After wandering around the forums like a child who has lost their mother at Wal-Mart, I find myself reading review after review. After stumbling over word after word, my tired eyes begin to realize that these reviews are being written by regular members. I grew curious, and after some more reading, I confirmed this. Now, I might not be the best writer, or the most insightful person, but I'll be damned if I let this game reviewing get past me.
I decided to throw in my two cents in on a little game called Mass Effect.
Upon booting the game up, I noticed the Sci-Fi theme and my eyes lit up a little girl who was just handed a doll on Easter; pigtails bouncing and all. I'm a sucker for Sci-Fi, and this game satisfied all of my nerdy needs. Aliens? Mass Effect has a closet jam packed with them. Futuristic technology? Mass Effect is attempting to shove them in the drawers, but they just keep spilling out. Hot alien women? Mass Effect is attempting to establish a monopoly in this field. Everything I could ever want from a piece of science fiction, this game has it in abundance.
After I got past the initial spasms that usually accompany the announcement of a new book in the expanded universe of Star Wars, I began to create my own character. I just adore it when a game gives me a chance to create my own character. It's as though the game developers realized that I don't want to be the generic tough guy who usually has a rippling set of muscles, and that I want to forge my own identity instead. Mass Effect opened the doorway to this fantastic land of options where I could choose to go balls deep, or ovaries deep. I could decide whether or not the women or men would be drooling over the idea of shagging my character, or if the villagers raised their torches and pitchforks and drove me to a windmill before burning me alive.
There were just so many options. Now, I don't think they punched Oblivion out of the ring with the choices, but they nudged in behind the giant beast that is the fourth Elder Scrolls game. I chose to be an asian with a jutting, manly chin perched atop a toothpick of a neck. Not the most ideal hero, but I liked him. I named him Kyle, because any man who shares my name must be fit for saving the Universe, and set off on my adventure.
Immediately upon starting out of the gate, the game's phenomenol voice acting cracked my skull with a four iron crafted out of pure brilliance. I immediately noticed that they lips were synced wonderfully, and I could sense some character behind those beautifully crafted faces. The voices gave me some insight into the character these two characters possessed, and I didn't even know who they were. Well, that's not entirely true; I enabled subtitles because I hate to be forced to sit through all the spoken dialogue in any game. I knew that the one that sounded a Hell of a lot like Seth Green was dubbed "Joker" and the one that was reminiscent of Carth Onassi from KOTOR was "Kaiden". Yet, with only five or six lines of dialogue and a name, I caught a whiff of their character and emotions.
While I'm on the subject of dialogue, I should probably mention that there is a SHITLOAD. I went into the game expecting this, and while at first I welcomed the conversations between characters, as I progressed farther into the story, I found myself mashing on the X button hoping to skip through as many words as possible. I couldn't get some characters to shut up. I would press the button to sprint and find myself accidentally engaged in a conversation with some exotic lifeform. I don't know why these species and such would speak in English, seeing as humanity is supposedly a newcomer in this whole thing, but they would just go on, and on, and on, and on. The light at the end of the tunnel would be seeing the option to say "goodbye".
There were several of times when I found myself cursing BioWare for putting the skip and respond function on the same button. I would occasionally find myself skipping through line after line of dialogue, and accidentally hit the response to either continue the conversation or tell them to go fuck themselves. The latter would result in a fight that I knew was avoidable, but found myself plunging headlong into a like a test dummy into a concrete wall as a result of my own impatience. This game forces you to build patience, while not a bad thing for some, it can be trying for others.
I do enjoy the option of being a total douche or being the equivalent of that one kid everyone knows that tries to get everyone playing nice in the sandbox. I could either tell the NPC's to pleasantly go eat some shit, or I could I could forcefully tell them to go eat some shit. I'm a man who likes options, and this one pleased me. It wasn't like KOTOR; where I could pull out my lightsaber and behead the man before going on to destroy/enslave all known life in the universe, but I could be a rude and cantankerous savior of the universe. The branching story lines were a welcome addition in my eyes.
There are some moments in the game where you really do get a feel of how your words can affect a situation. There's a point in the game where your choices and actions determines who lives or dies, and it's a very powerful moment; made even more so as a result of the fact that you are in complete control of the situation. I actually found myself pausing to consider my actions before I went ahead and made my choice.
Back to the topic before the dialogue rant; after the two characters were done quibbling, I noticed that there was a ring on the bottom of my screen; signaling me that I was supposed to say something. I chose to tell them to cut the chatter as a result of my real world persona being a huge wimp. In games, I usually like playing as some nut-stomping bad ass. Somehow, my "Cut the chatter" had been transformed into "That's enough. You're soldiers, act like it." You'll hear no complaints from me, I was just surprised. I guess the dialogue system has changed a bit from KOTOR, not a bad thing, but throughout the game I found myself wishing that my avatar would just say would I told him to say.
I'm going to skip down to the combat. It's 1:30 in the morning and my fingers are tripping over themselves writing this sham of a review. You may hear nothing but praise for the story and the dialogue, but what about the actual gameplay? I was plopped onto some world after some soldiers on this futuristic TV screen had their asses handed to them and was ordered to shoot some stuff. I preceeded to, and I found the combat system... familiar.
You can customize all of your weapons and armor, just like KOTOR. This can be intimidating at first, but after you do it for a short while it becomes second nature. The main reason it's so intimidating is the lack of tutorials regarding the expansive menus that are forced into your face upon pausing the game. It's sort of like when a father forces his son to wear a pair of floaties, then pushes him kicking and screaming into the swimming pool for the first time. You don't know what to do at first, but after some experimenation, or reading the manual, it becomes pretty simple and comfortable.
Mass Effect's combat feels a hell of a lot like Gears of War. That's not a bad thing, but it was kind of weird at first. There are some minor complaints that you'll hear coming from my camp. There isn't really a button to duck into cover, so I just found myself pushing the control stick against the wall and hoping that he'd not just give me the finger and get shot. Luckily, this mechanic actually works very well. It works for more than 99% of the game. However, that one percent may infuriate you, as it did me. I would find myself trying to get into cover, but instead I would just find myself stumbling around stupidly because I couldn't shoot from behind cover and duck back in effectively. This was very rare, but it is annoying when it happens.
Apparently, there's some sort of squad system. I can order my squadmates to a position and tell them what sort of demeanor to take; but that's just what the game wants you to think. Sure, you can point them to go somewhere, but all I got was a denial of some sort. I would have to say that the squad AI isn't completely terrible, they did take cover for the most part, however there were some points in the game where I would look over and find them just standing there shielding the wall behind them from incoming bullets with their face.
Mass Effect has these skills dubbed as Biotics or Tech skills that are akin to the force powers from KOTOR. I have a blast with these. You can just screw around with the enemy, or you can actually out gun them without using an actual gun. You can create your own playing style, and that's a facet of gaming that I always enjoy. I don't want to be forced to use the same style as everybody else. I don't want the game to put me in a chokehold and force me to play a specific way. Uniqueness is something that I appreciate.
Moving on to the enemy side of the playing field, I noticed that the grab bag of adversaries comes in two flavors: paralyzed or bat-shit retarded. Either the enemies will stand in the same spot waiting for you to plaster them, or they'll come charging straight at you and try to play a nice game of Red Rover. I would find them just bull rushing me, and my teammates would begin to circle me, and it would just turn into a giant orgy of confusion. I would find my character's ass in ruins and just scratch my head wondering what the Hell just happened.
Despite these shortcomings, I found the combat to be enjoyable. I would often find myself waiting for the next large conflict because it was a thrill to dash between points of cover popping up to put a large piece of slag in whatever the enemy used to sit with. If I had to rate the combat seperately from the main game, I would give it a 7/10. It isn't an amazing score, but it's good.
There are some points in the game where you are forced to drive a vehicle, and experience some vehicular combat; Mass Effect style. The Mako (Mars rover thing), handles crazily. It's sort of like trying to grab a greased up pig. The controls can be slippery, and you just want to forget the whole thing. After a while you begin to get comfortable just driving the thing, but then you get to the point where you must navigate around obstacles. You're vehicle will get hung up on the most annoying things. It seems to be magnetized to walls that border doorways, and it just can't seem to make it over small bits of debris effectively.
Once, I found myself with a wheel stuck in part of a building. I'm stuck spinning my tires while the enemy just has a ball shooting at me. I can't get free of the blasted buliding so I just hit the vertical thrusters on my rover and find myself doing multiple flips around this martian landscape. This brings me to the wacky physics.
Mass Effect employs rag doll physics, just like almost every game out there today. Watching the enemy's body fly around is enjoyable but there are bits where you just sit there dumbfounded. I found my guy flipping crazily around the ground after being hit with some sort of biotic power which resembled a force throw. There were some pretty blue gradient effects filling the screen and I was just tumbling around like a the little disc in a Plinko machine.
The sections where you are driving are livened up by these physics. Your car has boosters that propel it in the opposite direction of the undercarriage. I found myself wasting time just boosting off the side of large cliffs; just so I could see what would happen after the rolling through the air and I smashed into the surface of whatever planet I'm on. Now that I mention it, it's kind of odd that your car behaves exactly the same whether or not it's on the moon or a planet that supposedly has three times the gravity of Earth.
The main driving point of this game is its immersive universe. There is an entire galaxy to explore in this game. You can do whatever you want, when you want. If you grow bored of the story, you can just dick around on random planets. There's an entire backstory for every race and almost every character you meet. Mass Effect is just so deep. You can also deviate the way the story plays out. The story in this game is interesting and I found myself craving to know what happens next. This story is full of twists and colorful characters. I found myself doing sidequest after sidequest just to see if there was anything else added to the story or the universe I was playing in. There's just so much to do.
In conclusion, I would have to say that I thoroughly enjoyed myself while playing Mass Effect. While there are some technical problems and it can get a bit long winded, it's a fun experience on the whole. I recommend Mass Effect to any RPG fan, and to almost anyone who is willing to sit through some dialogue to enjoy an otherwise fantastic game.
I decided to throw in my two cents in on a little game called Mass Effect.
Upon booting the game up, I noticed the Sci-Fi theme and my eyes lit up a little girl who was just handed a doll on Easter; pigtails bouncing and all. I'm a sucker for Sci-Fi, and this game satisfied all of my nerdy needs. Aliens? Mass Effect has a closet jam packed with them. Futuristic technology? Mass Effect is attempting to shove them in the drawers, but they just keep spilling out. Hot alien women? Mass Effect is attempting to establish a monopoly in this field. Everything I could ever want from a piece of science fiction, this game has it in abundance.
After I got past the initial spasms that usually accompany the announcement of a new book in the expanded universe of Star Wars, I began to create my own character. I just adore it when a game gives me a chance to create my own character. It's as though the game developers realized that I don't want to be the generic tough guy who usually has a rippling set of muscles, and that I want to forge my own identity instead. Mass Effect opened the doorway to this fantastic land of options where I could choose to go balls deep, or ovaries deep. I could decide whether or not the women or men would be drooling over the idea of shagging my character, or if the villagers raised their torches and pitchforks and drove me to a windmill before burning me alive.
There were just so many options. Now, I don't think they punched Oblivion out of the ring with the choices, but they nudged in behind the giant beast that is the fourth Elder Scrolls game. I chose to be an asian with a jutting, manly chin perched atop a toothpick of a neck. Not the most ideal hero, but I liked him. I named him Kyle, because any man who shares my name must be fit for saving the Universe, and set off on my adventure.
Immediately upon starting out of the gate, the game's phenomenol voice acting cracked my skull with a four iron crafted out of pure brilliance. I immediately noticed that they lips were synced wonderfully, and I could sense some character behind those beautifully crafted faces. The voices gave me some insight into the character these two characters possessed, and I didn't even know who they were. Well, that's not entirely true; I enabled subtitles because I hate to be forced to sit through all the spoken dialogue in any game. I knew that the one that sounded a Hell of a lot like Seth Green was dubbed "Joker" and the one that was reminiscent of Carth Onassi from KOTOR was "Kaiden". Yet, with only five or six lines of dialogue and a name, I caught a whiff of their character and emotions.
While I'm on the subject of dialogue, I should probably mention that there is a SHITLOAD. I went into the game expecting this, and while at first I welcomed the conversations between characters, as I progressed farther into the story, I found myself mashing on the X button hoping to skip through as many words as possible. I couldn't get some characters to shut up. I would press the button to sprint and find myself accidentally engaged in a conversation with some exotic lifeform. I don't know why these species and such would speak in English, seeing as humanity is supposedly a newcomer in this whole thing, but they would just go on, and on, and on, and on. The light at the end of the tunnel would be seeing the option to say "goodbye".
There were several of times when I found myself cursing BioWare for putting the skip and respond function on the same button. I would occasionally find myself skipping through line after line of dialogue, and accidentally hit the response to either continue the conversation or tell them to go fuck themselves. The latter would result in a fight that I knew was avoidable, but found myself plunging headlong into a like a test dummy into a concrete wall as a result of my own impatience. This game forces you to build patience, while not a bad thing for some, it can be trying for others.
I do enjoy the option of being a total douche or being the equivalent of that one kid everyone knows that tries to get everyone playing nice in the sandbox. I could either tell the NPC's to pleasantly go eat some shit, or I could I could forcefully tell them to go eat some shit. I'm a man who likes options, and this one pleased me. It wasn't like KOTOR; where I could pull out my lightsaber and behead the man before going on to destroy/enslave all known life in the universe, but I could be a rude and cantankerous savior of the universe. The branching story lines were a welcome addition in my eyes.
There are some moments in the game where you really do get a feel of how your words can affect a situation. There's a point in the game where your choices and actions determines who lives or dies, and it's a very powerful moment; made even more so as a result of the fact that you are in complete control of the situation. I actually found myself pausing to consider my actions before I went ahead and made my choice.
Back to the topic before the dialogue rant; after the two characters were done quibbling, I noticed that there was a ring on the bottom of my screen; signaling me that I was supposed to say something. I chose to tell them to cut the chatter as a result of my real world persona being a huge wimp. In games, I usually like playing as some nut-stomping bad ass. Somehow, my "Cut the chatter" had been transformed into "That's enough. You're soldiers, act like it." You'll hear no complaints from me, I was just surprised. I guess the dialogue system has changed a bit from KOTOR, not a bad thing, but throughout the game I found myself wishing that my avatar would just say would I told him to say.
I'm going to skip down to the combat. It's 1:30 in the morning and my fingers are tripping over themselves writing this sham of a review. You may hear nothing but praise for the story and the dialogue, but what about the actual gameplay? I was plopped onto some world after some soldiers on this futuristic TV screen had their asses handed to them and was ordered to shoot some stuff. I preceeded to, and I found the combat system... familiar.
You can customize all of your weapons and armor, just like KOTOR. This can be intimidating at first, but after you do it for a short while it becomes second nature. The main reason it's so intimidating is the lack of tutorials regarding the expansive menus that are forced into your face upon pausing the game. It's sort of like when a father forces his son to wear a pair of floaties, then pushes him kicking and screaming into the swimming pool for the first time. You don't know what to do at first, but after some experimenation, or reading the manual, it becomes pretty simple and comfortable.
Mass Effect's combat feels a hell of a lot like Gears of War. That's not a bad thing, but it was kind of weird at first. There are some minor complaints that you'll hear coming from my camp. There isn't really a button to duck into cover, so I just found myself pushing the control stick against the wall and hoping that he'd not just give me the finger and get shot. Luckily, this mechanic actually works very well. It works for more than 99% of the game. However, that one percent may infuriate you, as it did me. I would find myself trying to get into cover, but instead I would just find myself stumbling around stupidly because I couldn't shoot from behind cover and duck back in effectively. This was very rare, but it is annoying when it happens.
Apparently, there's some sort of squad system. I can order my squadmates to a position and tell them what sort of demeanor to take; but that's just what the game wants you to think. Sure, you can point them to go somewhere, but all I got was a denial of some sort. I would have to say that the squad AI isn't completely terrible, they did take cover for the most part, however there were some points in the game where I would look over and find them just standing there shielding the wall behind them from incoming bullets with their face.
Mass Effect has these skills dubbed as Biotics or Tech skills that are akin to the force powers from KOTOR. I have a blast with these. You can just screw around with the enemy, or you can actually out gun them without using an actual gun. You can create your own playing style, and that's a facet of gaming that I always enjoy. I don't want to be forced to use the same style as everybody else. I don't want the game to put me in a chokehold and force me to play a specific way. Uniqueness is something that I appreciate.
Moving on to the enemy side of the playing field, I noticed that the grab bag of adversaries comes in two flavors: paralyzed or bat-shit retarded. Either the enemies will stand in the same spot waiting for you to plaster them, or they'll come charging straight at you and try to play a nice game of Red Rover. I would find them just bull rushing me, and my teammates would begin to circle me, and it would just turn into a giant orgy of confusion. I would find my character's ass in ruins and just scratch my head wondering what the Hell just happened.
Despite these shortcomings, I found the combat to be enjoyable. I would often find myself waiting for the next large conflict because it was a thrill to dash between points of cover popping up to put a large piece of slag in whatever the enemy used to sit with. If I had to rate the combat seperately from the main game, I would give it a 7/10. It isn't an amazing score, but it's good.
There are some points in the game where you are forced to drive a vehicle, and experience some vehicular combat; Mass Effect style. The Mako (Mars rover thing), handles crazily. It's sort of like trying to grab a greased up pig. The controls can be slippery, and you just want to forget the whole thing. After a while you begin to get comfortable just driving the thing, but then you get to the point where you must navigate around obstacles. You're vehicle will get hung up on the most annoying things. It seems to be magnetized to walls that border doorways, and it just can't seem to make it over small bits of debris effectively.
Once, I found myself with a wheel stuck in part of a building. I'm stuck spinning my tires while the enemy just has a ball shooting at me. I can't get free of the blasted buliding so I just hit the vertical thrusters on my rover and find myself doing multiple flips around this martian landscape. This brings me to the wacky physics.
Mass Effect employs rag doll physics, just like almost every game out there today. Watching the enemy's body fly around is enjoyable but there are bits where you just sit there dumbfounded. I found my guy flipping crazily around the ground after being hit with some sort of biotic power which resembled a force throw. There were some pretty blue gradient effects filling the screen and I was just tumbling around like a the little disc in a Plinko machine.
The sections where you are driving are livened up by these physics. Your car has boosters that propel it in the opposite direction of the undercarriage. I found myself wasting time just boosting off the side of large cliffs; just so I could see what would happen after the rolling through the air and I smashed into the surface of whatever planet I'm on. Now that I mention it, it's kind of odd that your car behaves exactly the same whether or not it's on the moon or a planet that supposedly has three times the gravity of Earth.
The main driving point of this game is its immersive universe. There is an entire galaxy to explore in this game. You can do whatever you want, when you want. If you grow bored of the story, you can just dick around on random planets. There's an entire backstory for every race and almost every character you meet. Mass Effect is just so deep. You can also deviate the way the story plays out. The story in this game is interesting and I found myself craving to know what happens next. This story is full of twists and colorful characters. I found myself doing sidequest after sidequest just to see if there was anything else added to the story or the universe I was playing in. There's just so much to do.
In conclusion, I would have to say that I thoroughly enjoyed myself while playing Mass Effect. While there are some technical problems and it can get a bit long winded, it's a fun experience on the whole. I recommend Mass Effect to any RPG fan, and to almost anyone who is willing to sit through some dialogue to enjoy an otherwise fantastic game.
