Mass Effect Review

Mass Effect is the adventure/RPG game that many people were waiting for. I think everyone was curious to see if it was going to be anything like KotOR (Knights of the Old Republic), or if the game was going to be a completely new path for BioWare. I personally think it was a bit of both, sure the force wasn't present but the sides were definitely there.

You are commander Sheppard and will become your task to not only help out the universe that surrounds you in the game, but you will also be charged with hunting down a deranged Spectre. You will have at any time 2 other crew members with you to help you along. Also through combat your members as well as you will gain experience which can be used to upgrade your skills in the arts that your character type is proficient in.

This game really kept me on the edge of my seat for the majority of it. Sure there were planets that I landed on where I was kind of twiddling my thumbs, but the overall story kept me coming back every day to play just a little bit more.

The graphics were amazing, and probably too much for my poor standard TV to take. There were many times when loading in a saved game, or just loading onto a planet where all the different pieces to an object weren't there when I started. An example would be something as simplistic as a rock, what I got was a solid colored object that could be a rock, then something that was a rock but had no lighting, and then the lighting would appear and it would look amazing for the 3 seconds I would then look at it before exploring the rest of the world, which was almost always loaded as soon as that one rock was.

The controls for the most part were solid. I felt confident in my endeavors. The problem was the use of squad commands. Your squad would sometimes not do exactly what you told them to do, this is probably more of a gameplay thing, but at the same time it is tied into the controls. You would tell them to take cover and if they were standing in a doorway where you and another squad member were standing on either side of the door the third member would just stand in the doorway and almost always die a horrible, bullet-ridden death.

The gameplay, with the exception of the just mentioned squad AI, was solid. The amount of planets you got to visit outside of the ones that you were given specific quests was great. A player could really think that they could make any decision in the game and still be able to move through it. The main story line was well crafted and I was sad to see it end. The dialog system was another great highlight of the game, you were able to choose what you'd say before the other character was done speaking causing the game to flow better during one of those scenes.

Overall I give Mass Effect a 8.9 out of 10.

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