Mass Effect

"A brilliant RPG offering that belies Bioware's lack of experience in action gaming."

Mass Effect is unlikely any game you have ever played before. This is true on so many levels. It would be fair to say that no game before it has managed to achieve such a brilliantly cinematic feel, or deliver such unparalleled voice acting and motion capture animation before (even the facial animations are so good that you'll notice them). It would also be fair to say that almost no games have managed to feel this epic, and almost none of those that did took place in a science fiction universe, let alone one as brilliantly and immaculately detailed as the one that Bioware has created in Mass Effect.

The game begins in the year 2183, and Humanity, a relative newcomer on the galactic scene, is ready to test their latest joint venture with an alien race, your ship, the Normandy. In typical fashion, a routine shakedown run turns into something much more serious, and things get a little hairy on Eden prime, courtesy of Saren, a rogue Spectre - a special agent of the governing galactic body, known as the council - and his army of sentient machines known as the geth.

By the time you've completed your first mission (and the extremely impressive approach to the Citadel, the galaxies' equivalent of parliament-in-space), odds are good that you'll have made up your mind about the feel of the game. It's obvious that Bioware spent a whole lot of time on developing the universe you're at work in: everything seems just right, and explanations that are often absent from other games are just jumping out at you in Mass Effect. Every aspect and issue of society - from the economy, to trade, to racism, to whathaveyou, is perfectly realized in Mass Effect, and given some life in the form of a narrated galactic codex, and the excellent in game dialogue.

Better yet, instead of falling on cliches like post-apocalyptic space odysseys, or the cyberpunk drivel that developers so often use as a creative crutch, Mass Effect really feels real. If you took human civilization and dropped it in space, this is what you'd wind up with.

After spending a short time on the citadel and getting to familiarize yourself with the game a little (the first tutorial mission on Eden Prime is a little abrupt, and a little too light on the actual tutorial elements), you're given free reign to travel across the galaxy. It's here where things get interesting. You have essentially free reign to go wherever you want.

You navigate around the galaxy via the galactic map, a 3D model of the milky way. A number of star clusters are available to peruse, each of which contains between one and five stars, each with a few planets to survey, and one to land on. You can opt to go straight to the populated main quest planets, each of which represent an hour or three of carefully designed and action packed environments, or you can go jumping from uncharted world to uncharted world, in search of interesting goodies and side quests.

If you choose to do the latter (and you probably will at some point), you'll be dropped in the Mako Infantry Fighting Vehicle, a powerful all terrain tank which can devastate enemies with a machine gun fire or its powerful cannon, and which offers zooming capability for long range engagements. Most of the uncharted worlds are relatively barren, but the Mako is shockingly excellent at ascending seemingly impassable slopes, and you almost drive up sheer cliffs (albeit slowly) to get to your objective, though there are often some longer routes which offer more manageable terrain.

Unhappily, these worlds are likely to really wear on the patience of even the most diehard gamer eventually (probably sooner rather than later), since they are all so large, so empty, and so difficult to move around. Indeed, the sidequests that are the meat of these planets are often totally underwhelming, a couple of very notable exceptions aside.

Fortunately, the main story planets are well put together, and help to show the player what is really happening (and what is really at stake), which is extremely interesting. These story planets also have the highest density of interesting character interaction and combat, which is done in a sort of action style.

In fact, Mass Effect's combat will probably throw you off at first since it's so unlike your typical RPG and so alike action games like Gears of War (right down to the cover system, holding A to run, and the over the shoulder perspective). In general, the balance seems about right (although the presence of immunity in the unlockable difficulties can really suck the fun right out of combat by drawing out battles to nauseating lengths), and it's never too tough, but your AI opponents never become punching bags.

You're allowed to take two of your six possible squadmates on to a planet, and while they can often get stuck firing into a wall that an enemy is behind, they can really help to make combat interesting (and doable! some of these fights would get pretty tough by your lonesome). Abilities are controlled through a radial menu that is brought up by pressing the right bumper, and which also pauses the game to allow for a little strategizing.

Abilities are basically broken down into techs (the domain of engineers), biotics (the domain of adepts), and weapon and combat abillities (the domain of soldiers). Hybrids of the three classes exist also, with the sentinel being a combination of engineer and adept, the infiltrator being a mix of soldier and engineer, and the vanguard a mix of soldier and adept. They all play slightly differently, but you can expect to be making good use of your guns regardless of who you play.

The story remains captivating until the end, and culminates in a satisfying finale that, without making things different for the sequel, feels just about right.

So it's epic, it's fully realized, and it got everything right down to the last detail. Unfortunately, the other thing that Mass Effect did like no other game is manage to completely screw up the fundamentals while it was at it.

To start, Mass Effect's inventory system (something you would expect to be critical to a proper RPG experience) is an abomination. It has been a very long time since an inventory system this bad found its way into a game at all, let alone one this good. Everything is managed through a scrolling list of items. Nothing is stacked, and the statistical information is explained in only the rudimentary sense (and no breakdown of your actual statistical totals is given anywhere). What this means is that you can have thirty different copies of the exact same upgrade and have no idea what it does. This will happen.

Further, the upgrade system is sloppy, and its difficult to know at first if you actually equipped this upgrade, or swapped it for an inferior one, and the game does you the added favor of not differentiating between items that have upgrades installed and those that do not (although fortuitously, it doesn't destroy upgrades equipped to items that you sell or discard). Further, the inventory system allows you to carry a maximum of 150 items. If you aren't dilligent about selling or discarding items (a process which turns them into "omni-gel," the ubiquitous lockpick / mako repair / press "x" to solve a puzzle resource), this wont take very long at all. Since you probably don't want to get into the business of managing your inventory, since its already a pain given the stupid way in which it's been set up (especially since all equipment is the kind that could logically stack), you're going to want to keep playing - but you can't until you've dealt with the fact that you need to destroy items until you're back at 150 to leave your inventory screen.

Combat is generally well done, except that you'll find that, especially in your first playthrough when nothing has been unlocked) that most of your deaths are the result of not being able to dodge a rocket because your party member was standing behind you, or being cornered by a big powerful enemy that requires your weapon to deal with, but you're forced into meleeing them to no effect at all while they take their time to kill you. The "roadie run" equivalent of this game feels absolutely right, with the camera shaking at exactly the right tempo and your character moving along just fast enough to make it seem like they're on a mission without being hokey. Unfortunately, it doesn't last very long (often not even long enough to safely move between cover), the melee that is supposed to accompany it is basically useless, and it takes basically forever to recharge.

And if you do the sidequests that involve combat on the uncharted planets, you'll find yourself becoming extremely familiar with the same four environments very quickly. Virtually all of Mass Effect's 25 or so uncharted planets involve a sidequest which sees you drive somewhere in the Mako, enter one of two possible bunkers or, for variety, a cave (which is always indentical), and kill everything, where you head to the back room and press the A button on a console, computer, or crate to complete it. The endless barrage of button pressing minigames may not bug you, but you'll wonder why pressing the X A Y and B buttons in order can create cures to bioweapons, unlock creates, debug computers, deactivate nukes, and operate mining lasers.

The Mako itself will either amaze and impress, or enrage and infuriate (and likely the latter). It's not the vehicle is poorly designed (it looks cool and is mostly a blast to operate, the weird camera angle issues that can result in going into reverse notwithstanding), but the levels that have been designed for it are not all that much fun. Don't be surprised if you find yourself driving past enemies in order to get to the next on foot sequence.

And that is what is really so remarkable about Mass Effect. It's utterly brilliant, and all the details are perfect. But you can really tell that Bioware is doing some things that they haven't done before, and the result is that many of the crucial game elements are off.

That said, despite its failings, Mass Effect is most definitely worth picking up (and since the game clocks in at anywhere from 15 to 35 hours, it will be tough to finish in a rental), and if you haven't already done so, you should!

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 02/25/08

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