffling. It's also very depressing to people who remember other Bioware RPGs like Baldur's Gate, Knights of the Old Republic and Jade Empire, all of which had interesting and varying guests. To make matters worse, the enemy AI is truly horrific. Despite wielding advanced weapons, the likes of which mankind is yet to behold, enemies almost always resort to the time-tested (and maddeningly infuriating) tactic of rushing. Mass Effect features kinetic shields, bullets that burn and freeze and biotic abilities (think of the Force) that can send a man hurtling to space, yet the enemy still thinks the best course of action is to run headfirst into a barrage of glowing hot lead. Go figure...
So what about the RPG elements in the game? They're solid enough. As you level up, you can spend experience points in different categories, corresponding to the class you chose at the start of the game. You can be a balls-to-the-walls marine who goes in armed and armored to the teeth, a sneaky engineer who relies on hacking and tech abilities or a biotic warrior who deals death with "magical" attacks and buffs. Or you can choose a hybrid class, which opens up entirely new options for play. Also making an entrance is what Bioware has dubbed the "conversation wheel". What this essentially means is that instead of being presented with fully written dialogue choices, you have a wheel with various options, each corresponding to a particular response, be it aggressive, inquisitive or what have you. It's a great system that feels intuitive and less cluttered than traditional options. It also enables you to choose your responses a lot faster, resulting in fluid, movie-like conversations.
As I briefly stated earlier, the locations in Mass Effect are boring. There are only three hubworlds in the game, and even the largest is, well, puny. The game makes a big deal out of the Citadel, a massive space station that serves as the capital of Citadel space. When you first visit, you'll be treated to an impressive cutscene and listen to your crew "ooh" and "aah" their brains out. But once you actually step foot on the thing, you'll notice how small and barren the place is, especially the Wards, which are supposed to be this bustling melting pot of aliens. A visit to the market for example, is quite revelatory. The market itself is about the size of a conference room, with not ONE, but count 'em, TWO vendors from which the player can purchase items and such. Fittingly, there are only a handful of NPCs milling around. And remember, the Citadel is supposed to be the biggest hub. This same banality carries over to much of the game (excluding a few mid- and endgame locations that are quite interesting and enjoyable to explore). In addition to the handful of story-related planets, you are also able to travel from galaxy to galaxy. Each galaxy has one planet or space station you can explore freely, totaling 32 locations. Sure, that sounds impressive at first, but once you realize every planet is just a square of randomized landmass with different textures and the same randomized "dungeons" appearing throughout, exploration quickly loses its lustre. If it weren't for the equally uninspired quests, you'd never probably even visit half of them. You also get an all-terrain vehicle called the Mako, which is supposed to make traversing these worlds more fun and fast. Well let me just say this; whoever thought the Mako was a good idea needs to get out of the gaming industry as soon as humanly possible. Coupled with atrocious handling, ridiculously uneven terrain and a bouncy physics engine (which, granted, is fitting for the vacuum of space), driving the Mako is an experience I'd rather forget.
Mass Effect uses the Unreal Engine 3, which brings with it some good things and some bad. But what really makes the game so pleasing to the eyes (sometimes the game even borders on impressive) is the art direction. Mass Effect has a very clean aesthetic with powerful, straight lines incorporated into the geometry, which is often colorful and detailed. It masterfully captures that 80's scifi vibe Bioware was going for. Textures are crisp on the highest setting (anything else will result in a disappointingly blurry picture), the framerate is mostly solid and the character models are detailed. A much-touted graphical feature in the run up to release was the facial animation. While it can be quite convincing at times, more often than not NPCs faces contort in weird, almost scary ways. Sometimes characters will face the wrong direction when delivering a stinging rebuke, flail their arms ludicrously whilst delivering a speech or look you cross-eyed in an attempt to intimidate you into submission. It's not really a gamebreaker, but it is distracting when you're watching an intense, movie-quality exchange between two characters, and the other looks to be suffering from severe constipation.
Every Bioware game is known for its incredible voice cast and stirring soundtrack and in this case, Mass Effect is no exception. Each and every actor delivers a strong performance, all the way from Shepard to the lowliest of NPCs. Sure, there are a few who overplay it and chew the scenery, but never in a way that takes away from the experience or sours it. The soundtrack also carries that 80's scifi vibe I talked about, with its synthetic tracks and sounds and it fits into the game exceedingly well. It's such a different and drastic take on the game soundtrack, you can't help but admire the composers. Mass Effect easily has one of the greatest soundtracks in gaming.
Mass Effect is extremely hard to score. The game has an excellent idea, it's filled to the brim with detail and the story and characters have been crafted with apparent love and devotion. It is wish fulfillment at its best, presenting a world just begging to be explored and savored. The problem is, Bioware forgot to build a game to go along with the fantasy it crafted so well. The RPG elements are fairly light and favor action, in an obvious effort to draw in a bigger crowd. This wouldn't be such a big problem if the action and shooting were competent. But they're not. In fact, they are far from it. The game also exudes an aura of incompletion. It's as if Bioware invited you to explore a vast galaxy, teeming with alien life and wondrous things of nature, then forgot to create that galaxy. Every location you visit is a depressing shell of what was promised and hyped, the loot is far too plentiful and boring to hold your interest and the crucial game systems are a mess. Mass Effect is an astonishing achievement in story-telling, but as a game it falls far short.