Like I said in my Oblivion review, I have a funny relationship with RPGs. I get sick and tired of hearing phrases like 'magical enchantment' and 'mystical power' or having characters who amount to being either brave, rugged knights, drunken, witty dwarves or slender, buxom and otherwise foxy elves. You could probably picture the look of wonder on my face when I heard that Mass Effect was going to be a sci-fi RPG based around assault rifles and aliens (they make games like that?).
Upon hitting 'new game' we say hello to our good friend, the character creation screen (with the cunning disguise of a login screen for the human military). Unlike Oblivion, it is actually hard to make a character who belongs in a freakshow (try as I might, I just couldn't do it) so I decided to make a heroic version of myself with the standard Bruce Campell chin (if chins could kill...). I reframed from making it apparant that it was a self-insertion persona by making my full name 'Welsh Shepard'. One part of character creation that peaked my interest was when you get to choose your character's past and origins, I opted for my character to be an earthborn sole survivor since I had the mini-story in my head that he was going to be the guy from DOOM (in other words, a complete and utter psycho with a body count somewhere around the hundreds of thousands). The only difference made by this choice is that you begin with different morality levels and you get particular missions and dialogue based on your choices, it's good that there is such a minor bonus connected to this or it would make the same mistake Oblivion made with star-signs i.e: everyone will only choose one and forget the others (I really am ripping into Oblivion, aren't I?).
Final part about creation, classes, you have a rather limited selection that basically juggles the three specialisations the game has in various mixtures (keeps things simple I suppose) but most of the game gives you no real reason to be anything other than the soldier, every ability has a 'cooldown time' meaning that until you reach the higher levels you can't rely on your powers to keep you alive (while an assault rifle is going to keep firing until either it overheats or the bad guys are well and truely dead), in this respect most of the game has been tailored around the need of the soldier while everyone else has seemingly become an after thought (I personally have no problem with that since pure combat power is pretty much what I do, I'm just being empathetic for the leigons of gamers out there who prefer a more technical way of playing).
The plot is pretty straight foward when you think about it and is only unique when we get into the fine details, the gist of it (potential spoilers, jump ahead to the word GROOVY if you care) is that the universe is now hanging in the balance due to the sudden revival of an ancient evil (which have wiped out civilisations before, contrary to what our schools keep telling us, we are not special), humanity is caught up in political drama around this time which means that you (and only you) get the lovely job of throwing yourself into harms way in the name of everyone else. Along the way you discover additional parts of this evil scheme, meet funky aliens and will more than likely get laid by either an intersteller member of the BNP or a blue scientist woman with hair resembling a squid (for the reccord, I seduced, and later had sex with, the latter). Lots of people and aliens die and the universe is saved...for now.
The dialogue throughout the game is often lengthy and exhausting. Granted, you can choose to skip it but a. some of it is pretty funny (Wrex: You're drunk! Alien: Yes, but you're ugly and I shall be sober in the morning) and b. some of it is actually important to know (like when they tell you that you should probably avoid slaughtering innocent civilians in the colony mission...I kinda forgot by the time it proved relevent). Another problem I had with the dialogue was that some of the things characters will talk about seemed forced and artificial, I personally did not feel comfortable asking about how various alien species have sex, and then ask them two seconds later for directions to the local gun store/clinic/strip club.
GROOVY, The gameplay itself is actually not too bad, the 3rd person shooter elements actually work well (I'm suprised too!). Since I could waste all day and a good few paragraphs granting endless praise to the wonderful parts I'll outline the problems first, the vehicule (or Mako) you get is a profound waste of time for many reasons, firstly, it is almost impossible to drive at first (even after a couple of playthroughs I still found myself occasionally bouncing into a nearby lava flow), secondly, the weapons are more or less pointless unless you're about as far away from the target as possible (even then, uneven ground may result in you posing a threat to nothing but clouds and the occasional flock of birds) and finally, on the higher difficulties the armor collapses after a single, short burst of fire (don't get me started on the final crazed dash to the teleporter).
Like I promised, the good parts. Weapons get infinate ammo but have an issue with overheating (so you do have to be careful about your shots, but you're not finding yourself forced to drop the shotty and resort to fisticuffs), weapon training actually does have a dramatic effect (so there is actually a reason to invest in it) but isn't so dramatic that you beef up the assault rifle and forget about everything else (even though the assault rifle is more or less the best weapon type in the game). Last point about leveling up, due to the limitations on what you can level up you will often find that your character will shape itself around your own style of play which resulted in the numerous gunfights I ended up in feeling very comfortable to play and quite relaxed and casual (thats actually quite rare for me). Unlike Oblivion, you get experience and money for pretty much everything you do, Welshy got to level 8 by the time I finished the first mission (a good 35 minutes in due to my lack of map reading skills), reaching level 2 in Oblivion took me at least an hour (this was before I lost heart and cheated, at which point I jumped 21 levels in 2 and a half minutes by taking numerous naps). Since experience is aquired this easily I found it hard to imagine how anyone could/would feel it nessercary to grind (okay, most of the missions are more or less centred around blowing up mercs but at least its still kinda fun).
Since it seems to have been a pretty big issue for some I should give mention to the sex scene that appears before the last story mission. Contrary to what most people were expecting, the nudity in the game was PG-13 at worst, to place a comparison, the sex-scene from the Matrix: Reloaded was far more explicit (and about 17 times longer with inserted clips of a rave to top it off) than this. If this hasn't made it clear enough, all you see is the two chatacters holding each other with no clothes on (from behind), the screen fades to black and we discover that Welsh is in fact capable of getting dressed quicker than Marcus Fenix (one second: nothing but boxers, the next: full blown power armor complete with bandana).
Overall, I would reccomend Mass Effect to anyone, the action provided is pretty good for an RPG with a deep backstory for those of you who are interested (with little, if any, consiquence for ignoring it all), the only people I would tell to avoid this game would be people who hate Star Wars with a passion or those who find the concept of blue alien booty to be offensive.
Like with all my reviews, could you please leave feedback so I can improve my work in the future (positive or negetive).
-Iron Mal
Upon hitting 'new game' we say hello to our good friend, the character creation screen (with the cunning disguise of a login screen for the human military). Unlike Oblivion, it is actually hard to make a character who belongs in a freakshow (try as I might, I just couldn't do it) so I decided to make a heroic version of myself with the standard Bruce Campell chin (if chins could kill...). I reframed from making it apparant that it was a self-insertion persona by making my full name 'Welsh Shepard'. One part of character creation that peaked my interest was when you get to choose your character's past and origins, I opted for my character to be an earthborn sole survivor since I had the mini-story in my head that he was going to be the guy from DOOM (in other words, a complete and utter psycho with a body count somewhere around the hundreds of thousands). The only difference made by this choice is that you begin with different morality levels and you get particular missions and dialogue based on your choices, it's good that there is such a minor bonus connected to this or it would make the same mistake Oblivion made with star-signs i.e: everyone will only choose one and forget the others (I really am ripping into Oblivion, aren't I?).
Final part about creation, classes, you have a rather limited selection that basically juggles the three specialisations the game has in various mixtures (keeps things simple I suppose) but most of the game gives you no real reason to be anything other than the soldier, every ability has a 'cooldown time' meaning that until you reach the higher levels you can't rely on your powers to keep you alive (while an assault rifle is going to keep firing until either it overheats or the bad guys are well and truely dead), in this respect most of the game has been tailored around the need of the soldier while everyone else has seemingly become an after thought (I personally have no problem with that since pure combat power is pretty much what I do, I'm just being empathetic for the leigons of gamers out there who prefer a more technical way of playing).
The plot is pretty straight foward when you think about it and is only unique when we get into the fine details, the gist of it (potential spoilers, jump ahead to the word GROOVY if you care) is that the universe is now hanging in the balance due to the sudden revival of an ancient evil (which have wiped out civilisations before, contrary to what our schools keep telling us, we are not special), humanity is caught up in political drama around this time which means that you (and only you) get the lovely job of throwing yourself into harms way in the name of everyone else. Along the way you discover additional parts of this evil scheme, meet funky aliens and will more than likely get laid by either an intersteller member of the BNP or a blue scientist woman with hair resembling a squid (for the reccord, I seduced, and later had sex with, the latter). Lots of people and aliens die and the universe is saved...for now.
The dialogue throughout the game is often lengthy and exhausting. Granted, you can choose to skip it but a. some of it is pretty funny (Wrex: You're drunk! Alien: Yes, but you're ugly and I shall be sober in the morning) and b. some of it is actually important to know (like when they tell you that you should probably avoid slaughtering innocent civilians in the colony mission...I kinda forgot by the time it proved relevent). Another problem I had with the dialogue was that some of the things characters will talk about seemed forced and artificial, I personally did not feel comfortable asking about how various alien species have sex, and then ask them two seconds later for directions to the local gun store/clinic/strip club.
GROOVY, The gameplay itself is actually not too bad, the 3rd person shooter elements actually work well (I'm suprised too!). Since I could waste all day and a good few paragraphs granting endless praise to the wonderful parts I'll outline the problems first, the vehicule (or Mako) you get is a profound waste of time for many reasons, firstly, it is almost impossible to drive at first (even after a couple of playthroughs I still found myself occasionally bouncing into a nearby lava flow), secondly, the weapons are more or less pointless unless you're about as far away from the target as possible (even then, uneven ground may result in you posing a threat to nothing but clouds and the occasional flock of birds) and finally, on the higher difficulties the armor collapses after a single, short burst of fire (don't get me started on the final crazed dash to the teleporter).
Like I promised, the good parts. Weapons get infinate ammo but have an issue with overheating (so you do have to be careful about your shots, but you're not finding yourself forced to drop the shotty and resort to fisticuffs), weapon training actually does have a dramatic effect (so there is actually a reason to invest in it) but isn't so dramatic that you beef up the assault rifle and forget about everything else (even though the assault rifle is more or less the best weapon type in the game). Last point about leveling up, due to the limitations on what you can level up you will often find that your character will shape itself around your own style of play which resulted in the numerous gunfights I ended up in feeling very comfortable to play and quite relaxed and casual (thats actually quite rare for me). Unlike Oblivion, you get experience and money for pretty much everything you do, Welshy got to level 8 by the time I finished the first mission (a good 35 minutes in due to my lack of map reading skills), reaching level 2 in Oblivion took me at least an hour (this was before I lost heart and cheated, at which point I jumped 21 levels in 2 and a half minutes by taking numerous naps). Since experience is aquired this easily I found it hard to imagine how anyone could/would feel it nessercary to grind (okay, most of the missions are more or less centred around blowing up mercs but at least its still kinda fun).
Since it seems to have been a pretty big issue for some I should give mention to the sex scene that appears before the last story mission. Contrary to what most people were expecting, the nudity in the game was PG-13 at worst, to place a comparison, the sex-scene from the Matrix: Reloaded was far more explicit (and about 17 times longer with inserted clips of a rave to top it off) than this. If this hasn't made it clear enough, all you see is the two chatacters holding each other with no clothes on (from behind), the screen fades to black and we discover that Welsh is in fact capable of getting dressed quicker than Marcus Fenix (one second: nothing but boxers, the next: full blown power armor complete with bandana).
Overall, I would reccomend Mass Effect to anyone, the action provided is pretty good for an RPG with a deep backstory for those of you who are interested (with little, if any, consiquence for ignoring it all), the only people I would tell to avoid this game would be people who hate Star Wars with a passion or those who find the concept of blue alien booty to be offensive.
Like with all my reviews, could you please leave feedback so I can improve my work in the future (positive or negetive).
-Iron Mal
