Mass Effect

My first formal game review! Hooray!

A little while ago, I was gifted the Mass Effect Trilogy box set. I had never played Mass Effect before, not even in a demo or at a friend's house. Not for any real reason, I didn't have some sort of vendetta against this game, I just never got into it. Well, anyway I promptly started on the first game and I felt compelled to try my hand at giving it a review because I've been wanting to do some game reviews and this seemed like as good a place to start as any.

 I'm writing this fresh off of completing the game; seriously, the credits are rolling past the screen as I type this at 4:30 in the morning. My first impression after my fifteen hour commitment was very positive. Yeah, I actually liked it a lot. Matter of fact, I'm a little ticked I never bought it sooner.

It's a pretty ingenious idea. Take facets from other games that people like and combine them. If I had to describe this game to someone who's never played it, I'd say, 'kinda like if Halo and The Elder Scrolls had a baby.' I think that's a pretty accurate way to summarize it. It takes the action and linear style from Halo, not to mention space and all those aliens, and it takes the choice-making, side-quests, lore style, skill-honing and (sort of) open world from The Elder Scrolls. I love it.

As for the choice-making in this game, it's a little limited, but only when you're talking about big choices. It's not a very long game, like I said, it only took me fifteen hours (and I fell asleep in front of the game for a few hours one night) and there are only a few choices that will majorly effect the rest of the game within that span. The smaller choices you make, e.g. who to take places and what to say, are incredibly entertaining. It always seemed that no matter who I took where, the cinematic quality was never lost; it always seemed like that character was supposed to be there to influence the game in such a way. Really cool.

And obviously you always have the choice of what to say. Never once do you have just one single option that the game forces you to take, you always get to pick from a few. Those choices will influence the conversation, your relationship with the character in the long run and possibly trigger certain events to occur in the longer run. For instance, the game allows you to be involved in relationships with characters, if you play your cards right.

It's kind of funny how much of a dick the game will allow you to be at times, but I often found myself inclined to be nice to everyone because I actually liked all of the characters. When I say that I like a character in a movie, game, book, whatever; what I typically mean is that the character interests me and I enjoy their screen time (I've been scolded for saying I like the murderous villain countless times), it's pretty rare, especially in movies today, for me to say that I like every character but in this case, I do. That definitely goes to show that this game is well written.

Speaking of that, the writing of the storyline itself is very good. Really unique idea that I will refrain from spoiling. The whole game is really story driven and plays out cinematically, much like a movie. If I had had prior knowledge of this game at the time, I certainly would've added it to my list of games that could be made into great movies. Aside from that, there are a few dozen side-quests that you can complete if you get tired of the main story. In my play through, I really didn't do many of those, but completing all or most of them would certainly add a few hours onto the total play time.
Also very cool is the intricacy of the game. It's much like The Elder Scrolls again where there's just so much to this world you're in that it's almost daunting. There're all sorts of bizarre, otherworldly species, all complete with history and stories and very planet your come across has all sorts of technical and political information, which only adds to the believability of this unbelievable universe.

The game also gives you many options in shaping your character. The face of Shepard that everybody knows is merely the default choice if you're for, whatever reason, too lazy to customize it. So, your lead character would look completely different from my lead character, much like any Bethesda game. It gives you the choice to give your character a name, but it really doesn't matter much because everyone will refer to you as Shepard anyway. It's just your first name and it's just for display.

You also have the ability to choose your backstory, personality type, combat type and you have ability customization. Like any RPG, you get points when you level up and those points can be put into your skills as you see fit. You do this with all of your squad members as well.

The combat in this game is very interesting. It's much more tactical than your run-of-the-mill shooter. It takes awhile to get used to, along with the items you'll have to be swapping out and the upgrades you get for them. It's daunting at first, but you get used to it. You'll find yourself taking cover, directing your squad members and using power ups and special techniques rather than just blindly running in, guns blazing, which is a good way to get yourself killed instantly in this game. You don't have a great deal of health and it only take a few direct hits to get a "CRITICAL MISSION FAILURE" message flashing up on the screen. This is one area where the game has a major flaw. Not in the combat, but in the way death is handled or rather saving. The fact is, it doesn't save nearly as often as it should. You have the option to save manually, but a lot of times, it's not there. You can't save when there are enemies in the area and when you're in the heat of a level and you're triumphantly running off to the next encounter after wasting a few dozen Geth, you're not always going to remember to go into the start menu and save and besides it's a bother. In games like Halo, it automatically saves after every battle so you won't be wasting time repeating something you've already beaten. I can't tell you how many times I was throwing my controller in frustration after losing twenty plus minutes of gameplay.

As I said before, you have sort of free roam in this game. The level never points you where to go, which is cool until you lose track of where you're going and spend all kinds of time wandering around, hoping you're going the right way. You always have your map in the start menu and it displays your objective, but if your objective is somewhere outside of the area, it won't display any such waypoint. A little arrow on the minimap would be nice, but instead you'll find yourself going from your map and then to your journal and then back to your map just to try and figure out where the fuck you're supposed to be.
The game explores all sorts of exotic planets and places throughout the galaxy, the coolest being the Citadel located somewhere in deep space.

Walking around that is interesting. All of those branches are part of a sprawling futuristic city and while you can't go to all of it, traversing what you can is pretty fun.
The rest of the galaxy is filled largely with unremarkable planets most of which you can't land on, which is a bit of a tease. When you can land on them, most of them are barren wastelands but there's generally a point of interest somewhere on it. You explore the planet in a large, six-wheeled tank-like vehicle called the Mako. The only thing I don't like about this process, is that the controls for the Mako are kinda awkward. It's fine if you're just driving straight, but if you want to turn around, you might have some issues especially if you're in an enclosed area or fighting... or both.

I highly recommend this game. It's a great experience that created a unique play-style that I've never seen done in any other game. The story and characters are great and the last act of the game is so fucking incredible that I was literally on the edge of my seat with my eyes glued to the screen (that part wasn't literal). I think this is a great example of the intelligence a videogame can display and sticks out like a beacon of hope for the gaming industry amidst the bullshit like CoD.
I'll give this game a 9/10 simply because, while it certainly is great, it has room for improvement and I expect to see that when I start up the next game.

9/10 - Very good. Check it out.