Mass Effect

The Good
I'm probably the wrong person to review RPG's mainly because I'm not true to the genre. I've mostly played more of the modern releases and some D&D based one's which would include Neverwinter Nights and Rage of Mages not forgetting some JRPGs.

When I look at Mass Effect though I see a RPG made purely on being accessible. And the sales and popularity behind this game proves this, as it has attracted even people not familiar with the genre. It's hard to review this Bioware title according to Mobygame's format because where Mass Effect tends to have a good it also has a bad.

But ignoring the gameplay for a while, the graphics are fantastic. Art direction maybe a bit cliched in the Sci-Fi theme. But the visuals work very well and thanks to the Unreal Engine I'm guessing this console to PC port didn't come with much graphical bugs or surprisingly no technical issues which tend to haunt many modern RPG games.

Mass Effect lets you customize your character from the looks to the Class which the game explains and also the starting skills. You can choose a male or female character with the last name “Shepard” and what's awesome is that they're both voiced. Jennifer Hales performance as the female Shepard is solid, not forgetting the rest of the characters too; topped off with beautiful character modeling and expressions which in all adds a strong foundation to the story telling. Speaking of which the storyline is nothing too original but at least they created a whole fictional universe and lore. The game provides a codex in which you can explore and read about the universe, technology and characters. Traveling to planets has been presented well too with the galaxy map and all. And there's nothing like the feeling of having your own ship “The Normandy”.

The combat system is similar to a shooter in the veins of Gears of War or Rainbow Six: Vegas. You got the cover system and can choose 2 team mates to assist you. Leveling up your character is pretty much the usual gain XP, gain points and spend it to unlock more skills based on which class you take. From there it's your typical RPG where you have a main plot and side quests.

The Bad
The Side-quests however make the game uninteresting. This is a RPG and side-questing is an important part of them. Mostly you travel to barren planets, drive the oversensitive vehicle, investigate which is mostly that hacking mini-game which is overused like crazy! Then go rescue/shoot a few turrets/enemies. Nothing really creative although I had to chase little monkeys for some gadget it had stolen...yes I'm serious. Seems like they were lazy and only focused on the main plot. Which I will admit to some point is good, the characters are memorable but follow a usual formula, there will be the love interest, the Bi curious, the serious mature one. Saren, the main villain is forgettable, the Asari Matriarch who assists him in the start was more memorable thanks to her Asari boobs of course. If it ain't side-quest or the main plot it's console game quests like the hidden briefcases in Rainbow Six. Find all minerals, find tags oh and surveying planets is really stupid.

There is the so called “revolutionary” dialogue system which is basically the dialogue options appearing before the character finishes talking (what is that like 2 lines of code?). Most of the time your character will say something far from what you've actually selected. If you select for e.g. the option “Okay follow my orders and you will be fine” your character will end up speaking something like “Yeah keeping it real aite” or “Bush did 9/11” it actually deviates far from the chosen words.

Who am I kidding? The port is actually terrible when it has to be. The User Interface is abysmal and maintaining your inventory is a pain really.The Dialogue system could use a mouse pointer instead of the analogue-like selection. Many times I've selected the wrong dialogue as my mouse jerked a bit before I could click.

Team mates A.I is terrible and to top things off commanding them or positioning them is just as bad an idea as having rough sex with Paris Hilton without protection. Your better off just leaving them to do their own shit. This area supposedly had improvements over it's xbox brother.

The Bottom Line
Mass Effect is basically a 12-15 hours game with the remaining 20-30 hours being fillers. Not saying it's a game to avoid but going into it with no expectation is probably the only way to be satisfied with it. Or maybe playing this after Dragon Age: Origins is a bad idea (yes I did that).

The Good
The story is pretty well-written, and to me, it seemed to be adequately wondrous and science-fiction-like enough. Even when the main plot is relatively simple and ordinary, it made me think about stuff and think about the characters - this is always a good sign. I also appreciate the fact that the game is definitely more of a "science-fiction" game than a "space opera" game; the designers put a lot of effort into writing a backstory and a bunch of technobabble that sounds plausible and well-thought-out. It's not just "it's got spaceship and ray-guns in it".

Graphics and music are top-notch, and the character art and animation is very good. Voice acting never really gets jarring, dialogue works surprisingly well.

This game is also one of the few games I really wanted to pick up for a second playthrough almost immediately afterwards. The game is not too long, yet not too short either.

The Bad
The planets you can land on are quite fun to explore, and the sidequest missions are interesting enough, but the problem is that the planets are rather bland and the sidequests are set in The Mine or The Base or The Other Kind of Base or The Spaceship - there's literally one map for each submission, with the interior objects slightly changed. This doesn't allow for much variation, and you can pretty much figure out a single strategy for them and then just say "Okay, now we're raiding The Base, here's my tried-and-true plan".

The firefights are chaotic to say the least. The enemies have absolutely no strategy, and they just run around a lot, usually scurrying around just as you're about to aim at them. This is compounded by the fact that your squadmates have no strategy either, and when these enemies scurry out of your line of fire, your squadmates offer to put their heads on the line of fire, instead, just as you pull the trigger.

Some of the game mechanics remain obscure. I was half-way through the game until I finally "got" some of the subtleties of the game - and could have played through without really getting them.

Yet, none of this is all that big. Even when blandness sometimes shows, the main plot definitely makes up for it.

The Bottom Line
Welcome to an epic science-fiction tale where the humanity has uncovered mysterious alien technology to allow faster-than-light jumping around the galaxy, and met several interesting alien species. Humankind is just about to be admitted to the greater galactic bureaucracy as one of the prominent races. And we, on the other hand, have to go examine the exploits of the crew of humanity's most advanced spaceship. The first call is to examine a rather mysterious conflict that is quickly unfolding in a rather sleepy planet; this immediately leads to the trail of a new threat to all sentient organic races.

The humankind, of course, does what it does best, as far as fiction is to be believed: kicking butt. Mass Effect is a tactical third-person shooter... and a RPG... and you get to drive around in an APC too... oh, and you have a starship and you get to conduct some exploration too. Dialogue is a heavy part of the game: situations can be often solved with guns or through eloquent or threatening speech. The character is given choice between acting nicely and heroically ("Paragon"), or just getting the job done no matter what it takes ("Renegade"). Not really a good vs. evil system, but close. These choices award points which are tracked independently; the better you are at either, you also get the chance to be more persuasive or intimidating.

The player controls a squad of up to three people; each character has unique talents and strengths. The player character, Shepard, can be customised as well. At your disposal you have a bunch of different weapons (grenades, assault rifles, pistols, shotguns and sniper rifles) that come in different makes and models and can be customised with various kinds of mods. Different character types can use different weapons to their advantage. When the characters level up, they learn new powers. Aside of conventional weaponry, there's a bunch of biotic powers that are extremely handy. When you land on planets, you also have at your disposal an armoured vehicle, called Mako, that has the necessary big guns.

In short, Mass Effect is a really well-done science fiction RPG, with only minor flaws that don't really take away too much from fun. It has tons of engaging dialogue, has a well-crafted milieu, and enough interesting plot twists to keep you busy.

The Good
I've played Mass Effect a couple years after it came out and already made a significant splash on the RPG community. Although largely considered one of the best games of 2008 and heartily recommended by each and every one of my friends and associates I didn't really know what to expect from this game. I haven't been a fan of other space RPGs (such as the highly acclaimed Knights of the Old Republic; coupled with intense feelings after playing the fantastic Fallout 3, I wasn't really expecting a genre-redefining game. Let me settle this right here and now: I was totally blown away. Mass Effect is by and large the best game I've played in years.

To start with, the game exhibits top-notch production values. The sheer scope is mind-boggling; not since Star Control II have I experienced a game of such breadth and scope, taking care and time to ease the player into a massive game universe with diverse alien species, each of which has its own history and cultural baggage that bears in ever-so-subtle ways on the progression of the game. From the militaristic but sentimental Krogan through the ancient, misunderstood Asari, the short-lived but brilliant Salarians and down to the exceedingly original Hanar the Mass Effect universe is teeming with life. The amount of dedicated work necessary to bring such a complicated game universe to life is simply beyond my comprehension. The game shines with a coherent, compelling narrative that guides you through the various settings the game has to offer while providing ample opportunities for various side-quests, as with any good RPG.

Mass effect is absolutely beautiful, so beautiful I spent most of my first hours of gameplay just wondering around and gawking slack-jawed at the awesome intensity of the visuals. Everything from the impossibly detailed character models (particularly the aliens) through the sleek, futuristic yet serene Citadel to the marvelous planetside scenery is sheer bliss to look at (and this is a two year-old game, mind -- an eternity in 3D engine time!). I do not make the comparison to Star Control II lightly; that game also featured space exploration coupled with combat and surface exploration, and it seems the Mass Effect designers definitely took a cue from Star Control II in providing detailed planetary descriptions and semi-random surface generation for surface exploration. All said and done, the game is technically as impressive as I've ever seen.

Sonically Mass Effect is equally impressive, with a compelling score by Sam Hulick and brilliant voice acting that, at its best, shines with terrific contributions by the likes of Seth Green and Armin Shimerman (Quark in Star Trek: Deep Space 9); at it's worst it's merely decent -- production values that are light-years ahead of most games and which truly herald an age where such aspects of games aren't treated as low-priority.

Finally, the control system works quite well, the characters are easy to control and even vehicle movement makes sense. This is a major improvement over the occasionally choppy control system in other contemporary first-person RPGs, such as Fallout 3.

The Bad
I have few issues with Mass Effect. The first two are quite trivial; first and foremost, inventory management is significantly less developed than it ought to be. It's hard to tell which items are improved over others, it's quite easy to "lose" upgrades in unequipped weapons if you don't read the instruction boxes carefully, it's almost impossible to track how close you are to the 150-item limit and you'll often find yourself having to dispose of important weapons or upgrades instead of the crappy Lance assault rifle you've been carrying since the beginning of the game because you just didn't expect it to matter.

Next: the hacking/decrypting/surveying minigames are too easy, not nearly varied enough and too random to be effective (I've occasionally failed cracking open an easy crate because the block arrangement was nearly impossible to navigate, whereas a hard-to-decrypt weapons locker merely required a few careless keystrokes).

The bigger issue, though, is the inconsistent depth experienced throughout the game; whereas at first it seems the game world contains infinite possibilities for research and exploration, this sensation doesn't last past the first two or three quest assignments. Although huge and exciting, the main storyline becomes increasingly linear as it approaches endgame; this is admittedly a problem shared by most major RPGs, with very rare games managing to provide comparable breadth towards the end of the game as at the beginning. This is perhaps the one point in which Mass Effect falls just short of truly succeeding Star Control II as the ultimate space opera. Don't get me wrong, the game is never boring, it's just that your choices towards the end of the game are significantly constrained in contrast with the sheer expanse earlier on.

The Bottom Line
The best space opera I've played since Star Control II, as innovative and impressive in breadth and scope. As a huge SC2 fan, that's probably the biggest compliment I could pay this game. Play it, you will not be disappointed!