Mass Effect

"It only gets a 9 because we don't get a sex scene with Tali."

I never had much of an interest in Star Wars, but I've heard so many good things about Knights of the Old Republic that it makes me wish I had my old Xbox back. Yes, it's true—I'm one of the sad souls who has never played KOTOR, said to be one of the most innovative RPGs of its generation. I have, however, played Bioware's Jade Empire, and you can see my review for it right here on GameFAQs. It has become one of my all-time favorites, raising the bar of the RPG genre so high that I didn't think anyone could do any better. I mean, you control the conversations! How sick is that? Not to mention the inventive battle system and wonderful characters. I mean, you just can't top that!

…Or can you? With the advent of the Xbox 360 we'd expect the advent of new, original games that blow away even some of the greatest classics from the Xbox generation. Bioware, the geniuses behind the above RPGs, realized this, and expectedly gave birth to Mass Effect, one of the deepest RPGs I have ever played. While Jade Empire will always have a special place in my heart and the rest of its fans' hearts, there's no denying that Mass Effect blows it out of the water on nearly every level. “Jade Empire in space” this most certainly is not. It's much, much more.

STORY:
You play the role of Commander Shephard, a man or woman whose physical appearance you may choose yourself. What's your story? Well, you get to choose that, too. Were you an orphan? A child raised in a healthy, family setting? Or maybe your past is full of tragedy. You also get to choose your recent military background—you can be a ruthless leader who does whatever it takes to accomplish a mission, a noble hero, or the “sole survivor,” which provides some interesting conversations during the game. The choices you make in regards to your Commander's history will heavily alter the way the story plays out, as well as if you go male or female.

But what about when you actually start playing? You see, your first mission is on Eden Prime. Your Captain and the mysterious Spectre (special government agents… let's make this simple) are being shady as to the details of this mission, and you and the rest of your crew have a hunch that there's more going on here than what they say. Once you arrive on Eden Prime, brace yourself for some crazy twists that you probably wouldn't expect from the first 20 minutes of gameplay. Let's just say Shepherd finds a strange beacon and has a vision that foreshadows the possible fate of the universe. As you can probably guess, it's not good. Choosing to either be a “paragon” or a “renegade,” where you go from there is up to you. You've obviously got some big responsibilities coming up, and how you go about them may work out for better or worse for the universe.

Honestly, there's way too much going on in the Mass Effect universe for me to explain everything in a silly little GameFAQs review. Thankfully, there's an in-game “Codex” which will store any and all information you need about the universe… from the many alien species, to the Council, to the planets you visit, to the technologies. Every little detail in ME has even more little details within it. There's so much going on it may be overwhelming to even the most patient players, but it all boils down to the main story, which is excellent in every way.
STORY: 10/10

GRAPHICS:
Like other Xbox 360 games, ME looks best in HD. Unfortunately, I'm a little too poor for a fancy TV like that, but even on a regular screen it looks damn good. The best visuals are in the characters. Not only do all the races have beautifully detailed bodies and heads, but their facial expressions are top-notch as well. Even better, their lips move as in-sync as possible with what they're saying. If there's one problem with the character designs, it's with when you make a female Shepherd—there are no options for hair length that is below the shoulders. They obviously did this to avoid having to make it flow when she runs around, so I thought that was a little cheap of them. Still, a VERY minor complaint.

The environments are also excellent. I've played way too many futuristic games with repetitious rooms and colors, so ME's locations were amazing. Inside the Citadel, scavenging on an eerie planet, or wandering around leisurely inside the Normandy, everywhere you go looks great.

With all these great visuals, there has to be some slowdown, right? Well, unfortunately, yes. It takes place only during battles, but usually it's not that bad. At times it gets incredibly slow, and the framerate bugs out on you like crazy, but that's only during REALLY intense battles (which also happen to be the worst times for this sort of thing to happen). In addition to the questionable framerate, some of the textures (on characters and objects) take a few seconds to load. They look fine even when they're not fully loaded, but once they are you'll say “did that really just happen?” It doesn't slow down the gameplay or anything, but it is kind of silly to be looking at a character for ten seconds and all of a sudden seeing his/her skin get a complete makeover.

Despite those complaints, you have to realize that ME does in fact have beautiful graphics. It's actually hard to even notice those issues because you'll be so absorbed with the game, so let's give ME a break.
GRAPHICS: 9/10

SOUNDS:
Musically, Mass Effect hits a grand slam. With futuristic sci-fi games, I often find that many of their scores are a little too over-the-top (Advent Rising, for example). This is probably because they want to be able to match the wonderful soundtracks we all know and love from Star Wars. Thankfully, Mass Effect didn't try to do that. Still, it managed to put in some very beautiful arrangements for the right moments. Even better than those more plot-based songs, however, is the in-game music. Electronica honestly doesn't get much more ambient than this. And it just fits… so well. And that's not to say all the in-game music is ambient. It certainly builds up when you start battling. The entire musical score in ME melds perfectly with the game.

If anything blows away the music, it's the voice-acting. Not only is the lip-syncing damn near perfect, but the voices themselves are as well. Commander Shephard's male and female voices fit great, along with the rest of your crew's. No obnoxiously high-pitched voices in the female NPCs, and no creepster voices in the male NPCs. Everyone sounds great. It's simple as that.
SOUNDS: 10/10

GAMEPLAY:
Mass Effect's gameplay is massively effective. See what I did there? But it's true—ME offers RPG fans some of the most in-depth gameplay they've seen for a long time. From the alternate ways to build up your characters to the conversations to the exploration, ME reveals something new around every corner.

Let's start at the beginning. Along with choosing Commander Shephard's past, you also get to choose his/her methods of fighting. You can choose from a soldier, a biotic or an engineer. There are a couple different options for each of those three, and whichever you pick, believe it or not, drastically changes the way you fight. Soldiers are the easiest to pick up, simply because they are experts with direct battling, while biotics are sort of the game's “mage” class (but they're way cooler than mages), and the engineers have a lot more technical field abilities. The classes' weapon preferences are also all very different. Trust me, if you're going to play through this game more than once, you MUST pick a completely different class than the last playthrough. These classes only make the intense battling that much more exciting. Are you a vanguard? Blow the enemies away with your shotgun (very satisfying). An adept? Toss your foes around like puppets (also very satisfying). There's much more to it than that, and while in a way ME is a shooter, it's all based around the RPG elements.

Building up your characters is half the fun in RPGs. ME's leveling up is similar to Jade Empire's in that you are given many different abilities and skills at first, but to really make any use of them you need to spend points to build them up. There are some locked abilities, too, which can be opened by improving enough in others. I focused on certain abilities that I used the most instead of being well-rounded, but it's really up to you.

Spending these points will not only improve how well you battle, but also how well you can converse with people. Similar to Jade Empire, Shepherd has a “Charm” and “Intimidate” level that can be raised with experience. It's best to focus on just one of these two for each playthrough because you'll want to save points for battle abilities, but with high enough levels in either one, you'll open up new options during the already-in-depth conversations. If you thought three options to choose from whenever Shepherd speaks was a lot, charm and intimidate will add another one for many of them, and they usually prove to be the best options to choose in conversation. Although none of the choices will drastically change anything in the story, they still make every run-through of the game completely different from the last.

Aside from the main quest (saving the universe, blah blah blah), there are also countless hours of optional quests that are, in a way, almost necessary to be able to finish the game. Not only will they build your level of paragon or renegade, but they also give you massive amount of experience points that will aid you a good deal in the main quest. And there are a LOT of sidequests—they actually make up more of the game than the main quest. Sometimes they will take place in one location, but they often require you to travel from planet to planet, which will span across completely different galaxies. While they are usually the same thing – explore a planet, find an enemy base, wipe them out – they still are very fun, simply because battling is fun. Exploring, however, will get old by the fifth planet you reach. You will often be using your Mako (similar to the Warthog in Halo) to travel across the vast planets, and while many players absolutely abhorred this piece of machinery, it's not all bad. Sure, the controls for it are sluggish and frustrating, but the thing can climb mountains!! I mean, that's kind of cool, right? I won't lie, the Mako was a very unpolished part of the gameplay, but it does have its saving graces.

Exploration obviously involves discovery, and you will be finding a lot of… stuff in your travels. Whether it's a weapon upgrade, a valuable item left behind by an alien race, or a chemical element, everything will slowly but surely make you better off. Most of the time the weapons, upgrades and armor you find will be pretty worthless. But you get to sell them or convert them into omnigel (used for the Mako), which makes you pretty filthy rich by the end of the game—I actually reached the limit of money by the end of the game. The other discoveries you make are a part of the sidequests, where you simply look for whatever is on your map. Once you get enough, that quest is done. The rewards are nothing great, but it's easy and doesn't get in the way of anything, so why not?

Although you won't realize it, one of the best parts of ME is that you can save anywhere. Why can't every RPG be like this? And with a game this challenging (and with a slight lack of automatic checkpoints), you will be very thankful.

There are a couple of bigger problems I found while playing, unfortunately. The game will take a couple hours for you to really understand—the manual doesn't explain that much and the actual game lacks any decent tutorials. This really angered me, because a game this complex should be helping out newcomers to the game, especially since they might be turned off before they even finish Eden Prime. Another slight bummer is with how you give commands to your party members. You are given this option during battle, but you'll completely forget about it. The thing is, my team members were perfectly fine without me giving out commands, so the whole idea was kind of pointless. Unlike my teammates who had great AI, however, the enemies were a little dumb. The bosses are fantastic, but any other enemy would, for the most part, simply shoot and take cover.

But even with these problems, you will be completely absorbed in ME from beginning to end. Whether your favorite part is the multiple conversation paths, the limitless battle options, or even the exploration aspect, once you get into ME you will not want to put it down.
GAMEPLAY: 9/10

LASTING APPEAL:
With just the main quest, it could be under 20 hours. But who the hell would want to do that? Side quests might just double that number, making this a game that will keep you occupied for a long time. And you'll replay it again and again, oh yes you will, because it's a completely new experience every time. It will last you forever.
LASTING APPEAL: 10/10

OVERALL:
So my overall score might be lower than the one I gave Jade Empire, but Mass Effect is no doubt the superior game. There a couple of quirks here and there, but the storytelling (and “story-altering”), the beautiful visuals and music, and of course the engrossing gameplay make Mass Effect an RPG that any of its players will enjoy for years.
OVERALL: 9.3/10

Thanks for reading =)

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 04/30/08

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