Mass Effect

"Mass Effect is an awesome Sci-Fi thriller that anyone can get into."

The science fiction genre is not exactly know for producing amazing hits. Outside of a few lone titles, most new science fiction games are laughable, and mundane. For a while, it seemed like every game that came out was just like every other game that ever was released.

Mass Effect aimed to change the status quot. It brings a lot of new, exciting features to the table, and it executes them flawlessly.

Story - The game starts out by letting you choose the main hero, After you finish creating your perfect character, you get thrown straight into an awesome plot filled to the brim with tons of twists and turns. The story does drag a little bit in some parts, though. It's not too shallow, but at the same time you do not have to be a genius to understand all of the events. It flows in a nice pattern, and it does not throw you on too many loops, something that the science fiction genre does all too much.

Here's a little bit of a preview: You play as Commander Sheppard (the first name is your choice), and officer who is sent out to investigate an attack on one of humanities outposts. When you arrive, you uncover a plot to take out all the life in the galaxy. You trek across the universe fighting Geth (synthetic robot soldiers) and other species as you attempt to save all the life in the universe.

The best part of the story is the effect that you can have on it. During certain battles, conversations and situations, how you react has a major impact on the rest of the story. Many games have tried to do something like this before, but none have been anywhere as good as MAss Effect's. There are several parts of the game that you effect, and what you choose really does make a big impact. Other games with this feature often only let you make choices a few times per game, and most of these times, your decision has little to do with the story. But this is not true with Mass Effect. Every time you make a choice, you feel like you've done something to really further the story. There are a lot of different scenarios where you pick the outcome, too. These situations are spread out across the game, and one of them even takes place in the very last stage.

Overall, the story unfolds in a tremendous way. Playing Mass Effect was as awe inspiring as reading a book; the plot stimulated my mind that much.

Game play - The first thing you'll notice when you load up Mass Effect is the menu screen. The menu is not cluttered, and it's easy to navigate, which is key if the game is going to succeed. When you're starting a game, you get to choose the way your character looks. You can change facial feature, gender, skin tone, add scars, and edit hair color. Once you are done making your character as perfect as possible, you get to name him or her. Finally, once you're done with all that jazz, you're ready to play the game.

You get to choose what class you want to be. There are three "base" classes, which are soldier, adept, and engineer. If you choose soldier, you go through the story the game using only guns. As you play through, you get better guns and upgrades that make fighting specific enemies easier. Solider is the easiest way to play through the game, so if you're a beginner, this is probably the class you'll want to choose.

The next base class is adept . Adepts are able to manipulate different power that allow them to attack and defend. You start out with a small amount of weak powers to use, but as you use them, you improve their skill level and also unlock different powers. This is the hardest class to use, but it also pays off the most. If you properly use an adept, during the last few levels you will be able to take out a large amount of enemies with relative ease.

The last of the core classes is the engineer class. This class specializes in being able to hack into electronic equipment. They can hack into safes, which will give you better armor for your party. The biggest perk that they have is the ability to hack into a large amount of synthetic enemies. This is a very useful skill that really helps you when you're facing off of against hoards of synthetic enemies later in the game.

There are three other classes which are hybrids of the core classes. Infiltrators combine soldiers and engineers, sentinels are a mixture of engineers and adepts, and vanguards are soldiers and adepts combined.

After you create your model and choose a class, you get to put together a little back story for your commander. You get to pick where and how he or she was born and raised, and you also get to pick one big event that happened in his or her past.

The game is easy to jump right into. You feel like you're in control right from the get go. You get to pick a group of two allies from a party of six. These allies are controlled by the computer, but the AI is fantastic, and they are always doing something helpful. I never felt like the AI was lagging or doing something adverse to my overall goal. However, I would have liked to see my team-mates take more of an intuitive stance. Often I was the only one targeting enemies and my team would only start shooting after I have.

There is one bad part that needs pointing out: the driving segments. Often times, you land on a planet and start to drive around, attacking enemies and looking for places to go and finish objects. The controls for the vehicle is just terrible. I felt like the biggest enemy inn the game was the tank's terrible steering. I probably died more times just trying to drive than I did getting killed by enemies.

Also, after w hle the game starts to get a little repetitive.Every time you land on a new planet you go through the same thing; you have to drive to a location, battling enemy turrets on the way. Once you get to the first building, you search around inside before you find evidence that sends you to the next building. After a while, doing the same thing starts to get really old fast. Luckily, in between these boring, samey missions you get tons of unique experiences, so that's balanced out.

When you beat the game once, you get a new option to play a second time using the same character. This is called New Game+, and it lets you keep all of your stats and weapons without starting over.

The controls were perfect. Each class feels like it's controls were tailor made for it. It really feels like the developers put a lot of time and effort into making sure the controls were perfect, and they definitely succeeded.

Graphics - The game runs smoothly, there's not noticeable slowdown. I was playing on a HDMI high definition set and it looks beautiful. The colors all look perfect. Each planet has a nice, distance feel. for example, the capital of the galaxy is completely white. Everything gleams in the sunlight, and it all looks perfect. The bloom from the explosions blows me away, and so do most of the different attack blasts as well. The game really took advantage of the Xbox360's capabilities.

Overall This is a game for anyone that has some time to really get wrapped up in an awesome story. This game is nearly perfect. Beating it once is not enough; you'll find yourself playing three or four times, just to gain the full experience. This is one of the Xbox360's better games out there, and there is no reason not to get it.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 08/11/08

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