Bioware’s dungeonmasters have trapped adventurers beneath the lands of the Forgotten Realms, tempted them with the Dark Side across the sands of Tatooine, and have sent them into the skies over the Jade Empire. This time, players will find themselves lost among the stars of a future that is part Star Wars, part Forbidden Planet, with an overwhelming helping of other bits and pieces of sci-fi mixed in for good measure, as they decide the fate of a galaxy.
In 2183, humanity takes to the stars as part of a vast community of interstellar nations united beneath the benevolent flag of the Citadel. Lightspeed travel is a daily occurrence, and the enigmatic mass relays- massive, ancient technological wonders left behind by a lost civilization- allow vessels to jump thousands of light years in the blink of an eye. As Commander Shepard of the human Systems Alliance, what begins as a routine mission to a colonial world will set the stage for resurrecting a forgotten legacy and the antediluvian horrors that buried it. A celebrated hero will turn his back on billions of lives and only you will be able to make a difference.
Bioware’s knack for creating an effective narrative underlining the politics, relationships, and the thrilling environments forming the backbone of the experience is no less than what its fans expect with Mass Effect, sharing quite a few elements with their previous titles such as Knights of the Old Republic and Jade Empire. The story is an exciting, cinematic synergy of music and CG as it charges forward with plenty of energy, pulling the player into a detailed world as it delves into the classic struggle between good and evil. An in-game encyclopedia even provides a boggling amount of fiction providing plenty of in-game facts to pore through. Bioware has never had a problem in fleshing out the details that fill their worlds, and veterans might still feel a sense of deja vu, but it all comes together extremely well.
You can either start with the default John Shepard, or create your own thanks to a convenient database accident requiring you to rebuild your profile. You’ll still be Shepard, but you’ll be able to add in all of the other details, such as profession, background, and even gender. It would have been nice to have seen a preview of what skills each class had to work with than the text description of what they were good at, but as it is, you’ll have to craft a character and then see what they’ve got after diving in. You can then let the game decide what is best for your character when you level, or assign earned points into the appropriate skills yourself and concentrate more on the action.
Spoken dialog is a large part of the game with a who’s who list of voice and screen actors such as Keith David or Lance Henriksen performing behind the emotional facework that their onscreen personas bring into play thanks to a compelling combination of eye and body language that Bioware’s animators have given them. Much of this comes off well, making these sequences play out like cinematic asides accompanied by a subtle soundtrack, and you can skip ahead to the responses in most instances if you already know what they have to say.
The vaunted dialog system still feels very much like the tree-based system that preceded it in Bioware’s earlier titles, only with a different look and the ability to allow the conversation to seamlessly transition from one point to the next as opposed to picking from a list at the end of the speech…which you can still do. There’s also the annoying tendency for the game to lock out your ability to simply skip through the cinematics, something I wish was available to you especially if you decide to replay the game with a new character or with what you can carry over, but altogether, the system manages to create a sense of immersion.
Responses are couched in emotional descriptors for what is going through Shepard’s head. Picking a response marked “This isn’t justice” will trip a line of dialog related to that feeling as opposed to reading it off a cue card making Shepard seem less like a mannequin and more like a person in whose role you’ve stepped into. Depending on how well developed your charisma or intimidation skills are, different responses to certain situations may appear allowing you to explore additional branches. The dialog is generally well written and many of the replies seamlessly blend into the conversation without feeling as if they were simply stuck in there to branch to another topic, although you can still get a few of the characters to loop their replies which can detract from the fiction.
Ask anyone who’s played a console RPG and they’ll tell you that combat takes up a lot of their time. Bioware’s decision to make the combat system in Mass Effect an action oriented blend of tactics and third person shoot ‘em ups can be confusing to players used to a more traditional approach. The tutorial consists of text notes and the learning curve for this might be a little steeper than what veterans may have gotten used to in Bioware’s other titles. There’s no ‘virtual training’ session against an AI, no proverbial rat quest to teach you the wheel interface other than by tossing you right into harm’s way. It took me some time to get used to it, but it works well enough with some practice.
A cover system is implemented alongside rudimentary squad commands, but don’t go in thinking that this is Gears of War with fancy stats. You don’t need greased reflexes, and you can always adjust the difficulty of your enemies, but it is still very much an action RPG oriented experience. The enemy AI is fairly predictable, but won’t challenge shooter fanatics with its basic level response to threats whether it is running straight at you, or simply staying put and maybe moving around once in awhile. Later enemies can mix in magic-like biotics and tech skills to make things a lot more interesting, but it’s not quite robust enough to entice action nuts, and it’s not exactly what every RPGer will appreciate having to get into making Mass Effect’s combat something of a mixed bag.
You’re restricted to only two other team members which you can only choose either when you leave your ship, the Normandy, or in certain situations. For the most part, your AI driven teammates will do a pretty decent job in defending themselves, especially if they’ve developed a large number of skills, although they can be capable of some odd behavior such as shooting at walls while trying to get at an enemy they clearly can’t hit from where they are, or getting stuck on objects as they try and follow you around. Otherwise, they’re not entirely helpless and you can customize their gear and weapons just as you can with yours, including what skills they should be focusing on learning.
Plenty of side quests will keep you busy searching out new worlds and exploring what is actually out there which leads into into one of the weaker parts of the game. Systems open up for travel, although most of these have only one real location that you can explore. Most every other planet within them can only be “surveyed” by your ship in the hopes of scanning for minerals or artifacts, with a text message telling you what you’ve found and your cash reserves growing a bit larger as a reward. For worlds that you can actually land on, you’ll be able to rove around to find hidden minerals to survey, relics to uncover, or enemies to blast into paste with the mounted cannon on your Mako land cruiser which can be fun as long as you’re willing to put up with how numbing some of the travel can be.
The Mako is pretty durable and you’ll only receive damage from enemies in the field whether they happen to be robotic geth or titanic worms that burst from the ground. It can climb over mountains and tumble down them without turning over, but it is also one of the most boring things to do in the game, especially if you’ve killed everything on the surface since nothing respawns. Unlike many of the unique locales that you can explore, most of what you’ll see on the ground will comprise of bland, barren surfaces with perhaps one or two installations…all of which share a small number of configurations and which must have been manufactured by the same company, leaving H.R. Giger without another opportunity to weird us out.
There are also occasional performance issues, especially with effects-heavy scenes, that can slow some of the action down. The Simon Says puzzles that the gameplay uses for performing hacks, surveys on the surface, and other tasks that require some interaction will also wear thin after doing so many of these, although the stuff that you often find is usually be rewarding enough to forgive it. The main quest can clock in under thirty or so hours, a little more if you decide to do the many side quests, but it offers replayability at the end, either going in with a new career or transferring your earned equipment and stats over for another go. Certain unlocked achievements do more than add to your gamerscore, unlocking skills that you can improve within classes that normally don’t have them.
Despite the flaws, I couldn’t help but be drawn in by the story, its characters, and the grandiose saga that has been set into motion. Mass Effect’s issues pale in comparison to everything else that its ambitious design does well in showcasing the pageantry hidden behind every pixel, setting the stage for the kind of experience that Bioware is known for within one of the most engaging worlds yet on the 360. Filled with the kind of details that RPGers are hungry for with driven characters, a no holds barred climax, and the promise of more to come as, it’s as good a time as any to take a trip to the stars as the center of your own universe.
Primotech Rating: 
Related Stories
Comments
Leave a Reply
-
Top News
Latest Articles
Listen to Primocasts
Newest Previews
Recent Reviews
Fresh Media
-
Sponsor
Links