Mass Effect is an action RPG from Canadian developers Bioware. Now, I am of the opinion that Bioware is so good at making RPGs that they have entered into some covenant with a terrible and dark beast, possibly Cthulhu or Baoht Z?ugga-Mogg. I still get warm fuzzy feelings when I think about Knights of the Old Republic, and in many ways, Mass Effect can be considered KotOR?s baby brother, taking more than a few stylistic cues from its older sibling. Where KotOR had blasters, Mass Effect has magnetically-accelerated assault rifles, where KotOR had the force, Mass Effect has biotics, where KotOR had lightsabres, Mass Effect, well, Mass Effect has magnetically-accelerated assault rifles.
Having made arguably the finest Star Wars game in existence, Bioware decided to make a sci-fi franchise of their very own and Mass Effect represents the first foray into a bold new intellectual property. Originally envisioned as a trilogy, although now that Bioware has been consumed by the leviathan that is EA ?hexadecilology? is closer to the mark*, Mass Effect is very much a scene setter. It?s obvious that they?ve worked hard to create a believable universe to base the game in, even drawing on current scientific thinking for their ?mass effect?. Every single one of the eleventy-million planets you visit has a little bit of history attached to it, even if it?s just a turnip-shaped lump of cold rock orbiting a dying sun in the arse end of the galaxy.
Now, I know how this goes, you?ve put a lot of work into something, you want people to see it and enjoy it, and praise it and call you some kind of reviewing god and lay rose petals at your feet as you pass...I think I may have gotten off track, but appalling jokes aside, Mass Effect is at times like a child that really, really wants to show you the drawing it?s just done, constantly tugging at your sleeve and fawning for your approval. The background in Mass effect is significantly better than the wax crayon monstrosity that your nephew has just made and personally I enjoyed reading it, but if the devil is in the details, then Old Nick could be hosting a kegger for all the demons in hell and still have enough room for a kickabout afterwards. While you?re never required to read any of it, there?s certainly a lot there to ignore.
Being an RPG, the plot of Mass Effect is central to the experience. You take the role of Commander Shepherd, executive officer of the SSV Normandy. This tighter focus on who the player is means you can be referred to by name, something that always bugged me about RPGs before and to their credit, Bioware does a good job of making Shepherd someone you can identify with without the ?cut from whole cloth? character creation they have used in the past.
It?s actually quite hard to provide a brief synopsis of the plot as Bioware has made a complex beast and there are a lot of things going on all at once, but what the hell, I?ll give it a whirl. Shepherd is sent to collect an ancient alien beacon that has been recently discovered on Eden Prime, humanity?s oldest colony. This mission also marks the beginning of a period of assessment for Shepherd?s suitability to join the Spectres, a sort of secret agency without the secret part; Shepherd?s admission into the Spectres would represent a big step towards humanity being accepted fully by the galactic community, who view humanity as a very young and impulsive species. Naturally the mission goes tits up when the Normandy receives a distress call from the surface and we get a glimpse of a mysterious alien ship the size of Manhattan. Landing on the surface they discover that the colony has been attacked by a horde of sentient robots lead by a rogue Spectre agent. After reclaiming the beacon and being zapped by it, it is up to Shepherd, newly inducted into the Spectres, to find out what the rogue agent is up to and stop him at any cost.
Obviously there?s a lot more to it, but I could easily add another thousand words to the review, and if you want to know the plot you can always look on Wikipedia, or just play the damn game!
As good as the plot is; I can?t help but feel like there?s something missing. The storytelling and characterisation seems to have taken a retrograde step. For example, Nihlus, the Spectre agent who is assessing you at the start of the game, tells you that Eden Prime will be the first of several missions together, then you don?t see him for half an hour, and then you get a cutscene showing him get murdered. I can?t help but feel that it would have been better if Eden Prime really had been the first of several missions together, then his death would have had a little more impact. The way Bioware has done it, it?s a little like hearing the news that a very distant relative that you haven?t seen since 1986 has just passed away. You say ?how sad,? but you don?t really care and you just get on with your day.
Similarly, the various NPCs and squad mates you meet are pretty good, with good dialogue and acting, but none of them really sparkle. There?s no HK-47 to be found anywhere in the game. I also really miss the ability to talk to my squad in the field, even in the relative safety of the Citadel, a city sized space station guarded by a whole sodding fleet, they remain tight lipped, aside from the occasional comment on the nice statue or plant or pile of burnt bodies. They also never talk to each other, a feature I really liked in Baldur?s Gate 2, except in the agonisingly long elevator rides to be found everywhere in the bloody game and then it?s only pleasantries. There?s also a bait-and-switch with a major villain which isn?t quite ?eleventh hour?, but isn?t that far off. That?s not to say that the storytelling and characterisation are bad, it?s just that they?re not excellent like I?ve come to expect from Bioware.
The main quest is very short, about 10-15 hours, and follows the Bioware formula, with the beginning and end set in stone but the option to pick which planet you go to in the middle. The problem is, while the planets you do visit as part of the main quest are varied and aren?t bloody Tatooine, there?s not a lot to do on each one. I would have preferred Bioware to have stuck a little closer to the formula, with each planet being a hub for a plethora of adventures, rather than each planet having a single objective to achieve. There is a galaxy full of planets to explore, but most of these are pretty much filler. There are about six different types of planet, a couple of bases and the same mine repeated ad inifinitum. After the first few planets you really start to notice it and exploration becomes a lot less appealing.
For gameplay, Bioware has taken KotOR, Rainbow Six Vegas and drunken figure skating and blended them all together into a creamy health drink that, like many things that supposed to be good for you, tastes a little odd. For the most part Mass Effect play like KotOR, you and your squad wander round whatever planet you happen to be on chatting to all and sundry, doing quests, earning pocket money and finding enough guns to arm Arkansas twice over. The new conversation system, which got so much attention from the gaming media, deserves all the praise it received. Rather than writing out all possible responses in full, Mass Effect gives you options that give the general tone of the response and choosing the response you want is a simple matter of pushing the stick in the right direction and pressing a button. It?s quick, easy and dynamic, making a conversation in Mass Effect much more like a conversation in real life.
So all is good on the role-playing part of the game, very good in fact, but what about the action element? Well, Bioware seemed to have lost their taste for turn based combat, no bad thing in itself, but what they?ve replaced it with is a tactical squad based third-person shooter and I?m not sure that Bioware are really cut out to make that kind of game. There?s nothing wrong with the combat per se, but it?s certainly not great. You can issue squad commands and use powers in something that looks a lot like real time, but your squad seem to like bullets an awful lot and the concept of cover seems to confuse them from time to time. There is also a complete lack of melee options, unless you count bashing an enemy in the face with a rifle butt when they get too close. I suppose it?s more realistic, but I kinda liked using a sword or even better, a lightsabre in a fight. Hell even a knife would have been nice. Sadly, what it means is that battles that should have a lot of dramatic intensity end up as ?hide-behind-a-box-shooting-until-someone-falls-down? fests. If that wasn?t enough, about half way through the game you gain access to the Spectre armoury, which features weapons that make anything else you find pretty much irrelevant.
The more perceptive amongst you make have noticed that I mentioned drunken figure skating a couple of paragraphs back. ?Surely,? you might intone, ?Mass Effect doesn?t include an alcohol fuelled version of figure skating, glittering crown of the Winter Olympics?? Well, no, not really, but that?s what the bloody driving sections put me in mind of. The Mako APC handles like a greased shopping trolley. I?ve played a lot of video games in my time and the only game that has worse handling that I can think of is a movie tie in, and no one expects them to be any good. Add a turret with a crosshair that is almost impossible to see and regenerative shields that take so long to recharge that you could find a safe passage to India while you wait and it isn?t exactly a compelling experience. The game even denies you the satisfaction of running over enemies, as very often they will get back up and shoot at you at close range, where you can?t hit them with the turret. This wouldn?t be so bad if the Mako was used sparingly, but it turns up on every single level like herpes.
The game also has a couple of technical issues that, while not game breakers, detract from the experience a little. The first one is graphical. The game looks awesome, the graphics are truly stunning.
Once all the textures pop in.
Seriously, for the first few seconds after you enter a level it?s like you?re wearing your contact lenses inside out. It?s more than a little jarring and it happens pretty much every time. There?s also a problem with the sound, as the speech volume is really inconsistent. Sometimes it?s really low, even when you turn the other volumes down and other times its fine. Now, for some people it?s not going to be a problem, but I had heard that if you interrupt a person when they are speaking they will like you less, and I really wanted to get myself some alien booty, just for the achievement obviously. So I turned the subtitles off, because I read faster than a puma on speed and I?m quite impatient at times, but it meant that sometimes I couldn?t hear what was going on, and I missed about 90% of the tiny, nearly silent audio cues that a squad member gives when they have something to say.
The thing about Mass Effect is that despite all its flaws, it?s still a really good game. It?s smarter than most games available at the moment, it has adult themes and features sex without being juvenile about it (Witcher, I?m looking in your direction.) If you have a 360, then I recommend that you buy it, if you have a PC, then you?re in luck as its being released for Windows, if you have a PS3, ooh, nevermind.
*This word is a fabrication. It?s meant to mean sixteen.
Having made arguably the finest Star Wars game in existence, Bioware decided to make a sci-fi franchise of their very own and Mass Effect represents the first foray into a bold new intellectual property. Originally envisioned as a trilogy, although now that Bioware has been consumed by the leviathan that is EA ?hexadecilology? is closer to the mark*, Mass Effect is very much a scene setter. It?s obvious that they?ve worked hard to create a believable universe to base the game in, even drawing on current scientific thinking for their ?mass effect?. Every single one of the eleventy-million planets you visit has a little bit of history attached to it, even if it?s just a turnip-shaped lump of cold rock orbiting a dying sun in the arse end of the galaxy.
Now, I know how this goes, you?ve put a lot of work into something, you want people to see it and enjoy it, and praise it and call you some kind of reviewing god and lay rose petals at your feet as you pass...I think I may have gotten off track, but appalling jokes aside, Mass Effect is at times like a child that really, really wants to show you the drawing it?s just done, constantly tugging at your sleeve and fawning for your approval. The background in Mass effect is significantly better than the wax crayon monstrosity that your nephew has just made and personally I enjoyed reading it, but if the devil is in the details, then Old Nick could be hosting a kegger for all the demons in hell and still have enough room for a kickabout afterwards. While you?re never required to read any of it, there?s certainly a lot there to ignore.
Being an RPG, the plot of Mass Effect is central to the experience. You take the role of Commander Shepherd, executive officer of the SSV Normandy. This tighter focus on who the player is means you can be referred to by name, something that always bugged me about RPGs before and to their credit, Bioware does a good job of making Shepherd someone you can identify with without the ?cut from whole cloth? character creation they have used in the past.
It?s actually quite hard to provide a brief synopsis of the plot as Bioware has made a complex beast and there are a lot of things going on all at once, but what the hell, I?ll give it a whirl. Shepherd is sent to collect an ancient alien beacon that has been recently discovered on Eden Prime, humanity?s oldest colony. This mission also marks the beginning of a period of assessment for Shepherd?s suitability to join the Spectres, a sort of secret agency without the secret part; Shepherd?s admission into the Spectres would represent a big step towards humanity being accepted fully by the galactic community, who view humanity as a very young and impulsive species. Naturally the mission goes tits up when the Normandy receives a distress call from the surface and we get a glimpse of a mysterious alien ship the size of Manhattan. Landing on the surface they discover that the colony has been attacked by a horde of sentient robots lead by a rogue Spectre agent. After reclaiming the beacon and being zapped by it, it is up to Shepherd, newly inducted into the Spectres, to find out what the rogue agent is up to and stop him at any cost.
Obviously there?s a lot more to it, but I could easily add another thousand words to the review, and if you want to know the plot you can always look on Wikipedia, or just play the damn game!
As good as the plot is; I can?t help but feel like there?s something missing. The storytelling and characterisation seems to have taken a retrograde step. For example, Nihlus, the Spectre agent who is assessing you at the start of the game, tells you that Eden Prime will be the first of several missions together, then you don?t see him for half an hour, and then you get a cutscene showing him get murdered. I can?t help but feel that it would have been better if Eden Prime really had been the first of several missions together, then his death would have had a little more impact. The way Bioware has done it, it?s a little like hearing the news that a very distant relative that you haven?t seen since 1986 has just passed away. You say ?how sad,? but you don?t really care and you just get on with your day.
Similarly, the various NPCs and squad mates you meet are pretty good, with good dialogue and acting, but none of them really sparkle. There?s no HK-47 to be found anywhere in the game. I also really miss the ability to talk to my squad in the field, even in the relative safety of the Citadel, a city sized space station guarded by a whole sodding fleet, they remain tight lipped, aside from the occasional comment on the nice statue or plant or pile of burnt bodies. They also never talk to each other, a feature I really liked in Baldur?s Gate 2, except in the agonisingly long elevator rides to be found everywhere in the bloody game and then it?s only pleasantries. There?s also a bait-and-switch with a major villain which isn?t quite ?eleventh hour?, but isn?t that far off. That?s not to say that the storytelling and characterisation are bad, it?s just that they?re not excellent like I?ve come to expect from Bioware.
The main quest is very short, about 10-15 hours, and follows the Bioware formula, with the beginning and end set in stone but the option to pick which planet you go to in the middle. The problem is, while the planets you do visit as part of the main quest are varied and aren?t bloody Tatooine, there?s not a lot to do on each one. I would have preferred Bioware to have stuck a little closer to the formula, with each planet being a hub for a plethora of adventures, rather than each planet having a single objective to achieve. There is a galaxy full of planets to explore, but most of these are pretty much filler. There are about six different types of planet, a couple of bases and the same mine repeated ad inifinitum. After the first few planets you really start to notice it and exploration becomes a lot less appealing.
For gameplay, Bioware has taken KotOR, Rainbow Six Vegas and drunken figure skating and blended them all together into a creamy health drink that, like many things that supposed to be good for you, tastes a little odd. For the most part Mass Effect play like KotOR, you and your squad wander round whatever planet you happen to be on chatting to all and sundry, doing quests, earning pocket money and finding enough guns to arm Arkansas twice over. The new conversation system, which got so much attention from the gaming media, deserves all the praise it received. Rather than writing out all possible responses in full, Mass Effect gives you options that give the general tone of the response and choosing the response you want is a simple matter of pushing the stick in the right direction and pressing a button. It?s quick, easy and dynamic, making a conversation in Mass Effect much more like a conversation in real life.
So all is good on the role-playing part of the game, very good in fact, but what about the action element? Well, Bioware seemed to have lost their taste for turn based combat, no bad thing in itself, but what they?ve replaced it with is a tactical squad based third-person shooter and I?m not sure that Bioware are really cut out to make that kind of game. There?s nothing wrong with the combat per se, but it?s certainly not great. You can issue squad commands and use powers in something that looks a lot like real time, but your squad seem to like bullets an awful lot and the concept of cover seems to confuse them from time to time. There is also a complete lack of melee options, unless you count bashing an enemy in the face with a rifle butt when they get too close. I suppose it?s more realistic, but I kinda liked using a sword or even better, a lightsabre in a fight. Hell even a knife would have been nice. Sadly, what it means is that battles that should have a lot of dramatic intensity end up as ?hide-behind-a-box-shooting-until-someone-falls-down? fests. If that wasn?t enough, about half way through the game you gain access to the Spectre armoury, which features weapons that make anything else you find pretty much irrelevant.
The more perceptive amongst you make have noticed that I mentioned drunken figure skating a couple of paragraphs back. ?Surely,? you might intone, ?Mass Effect doesn?t include an alcohol fuelled version of figure skating, glittering crown of the Winter Olympics?? Well, no, not really, but that?s what the bloody driving sections put me in mind of. The Mako APC handles like a greased shopping trolley. I?ve played a lot of video games in my time and the only game that has worse handling that I can think of is a movie tie in, and no one expects them to be any good. Add a turret with a crosshair that is almost impossible to see and regenerative shields that take so long to recharge that you could find a safe passage to India while you wait and it isn?t exactly a compelling experience. The game even denies you the satisfaction of running over enemies, as very often they will get back up and shoot at you at close range, where you can?t hit them with the turret. This wouldn?t be so bad if the Mako was used sparingly, but it turns up on every single level like herpes.
The game also has a couple of technical issues that, while not game breakers, detract from the experience a little. The first one is graphical. The game looks awesome, the graphics are truly stunning.
Once all the textures pop in.
Seriously, for the first few seconds after you enter a level it?s like you?re wearing your contact lenses inside out. It?s more than a little jarring and it happens pretty much every time. There?s also a problem with the sound, as the speech volume is really inconsistent. Sometimes it?s really low, even when you turn the other volumes down and other times its fine. Now, for some people it?s not going to be a problem, but I had heard that if you interrupt a person when they are speaking they will like you less, and I really wanted to get myself some alien booty, just for the achievement obviously. So I turned the subtitles off, because I read faster than a puma on speed and I?m quite impatient at times, but it meant that sometimes I couldn?t hear what was going on, and I missed about 90% of the tiny, nearly silent audio cues that a squad member gives when they have something to say.
The thing about Mass Effect is that despite all its flaws, it?s still a really good game. It?s smarter than most games available at the moment, it has adult themes and features sex without being juvenile about it (Witcher, I?m looking in your direction.) If you have a 360, then I recommend that you buy it, if you have a PC, then you?re in luck as its being released for Windows, if you have a PS3, ooh, nevermind.
*This word is a fabrication. It?s meant to mean sixteen.
