Game Review: Mass Effect (Xbox 360)

Mass Effect (Xbox 360)


Overall: 9.5/10
Pros: Beautiful graphics, great gameplay, amazing story, really great conversations...and graphics...and did I mention the awesome story?
Cons: Elevators, some combat situations, and your squadmates-sometimes.

The first time I saw this game I practically freaked-Bioware, the makers of the greatest Star Wars game ever, creating their own IP with their own ideas and story and characters. Add that scenario in with absolutely brilliant graphics, interesting characters, a unique and revolutionary conversation system, and your own starship, and you have a recipe for science fiction greatness.

I ordered the Limited Edition of the game off of Gamestop.com on Thanksgiving night, and when it arrived on Teusday, I couldn't stop playing. My final playthrough logged in at around 11 hours (I hated the fact that the game didn't outright tell you how long you played it once you beat it) and I didn't even crack the surface of what was possible in the game. I simply followed the story quest, pursuing two or three optional assignments maximum.

First off: the story and setting. The setting in the twenty-third century is superb, and is highly enhanced by the awesome art style and graphics. The environments everywhere are breathtaking and amazingly inhabited by the aliens within them. These environments and inhabitants help to give the story a breath of fresh air, as it simply provides context to everything that you do, and every situation that you find yourself in. The story itself is amazing, spanning several planets and situations to find yourself in, and the scale is just awe inspiring.

I just traveled laong the main pathway this time around, sticking to those planets that you absolutely need to go to in order to complete the game, and sticking to the order that you are supposedly supposed to visit those planets. That main quest alone took eleven hours of my time, and that eleven hours in four days was completely worth it.

I just loved the exploration and main quests that you have to partake, even though on some planets there are extended sequences where you just run from person to person until you can progress in some other way. This was sort of annoying, but in the end it just didn't matter because it always made you feel like you were progressing, which is the most important thing. Then, when you started to get going and really progress in a visible and quick manner, then you just love it even more.

The combat was extremely smooth and easy, playing a lot like many FPS games, albeit from a third-person perspective, and it was really, really fun and cool. The actual encounters, except for a few that I can think of, were extremely easy and simple to get through. However, that only strengthens the game. The combat, really, if you think about it, is simply overlaid over top of an epic and amazing story. It just doesn't matter in the long run. It is simply a vehicle to get you from place to place in order to progress the story-and that's what I really liked about it. Plus, even though you do level up, it doesn't feel like you absolutely need to spend hours and hours in order to upgrade your character, which is something that I hate about most RPG's. It really plays well in that you can simply play the game like a shooter-going from place to place doing what you need to do in order to get the game over with, and you can beat the game that way. That is very unlike most RPG's where you have to spend a massive amount of time leveling and working towards beating the game, leveling up every character that you could possibly have in your party, keeping everyone balanced. Also of note-you didn't have to keep switching characters in order to get certain things done. I beat the entire game using only two characters in my party: Ashley and Liara. Obviously Liara came into the game late, but after I acquired her, she was the only character that I used along with Ashley and myself-Commander Shephard.

This idea of using only two characters was interesting in that it provided me with insight into two interesting things: what makes a great game brilliant, and what makes a great game simple while at the same time being complex. What I thought was brilliant was that using this constant party, my Tech powers were never leveld up at all. That meant that I never got to hack into many of the crates and lockers and supply-giving areas in the game. This meant that except for around 5-10 crates maximum, I didn't pick up any new equipment or powers or items. I also only visited one store in my entire playthrough-and I still beat the game! I think that all games, not just RPG's need to be made like this. They need to be made while giving you the ability to beat the game with a minimal amount of work. You don't need to collect everything to get through the game, you just need to work at it minimally. You don't need to be an expert, you just ned to be a fan. And as for what makes a great game simple while at the same time being complex: guided freedom. I'm not a big fan of the sandbox genre, and I hate that 'go anywhere do anything' mantra. It just annoys me. I like to finish games and get a complete understanding of the story. If that takes me forty hours because I wasn't sure what was really going to progress the plot or help me out, then that sort of dampens the experience. The ability to visit literally dozens of worlds in Mass Effect is very cool and unique, and eventually I'd like to visit many of those optional worlds and discover what they have to offer, but if you really just want to get through the main plot and understand that aspect of it completely, than you can and it is extremely easy and fun to do so.

The conclusion, however, is just a little bit odd. It does leave room for the rest of the planned trilogy, albeit a little bit wierdly, but really it just makes me want to play throug the game all over again.

Now, onto the only three bad things that I can think of.

#1: Combat and Squad
Sometimes the combat is a little unbalanced and difficult. I mean it is fun and easy to play with, it can sometimes be a little overwhelming and odd. Now, in terms of the squad, this was my one major complaint. Your squad, while most of the time helpful, can at times be extremely stupid. One particular incident comes to mind where I realized that one of my squadmates was way, way behind me and wasn't moving at all. I had to go backtrack all the way back over there to get to Liara, the squadmate in question, and then I had to screw around for another five minutes until I finally got her to come with me and help to finish the mission.

#2: Odd Dialog Choices
The dialog is my absolute favorite part of the game. I could sit for hours on end and just go through the many sorts of conversations in the game. My major complaints with this system isn't with the system itself, its more with the delivery. Some of the lines are delivered in a sort of sarcastic or serious or even angry manner when they are supposedly the 'nice' lines. The characters react in the desired way, but the delivery is just a little bit wierd. At the end, one of the dialog choices suddenly makes you like whip around in another direction and walk off while spouting a few more lines. It isn't bad or game killing, it's just a little odd.

#3: Bugs
I don't play games to find bugs. With Halo 3 and the Forge, yes, I do screw around some and try to find glitches and things like that that help to make the game fun in a different kind of way, but with Mass Effect, my entire desire in playing the game was just to do that: Unfortuantely, my experience was marred by two bugs that I found while just doing what any player would normally do. The first one was me just simply walking along a walkway right next to the railing, and all of a sudden I was stuck and couldn't move at all in any direction whatsoever. It would play walking animations, but I couldn't move. I couldn't figure out any way to get out of there, and so I had to load my last save point and do about fifteen minutes worth of playing over again. The second bug happened while I was in the Mako. I went over a rock and flipped the thing. The Mako ended up falling through the geometry of the level and then ended up hung from its cannon. I could move the cannon, but the Mako itself was still stuck underneath. While these bugs were technically game killing, and I was mad about them, I didn't mind them overall, because the rest of the game was so good that it just didn't matter.

Overall, if you love either shooters or RPG's, get this game and play it to its full extent. It is amazing and extremely fun to play. I really loved the game and can't wait to continue on with the story.

Concept: Create an amazing RPG, and an amazing science fiction universe while incorporating amazing tactical gameplay and an awesome conversation system to create one of the greatest video games ever overall.

Graphics: The in-game environments are amazingly beautiful and detailed, and the character models are awesome. However, the character models that are used during the conversations and cinematics are the true show-stealers, showing off nearly five million polygons at once. They are amazingly detailed and show of the real power of the Xbox 360 and next generation machines as a whole.

Sound: The main draw for sound-the voice acting, is absolutely perfect and exquisetly superb-mostly. See my section up above for the full story. The music was also really, really amazing. I didn't expect it to be as good as it really was, but it was amazing-inspired by the electronic soundtracks of the 70's and 80's. It was one of my favorite features of the game in the end-and I wasn't even expecting it. What a pleasant surprise it was.

Playability: Combat is awesome and smooth. Exploration is fun, although a bit jumpy, and conversations play like video games were invented just for that system.

Entertainment: It is extremely fun and offers a massive amount of entertainment, and you don't really have to look for it. It is all right out there on the surface and aching for you to come in and play with it.

Replay Value: So high it is impossible to come up with any kind of words to describe how high the replay value is.