- Title: Mass Effect
- Platform:Xbox 360
- Publisher: Microsoft Game Studios
- Developer: BioWare
- ESRB Rating: “M” for Mature
- Genre: Action RPG
- Pros: Great graphics and sound; good replay value; good story
- Cons: Combat is only average; bugs and glitches abound; main story is pretty short; turn off the grain effect filter, it is hideous!; braindead AI
Features
I can’t say too much about the overall story, since the reviewer’s guide from Microsoft had more stuff we can’t talk about than things we can, but I will say that it is very entertaining throughout and manages to capture that same special warm and fuzzy feel that rivals the greatest sci-fi epics we all grew up with.
Gameplay
The gameplay in Mass Effect is made up of a few distinct parts: Exploration/conversation, combat, and space travel. Much of your time is spent exploring cities and helping people in order to move the story along. Much of this is just simple fetch quests and the like that we have seen before in the KOTOR games. This is where the conversation wheel, Mass Effect’s greatest draw comes in. As you have a conversation with someone in the game, you have several replies to choose from. These choices aren’t exactly what your character will actually say, but they give you the gist of it. What can happen, though, is that your character doesn’t always react the way you expect them to based on the phrase you chose. Since it isn’t a question of being good or being evil, it ultimately doesn’t matter all that much, but it is surprising how a seemingly simple comment can build into something else. It keeps you on your toes and adds to the replay value of the game considerably.Another smaller component of the game is traveling between planets. The game gives you a nifty little galaxy map and you can travel to different star systems and visit a lot of different planets. You can’t actually land on most of the planets, but you can scan them for information and learn all sorts of neat little tidbits about the universe the game exists in. Main story planets will have major cities and lots of stuff to do. Side quest planets are usually barren and don’t offer much other than an optional dungeon and some loot, but you do get to drive around in a cool little armed vehicle.
