Mass Effect

"Fun for a while, but forgettable. - Rent it."

Mass Effect can be summarized as an attractive blond with a bad tan that talks your ear off. From a distance, she looks great with minor, visual annoyances, and you think she's girlfriend or “hook up” material, but then you start talking to her and wonder if it's worth the trouble. She will be in beauty school and plan to open a tanning/beauty salon with her best friend, and she'll be a vegetarian so she can help save the planet. However, the visible thong above her tight jeans will keep you rooted next to her.

This is an interesting story with a game build around it. It's an Action RPG in the sense that the action is real-time, and an RPG in the sense that you can make a LOT of choices, nearly all of which are dialog driven. If you liked Oblivion and the freedom it provided, you'll probably dislike this game because exploration is virtually non-existent. (Yes, you can explore uncharted planets, but you're literally driving around deserts and mountains trying to find virtually useless items for the primarily just to say you've found them all.) If you liked Knights Of The Old Republic, you'll probably enjoy this game because it's similar, but with lots and lots more dialog.

Pros:
- Looks great. Amazing use of focus and motion-blur.
- Great story. Well explored and thought-provoking.
- Sound effects are spot on. Spot on!
- Music was just right. It wasn't overbearing and had just the right accent to the game.
- Fighting was pretty cool. Great menu system that allowed you to interact with your teammates quickly and easily.
- Lots of customization with how you level up characters and their equipment.
- Great environments! This was extremely well done because each ship, station, etc. had polished details that made it feel like a real place. It felt like each area of the game was custom-built to make it as real as possible rather than rehashing the same models and textures.
- Conversations were visually realistic. Characters had excellent body language and enough movement and gestures that you didn't see the same motions over and over again.

Cons:
- Way, way, way too much talking. A huge majority of conversations end with exactly the same result no matter what your responses are, so having the conversation stop so the user can choose between, “Yes”, “Of course”, and, “Sure”, is ridiculous. This severely impacts the pacing of the game. Imagine going to a concert and the band stops after each song and talks for ten minutes to decide what to play next. The absolute worst part of all this? You gain experience from conversations, so if you want to level up as much as possible (which primarily affects your ability to fight) be prepared to sit through hours of dialog. Realistic? Yeah, sure, but I'm also playing a space soldier that's destroying androids with aliens by my side. I'm not playing for realism.

- Too much customization with weapons and equipment. When attack, defense, accuracy, etc. are all defined for weapons and armor on a scale of about 1 - 300, having one item that differs from another by 4 or 5 points is a waste of time… and they're found everywhere. I found myself dumping inventory very often because I got tired of updating my equipment every ten minutes.

- Stores are useless. Everything is way too expensive and typically barely better than anything you can find by just walking around. Total waste of time.

- Level layout was frustratingly bad. Finding a particular location that isn't marked or labeled on the map is nearly impossible at times.

- Character development wasn't great. I didn't care about any of my squad-mates. There are times when you have to make very important decisions regarding your squad, but I didn't have any emotional attachment to any of them, even after exploring each of their characters with dialog as often as possible. When it came down to choices, I seriously didn't care about the outcome.

- I have to wait in real-time on every elevator? Seriously?? What's up with that?


In all, it's worth playing, but the whole thing feels like a prototype for the game engine. “This is how the final game will look and operate. We threw in some missions to make it testable.” Mass Effect could have been an amazing gem, but it's not. It's like a movie sequel that should have been amazing, but isn't, and you're left wondering how they could have come so close and still missed the mark.

Rent it. Rent it. Rent it. Don't let the "40+ hours" comments fool you... it's mostly dialog. If you are engrossed after two hours, you will love it. If you find yourself bored during that time, you will be glad you didn't buy it.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 12/10/07

Game Release: Mass Effect (US, 11/20/07)