Mass Effect

Video game reviews and discussion.

Mass Effect

Postby mega raptor » Thu Jun 19, 2008 1:15 am

Mass Effect is a science-fiction RPG/FPS set in the 2180's, after humanity has made contact with a number of other species and built up several colonies around the galaxy. After one of those colonies is destroyed by a rogue agent from the galaxy's government, the Citadel Council, the player, Commander Sheperd is assigned with the task of hunting down this rogue agent and stopping his plans. And from there, the player is free to explore the galaxy, wandering through various star systems searching for sidequests. The developers, it seems, intended this, as the main plotline is rather short, and could probably be completed in about 7-8 hours if one really rushed, but if one were to hunt down every possible optional mission the game could take about 30 hours to complete and I've heard people have taken even longer, in the realm of 40-something hours.

Unfortunatley, many of these hours are spent rather tediously as one waits through long sections of talking, irritating un-skippable cutscenes, extremely long elevator rides, attempting to get a hold of your vehicle's crappy controls and re-tracing one's steps because of the crappy autosave system. The hours that are actually spent playing the game, however, make up for this somewhat, with fast-paced shooting and the use of various abilities. There are six different classes in the game, three based solely around one type of ability: soldiers, that have access to all the game's weapons but none of the other abilities, adepts that have mastery of suspiciously Force-eqsue physics-bending abilities but only the basic pistol weaponry, and engineers that can damage electronics, weaponry and mechanical enemies while also being restricted to the pistol, as well as three other classes that are hybrids of two of the above.

This is, interestingly enough, not the only thing customizable about Commander Sheperd-the player can customize gender, looks, background, military history, etc, etc. The player also has the ability to to make their character either a 'Paragon', who is polite, caring and avoids unnessecary bloodshed, or a 'Renegade' who will happily sacrifice other people if they are so unfortunate as to get in your way.

In addition to your own abilities, you are always assisted by two AI squad members, each one of the classes mentioned earlier. Generally, they're reasonably competent, but it's not typically needed-battles are usually small, rarely having more than half a dozen enemies attacking you, and that fact that your weapons all have unlimited ammo and are only restricted by overheating and recoil makes it even easier.

These squad members can all also be spoken to out of battle onboard the player's ship, and they all have backstories that help to characterize them and make them more than just a cluster of pixels. Of course, none of these backgrouds are particularly interesting, but it's better than nothing at all.

Oh, and the graphics usually look pretty good-the character's faces, in particular, are all done very well, but this only makes it more irritating when textures refuse to show themselves until you're standing five feet in front of them.

All in all, I like Mass Effect-parts of it can be annoying, but just the number of classes and alignments one has to choose from add a huge amount of replay value, as does the game's length. And that's it, the end of this rant/review/book/whatever.
It's you and me against the world. We attack at dawn.

This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang but with a whimper. - T.S. Eliot
mega raptor
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