Mass Effect

"One Small Step For Man, One Giant Leap for the Mako 35"

I am very glad I did not know that BioWare had made a new Choose Your Own Adventure game like it had done with the Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic games. Those two games were masterpieces in their own right by introducing dialogue text choices that determined whether you would ultimately become a Jedi or Sith in a Star Wars Universe that was completely in its own world. Mass Effect came out in 2007 and I was right in the middle of some tough college classes and if I had not dropped my new game release radar back then I would still be in college now. Mass Effect is a huge step forward into interstellar awesomeness featuring all of the elements that you loved from previous BioWare titles to improved combat and added exploration and vehicular travelling. Mass Effect's only problem is that it tries to conquer the universe and you just can't pack into a single game everything as unlimited as what Mass Effect tries to pack in. What drives Mass Effect is not the interstellar battles you will have to fight but the character devoted story work that was put into the game as well as all of the drama that you get to create or try to resolve.

Story

Mass Effect has an original story based around many of the current theories about interstellar travel along with a plethora of creative alien interjections. Humanity discovers some ancient ruins on Mars that turn out to be relays that cause space travelers to zip into wormholes and come out at other relays throughout the Milky Way Galaxy. The Mass Effect universe itself is based only in the Milky Way with a bunch of star systems within it supporting the other alien races you encounter as well as plenty of planets to explore. Of course this does not even scratch the surface of our gigantic galaxy and this game does a good job of making you feel very small. You can pick your own character or go with the default Commander Shepard who has a slight resemblance to the doctor guy on Lost, and Shepard has his or her own baggage as the sole survivor of an attack on a human colony in Akuze. His status as a survivor earns him an eyeballing from the Council who are a bunch of aliens trying to run a galaxy based on interspecies unionism. The big theme of the game is that the other aliens do not trust humans and humans do not trust the aliens and Shepard is seen as a key to bring about an interstellar age of Aquarius. The story does a superb job of explaining how things happened, when they happened, and the backgrounds of all of the known intelligent sentients in the galaxy. I was engrossed in this game from the start but surprisingly, this game can be very short if you are not careful. The main story line only carries you across four main missions while there is a lot of problems and situations you can check out along the way. A lot of the side plots have something to do with one of the characters you recruit along the way.

The drama between you and your crew becomes quite intense as the game throws in some romance into the game along with a few tough decisions and a lot of love/hate relationships between the different species you have on board. The ultimate ending of the story is the same but each time you play through differently, you will encounter several variations in the dialogue and other things.

Game Play

Most of the time you will be playing in the third person with two of your crew following behind you. You get to pick who goes with you on missions and in addition to being able to upgrade your weapons you will be able to level up all of your characters. After the first play through Mass Effect becomes a walk in the park unless you bump up the difficulty settings. Once the main mission gets under way you will have the ability to travel anywhere by selecting a solar system and then a particular planet or space object to explore. Once "ashore" you may be able to travel around deserted planets in the Mako 35 rover or get out and stretch your legs. I mentioned before this game tries to pack too much in and one of the problems is that the planets you can land on just for exploring get repetitive. They are all deserted and simply involve riding around over mountains and plains to find things on your radar. There is just not that much to the exploration part of this game, however, you can get a lot of reading in about all of the planets in the game. Some make for very interesting reading into the background of Mass Effect.

The combat system works well enough. Unlike Knights of the Old Republic you will not be pushing certain buttons to cause an attack but get to freely run and gun. You can also take cover and use your buddies as cannon fodder if necessary but I enjoyed the combat play in Mass Effect. The enemies in the game are mostly the "geth" and they are eerily too similar to the Star Wars robots that the clones have to fight. They are not the best of enemies but this is why sequels are made people!

Sound/Graphics

The music in Mass Effect sets the mood with plenty of otherwordly mixes along with some great action music and you cannot go wrong with the talent that was put into the voice work of this game. A lot of recognizable actors are in this game from Seth Green as the Normandy's pilot and even the Arbiter from the Halo series is in this game (well not exactly but the guy who does his voice is the helpful captain in Mass Effect). The dialogue work alone must have taken weeks to get through as each conversation presents you with a lot of choices to go into. Mass Effect even includes the grainy classic graphical feature that gives you the old Knights of the Old Republic feel, with the option to change it of course. There is a lot of conversation in the game and with that are plenty of facial expressions which work well for the most part.

Replay Value

Mass Effect lasts for a good three playthroughs. The best way to play Mass Effect is to take your time on the first playthrough and then play it again differently if you missed anything or want to try something you did not do in the first run through. The achievements are very easy to get with the most time consuming being the ones where you have to search for mineral deposits and collectibles. Judging by the reviews I have seen with the DLC additions to the game there has not been any encouraging reason to download them although they are much cheaper than other games that have DLC available.

Final Recommendation 9/10

Mass Effect is a huge undertaking that will have you star gazing and thinking about the benefits of harvesting Helium 3. No flaws in Mass Effect will keep you from enjoying this game thoroughly and a story driven game is always the best game. If you were like me and this game got under the radar, then I urge you to be ready for Mass Effect 2!

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 09/08/09

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