Mass Effect

"Great game, but questionable flaws killed some of the fun."

It was August 2006, when I received my September issue of Electronic Gaming Monthly in the mail box, showing a picture of Commander Shepard, an early rendition of Ashley Williams, and an early rendition of Garrus Vakaran in the front cover. I thought to myself, “Wow, that game is cool” and decided to read the article that was dedicated to Mass Effect, and the game's attempts at exploring new bounds caught my interest, especially with the dialog tree, ambiguous morality, and how the story was going to play out. Being a fan of Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and Jade Empire, and enjoying the two games, I figured, “Hey, it's BioWare. How can they screw this up?”

At first, I was reluctant to buy the XBox 360 in order to get the game because the system was known to have been plagued by questionable hardware integrity over the years it was released, and Halo 3 was the only other game I wanted to buy. Fastforwarding to November 16, 2007. I bought the XBox 360 and Halo 3, as an early birthday present on that day, as well as a Product Replacement Plan for the system from Best Buy, should the system ever die on me. On November 20, 2007, I bought my copy of Mass Effect at 10:00 A.M., impatiently wanting to play the game the second I got home. The second I popped the CD inside the 360, I was immediately sucked in.

Story: 8.5/10

From start to finish, Mass Effect's story drew my interest, and did not fail to lose my attention. At first, Mass Effect's story seemed like a standard “good versus evil” battle, in the same sense as Star Wars, but as the story progressed, things were not that easy. What would happen if you have 24's Jack Bauer in a Sci-Fi setting? You get your player character, Commander Shepard, a Lieutenant Commander in the Alliance Navy, a modified futuristic version of the United States Navy who is trying to get accepted into the Spectre ranks, an intergalactic elite military program who are basically the Special Forces versions of Jedi Knights, during a time period when humanity is struggling to get accepted by the alien races they encountered. Unfortunately, a “training mission” gets screwed up by an unauthorized Spectre hell bent on destroying a human colony with some aid by a machine race called the Geth. The rest of the game focuses on why this Spectre did what he did, and Shepard has to stop him from carrying out his plans. I would go more, but would end up getting spoilers.

Feedback on story: The main story was the meat of the game, but there were times when the story just felt too short, where if someone just plowed through the main story without bothering to do the side-quests, it could be completed from ten to twenty-four hours. There were only a total of seven explorable activity-filled planets pertaining to the main story, and exploring those particular planets just felt too empty at times, regardless of the NPC population on said planets. The tagline, “Some choices have to be made, none of them easy” barely played out, other than that one instance on a story planet, where you had to choose between sacrificing a squad member over the other. I loved that moment, and wished that there were more situations like these, in conjunction with the recent “Bring Down the Sky” downloadable content.

Side-quests: 8.0/10: Despite the moral ambiguity's promise, a good majority of the side-quests have been cookie-cutter at best, but there were only five side-quests which presented very difficult choices. Without naming names, these are the situations that actually worked out well:

- Demanding an Alliance scientist to return a marine's dead body to her husband, or to allow the continuation of experiments which may provide good defenses against the Geth

- Confronting a Marine turned renegade killer bent on killing a former Alliance scientist for experimentation

- Letting a terrorist go in order to save a hostage or killing the hostages in order to kill said terrorist

- Accepting an assignment to kill Criminals from a questionable person, or sticking to your moral bounds

- Negotiating with a warlord for mining a resource from warlord's home planet.


Compared to these five side-quests, I felt a bit shortchanged, since the rest involved collecting old emblems and artifacts, and finding resources to maintain Alliance Ships to gain credits, as well as accepting occasional missions from Alliance Command involving hostage situations, defending a location from hostile forces, or first-strike missions against the Geth or criminal organizations. As much of a short change it was, this format is more preferable than the Japanese RPG system of killing hostile animals for hours on end just to level up.

Gameplay: 7.0/10

Regular/menu:

Regular gameplay is the “normal” mode where the player moves from point A to point B with their weapons stowed. The player is able to talk to other people, explore items of interest, and interact with highlighted objects. The dialog tree is the main starring gameplay element. The dialog tree is shaped like a wheel, giving the bare bones of what Shepard is going to say. Supposing you have Shepard say a given thought like, “Give me more money. You owe me.” Shepard would say the line, “I think you should give me more. After all, I helped you out.” There is also decrypting objects in a “Simon says” manner, and while it was well-received, it made it a bit too easy at times.

The menu system is somewhat modeled after the dialog tree, allowing the player to move the analog stick to highlight an item and then select it. The interface has a good design, but there is a major gripe with the item selection. The way the things are categorized were too clunky and only organized as singleton items, and it made selecting items a ridiculous pain in the *** to do, especially if you have ten “Polomium Rounds Mark V” you want to sell, when you've been spammed by ten versions of “Radioactive rounds 1” at the bottom of the list. To make matters worse, you are only allowed to carry 150 items, and if you do run out of space, you're either forced to decompile said items or sell them. Storage never existed in the world of Mass Effect apparently. Wouldn't it have killed the devs to at least let us store our items in Shepard's locker?

Gripes: Moving around feels slow, as Shepard and company only walk and jog around the map, and the dialogue tree does not always give the desirable results in story-related conversations. For example, some “options” ended up with Shepard saying the same universal line, regardless of what line was chosen. Menu system for items is disorganized, and needs to be fixed A.S.A.P. Make item duplicates stackable for crying out loud.

Third-person shooter combat:

The gameplay occurs in real time, with some pseudo-turn-based related skills such as using Tech or biotic skills, or special skills such as “Marksmanship,” “Overkill,” etc. The rest, however is relegated to that of a third-person shooter akin to Gears of War and Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 1. The firefights are mostly smooth, but unfortunately, they get clunky at times.

Problems with third person shooter portions: When carrying out heavy firefights in indoor locations, I occasionally find myself taking cover behind an object or wall automatically when trying to run away from danger. This at time causes me to get killed when I'm trying to get a better angle on shooting the hostile forces, forcing me to adopt the “Halo Gun & Run” gameplay, when playing as a Soldier/Shock Trooper instead of playing like a Special Forces soldier. Other classes however do not have the same leeway, and some of them will have a harder time in combat, despite their devastating abilities. To make things worse, your squadmates, while useful at times will constantly run into your line of fire, and rarely take cover because of how the command system is set out. There will be times when one squad member will take cover in one spot, while the other will be standing in the open, waiting to get sniped at

Mako: The Mako is the main driving IFV of Mass Effect, and is the only drivable vehicle in Mass Effect. Despite the cool design and devastating firepower, there are two major problems with the Mako.

Customization: When Mass Effect was just announced, the players were promised that they would be able to customize the vehicle, such as putting better grips on tires to navigate slippery terrain and the like. Not sure what the story is, but that thing never came to fruition.

Controls: Controlling the Mako was a nightmare at times, especially when I drove Halo's Warthog proficiently in the Halo games. Just when I entered an uncharted world for the first time, I got killed by a Thresher Maw over twenty times just because the Mako decided to reverse on me, despite the fact that I wanted to make a U turn and high tail out of dodge.

Here is a rudimentary diagram of how the controls are set up

Halo:

< (Warthog) << (Camera). When I press up on the Analog stick, the vehicle always drives forward, with the camera following behind it, it works well, while pulling down will automatically reverse the Warthog.

> (Warthog) << Camera. Like the previous “paragraph,” The Warthog will automatically steer to the direction the camera is pointing at when I press up, making the U-Turn when necessary.

Mako:

Unfortunately, the Mako needlessly aggravated me, and here is what I got.

< (Mako) <<(Camera). Okay, the controls are fine. At least it goes forward when I want to, providing that the Mako's trunk is facing me.

> (Mako) <<(Camera). The situation I mentioned in the “controls” section is what exactly happened. Knowing that my Mako is damaged and I needed to run away, I moved the camera to a different direction, which is 180 degrees, and then pressed up on the analog stick. Instead of the U turn, I got met with backing up and then getting killed just because the Mako backed up.

I have posted this on the Gamefaqs message boards, but got met with the typical fanboy response, “You suck at gaming” “You suck at driving,” “You suck at this game.” I've beaten this game three times completely, and honestly felt that the QA department really didn't test out everything in the game. Seriously, please revamp the controls for the Mako.

Graphics: 8.0/10.

The Graphics are amazing, and made everything look life-like. I also loved the tiny details given in the armor. Unfortunately, as great as the graphics are, loading times just killed the pacing of the game, especially when the text “Now loading” randomly pops up here and there when I'm on the Citadel. To make matters worse, the framerate is known to dip in large-scale firefights, especially when fighting a boss battle which involved numerous henchmen, and a powerful boss. Hell, even using the biotic “Singularity” power caused some lag. I understand that this may be the side-effect of the Unreal engine BioWare is working on, but is there any way for the thing to sting less? No one should also have to use “workarounds” such as turning off the motion blur function just to stabilize the framerate either.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 07/16/08

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