Link for the thumbs upping

Space. Where aliens hate humans but speak our language. Space. Where there are no children. Space. The setting for an epic adventure. (With a few bumps along the way).

Welcome to Mass Effect, Bioware's sci-fi epic. Before I get into the "bad", let's talk about Mass Effect's strong points. And there are a lot of them, as you would expect in a great game like this.

They look pretty serious.

For starters, the story is magnificent. It may seem cliche, but that is definitely not the case. You get to make choices in Mass Effect, and these choices play a massive role on the progression of the story. These aren't simple black and white choices. You're going to have to think out the consequences of each choice.

Another strength is the fantastic voice acting and cinematic presentation. Conversations are truly engaging due to the way they are presented. Every character delivers their lines with so much passion and emotion that you come to expect it out of every game you play. Even better is the fact that the option you select to say is not exactly what your character says. For example, if you select the option that says "Hello", Shepherd may instead say "Greetings, captain". This makes conversations seem more dynamic and realistic.

You play as Commander Shepherd, who can be either male or female. The character customization is excellent. Not only can you customize the visuals of the character, but also the cl@ss and the background of the character, both of which affect the progression of the game.

Would you hit that?

Mass Effect uses a morality system, but it does it in it's own way. Most Western RPGs have a meter that increases as good actions are done and decreases as bad actions are done. Mass Effect does things differently, and better. There are two bars. Paragon (Good), and Renegade (Evil). They both fill up as you do actions throughout the game, giving a new level to the morality system.

Now, let's move on to the problematic parts of Mass Effect. The combat. It's simply not engaging. It's not too fun. It plays a little bit like a third person shooter. But your weapons have infinite ammunition and to control your fire, they overheat when used in succession. This simply put, does not work well at all. I'm so glad that they fixed the issue in Mass Effect 2.

Also, you can get weapon and armor upgrades as you go through the game, but the way they are used isn't explained well at all. You might find yourself going through 20 hours or so before realizing that you can equip upgrades onto your weapons and armor.

Or would you go for this?

There are squad commands in Mass Effect, and they don't work well at all. It also doesn't help the fact that your allies' AI is horrible and sometimes doesn't even turn on due to glitches. You'll find them being dead many times in the game and you'll have to either revive them or finish the fight without them and wait for them to auto-revive.

In addition to the shooting, you also can use Biotic powers. These are pretty fun, but once again, it's one of those things that are cool but not really needed at all. You'll be able to get through many battles without using Biotic powers.

The vehicle sections here are laughably bad. You control the Mako, which is a tank that helps you get through terrain. It's a neat concept but isn't executed well. Combat on the Mako doesn't feel like it belongs in a role playing game at all, as it juts feels like a vehicle section of Halo.

Another weak point in the game is the side missions. There are many of them, but there's not much incentive to complete them as they mainly involve you, Shepherd, going to a planet and rescuing someone. The other side missions are for the most part, cookie cut.

A playthrough of Mass Effect takes around 15 hours if you just do the main quest. Doing the side missions can double that number. You get a lot of quality hours for your money here. It's a great value for $20 and you should definitely check it out if you can get it for a good price.

Overall, Mass Effect is a great game on its own, but it falls into the category of games that don't live up to their potential. I'm not just talking about hype here. Mass Effect has a lot of untapped potential. The universe is well developed, but it's not really used that well. Combat is great in theory but the overheat system is poor. Then throw in all the little glitches, and you have a beautiful diamond with many scratches on it.

8/10