 "Wonderful Game" | 2009-11-04 |
| - Reviewed By User: A2TH3ON31GS972 |
This is a wonderful action based RPG, the game setting is such a rich environment that has been created. The game contains a wealth of information on the setting of the game, it explains in detail all of the alien species yo encounter, the way the "mass effect" technology works, how weapons work, etc... The developers took all of this rich information and layered it out into a fully voiced action RPG. I have to say the voice acting is also fairly good.
The game play is a good mix of action and story. The action elements play out fairly well, whether it is hacking something open (this plays out similar to the simon says game), or being engrossed in a large firefight. The combat is fun, however the flow of combat is broken by having to oopen a menu to issue commands to team mates, and to tell them what weapon to use.
The game has a wonderfull soundtrack that really sets the stage for what yo are doing in game. |
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 "Believe!" | 2009-10-27 |
| - Reviewed By User: A5HGTMO15SM76 |
Well if your looking for rpg shooter sci fi, then look no further. Mass effect is truly a movie. From the very beginning you are thrown into a deep and emersive story line. A very linear path to choose where you hunt down 1 single person. But as you progress in the story it opens up with rich mystery, suspense, and puzzles. You are given bits of information and from there you have to peice together a story from countless enemy encounters and legendary artifacts. This game plays heavily into the good or bad cop and politics. Throughout the entire game you get to choose what your main character says and how he enteracts with people. Weither it be a good response a bad response a mixed response or no response at all. There are chances where you get to intimidate people to do what you want rather than shoot them dead. Or you can charm the person into doing the right thing rather than turn them into the cops. There are also chances you can take to eliminate people if you want to be a hard liner. Along with the story is the playback value of the game. I myself am on my forth playthrough. After you finish the game they allow you to continue with your same character and start again. This allows you to build more levels and get some really unique gear. The quests also follow a not so linear path where you can do side quests and missions to uncover more secrets and add many more hours of gameplay.
My only complaint with the game is the texture mapping sometimes delays and visual details sometimes dont hit till mid conversation. |
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| "Solid sci-fi action RPG" | 2009-10-21 |
| - Reviewed By User: A28DNJJ11VXFDW |
| I bought this game without playing it beforehand, and didn't regret the purchase. It really has a great cinematic presentation to it, very impressive graphics and sound (even two years later). The voice acting is top-notch also. The gameplay is mostly good, has a bit of KOTOR resemblance, as Bioware made this game several years beforehand and this game seems like a modernized version. The characters are interesting and serve as important parts of the storyline. However, the in-game AI with your companions (as well as your enemies) isn't all that great. There are some graphical glitches here and there. My main problem is that without the Downloadable Content from Xbox Live, there isn't much to do after finishing the game. You can reuse your previous character and begin at a much higher level, which I do like. Also you can go back and collect rare items, get certain types of kills, etc. to earn Achievements. Most planets you travel to are barren and abandoned, with nothing interesting to see, and the driving part gets old soon. Mass Effect 2 supposedly addresses these issues, we'll have to wait and see. |
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| "Best game I've ever played" | 2009-09-28 |
| - Reviewed By devouring_wind |
This game is incredible. It isn't perfect, and its style might not appeal to everyone, but if you're looking for an extremely detailed RPG with a lot of real time combat thrown in for good measure, this is a great choice. Mass Effect was first recommended to me by a friend who told me it was "just like" KOTOR (which I also loved). Let me say that he was dead wrong, this game is no KOTOR. Yes, there are elements of the game play that are reminiscent of KOTOR - this is a good thing, trust me. The system isn't close enough to be anything close to a KOTOR clone. More like the elements of KOTOR that worked well evolved further. The story is incredible, and the choices in character development, dialogue and so on are the most varied I've seen in any game. Also, for once we're presented with a game that allows multiple moral choices, without those choices falling into the realm of cartoonishly good or evil, and without being reprimanded or punished if you choose the less noble actions. Which brings me into another big appeal of the game - this game is for grown ups. Not in the way that the GTA games are, but because the game world is not black and white, with bad things never happening to the good guys. Some of the decisions you'll make will be tough ones, and that's a good thing for an RPG. In all, I would say that anyone who likes plot and doesn't mind exploring huge dialogue possibilities will probably like this game. If you just want to shoot at stuff, there's plenty of that too, but you probably won't want to deal with everything in between.
That said, I have a few criticisms, which is why I would only give this game 4 stars instead of 5 in regards to pure fun. Although the plot is great, there aren't enough main missions. Instead, the vast majority of the missions are side missions. This wouldn't be a bad thing if it wasn't for the fact that most of the side missions are tedious and repetitive. Unlike some reviewers, I didn't mind the idea of exploring planets in the Mako in and of itself, but got bored when there wasn't much of anything new to see. Yes, every base looks the same, and the planets look almost the same. A lot of creative detail was put into the sky of some of these worlds, but practically nothing when it came to the landscape. The colors were changed a little and the layout of the mountains varied slightly, and that was it. Even on worlds that supposedly had life, the only thing slightly interesting that you might find would be a small heard of the same two kinds of animals, and only if you didn't mind exploring the whole surface of the planet looking for minerals. Navigating these planets was also frustrating, because a lot of the things you need to find involve climbing mountains in the Mako, which is practically impossible. You have to drive around, looking for a spot that's a little less shear, only for the Mako to come to a halt about 3/4 of the way up. Then you have to struggle not to slide all the way back down, and try to inch your way up the rest by driving sideways. Needless to say, this isn't fun. I would not have minded the repetitive side missions if it meant you at least got to explore a new and interesting environment each time. There are other ways to hide goodies than to place them in nearly inaccessable mountain crevices, and I didn't find it believable that every single planet would be mountainous. What about some sand dunes? A jungle environment? Canyons, craters, or water? Given all the effort that was put into graphics in this game, and how detailed some of the main mission environments are, I don't see why they couldn't have put just a little more creative effort into the side mission planets since they are such a huge part of the game.
Battling in the Mako is also difficult because you usually have to do it while driving, and even when you use the canon you have to be spot on with the aiming. Enemies will be highlighted with red triangles. While they are easy to hit when fighting on foot (you don't have to hit inside the triangle), in the Mako it seemed to me that if you didn't line the center dot of the sights directly in the middle of the red triangle, you would almost never make a hit. This was especially problematic because you tend to fight at a distance with the Mako, so the triangles are tiny. Even closer up, however, I found that large targets such as Geth Armatures would not register a hit, even if visually, the canon sights were lined up with a part of the Armature's body, unless you hit inside the triangle. Very frustrating, especially while moving. And you do have to move while you're fighting in the Mako, or you'll get your butt kicked. I found that enemies will almost always be able to hit you, no matter where you're coming from, even if you cannot hit them. Pretty much any time you are not level with the enemy, you will not be able to hit them, even if your line of sight looks clear. Whether you are coming from above or below, or appear to have a clear shot, it usually won't matter and you'll find your canon rounds hitting the side of a hill or ridge between you and the enemy. Despite this, they will almost always be able to hit you if you can see them (and sometimes when you can't), whether you are above or below them.
In other respects, the game itself was awesome enough to make up for these flaws, but it really would have been perfect if the missions in the Mako could have been improved. Despite this, it really is an awesome RPG/3rd person shooter, and I highly recommend it to anyone who likes a game with both action and plot. |
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| "It's no KOTOR, but it's the next best thing" | 2009-09-14 |
| - Reviewed By peacecraftknight |
I'm sure I'm not the only one who passed up Jade Empire because he was waiting for Bioware to make another Knights of the Old Republic. I"m a huge fan of sci-fi and I love RPGs, so naturally I was excited to play Bioware's first sci-fi RPG since KOTOR. While most RPGs are pretty much a series of turn-based battles followed by long text readings and long cinemas, Mass Effect takes things into a very different direction. At its heart it's a hybrid of a squad-based third-person shooter and a branching-dialog RPG like Knights of the Old Republic, with plenty of land-vehicle driving around nonsense for good measure. Effect is a totally original story in a brand new universe. Unfortunately, the story and gameplay is not better for it.
First all, the feel of the world in this game might seem a bit tired and run-of-the-mill (especially after the Iraq War cools off and people get over their shaved-head space-marine mania). The back-story of the Mass Effect universe might have been written by Elizabeth Moon or David Weber, except their worlds offer better space-army colonial sci-fi back-story than what you'll find here. Heck, Firefly is or Outlaw Star is better too (for the TV and anime fans out there). So Star Wars it ain't.
Then there's the character generation and trait-building. While it's nice to be able to totally customize your character's appearance, Bioware, like so many other game designers these days, goes about it all wrong (Guitar Hero World Tour made the same mistake). You basically can either pick from a dozen or so generic ugly space-marine faces and modify them slightly, or go all-out and change the height and size of eyebrows and ears. As far as I can tell the other game creator who ever got this right was Sega, who in Phantasy Star Online and Virtua Tennis game us around 24 UNIQUE faces, and 24 UNIQUE hair styles, and COMPLETE control of height and weight. I would much rather make my character look like like a lean Luke Skywalker or a tiny elfin chick than space marine old lady number 5, thank you very much.
The branching dialog and RPG elements of KOTOR, while legendary in of themselves, for the most part have NOT been improved here. You'll still have the same conversation over and over with a character, you'll still find characters in EXACTLY the same spot in your ship for most of the game. So while admittedly a massive (pun intended) amount of work went into creating the story elements, there are still things that pull you out of the game that should not (if game characters just wandered around the ship like real people would or said nothing if you already had that conversation it would go a long way to making it feel less like a game and more like an experience).
The action gameplay has likewise come under heavy criticism and for good reason. While its great to have a hybrid gameplay attempted, here the execution is clearly not up to snuff compared to other first and third-person shooters. And the special attacks (non-gun attacks), while a nifty idea, in execution are pretty much the same (they knock back, slow down, enemies, ect, and protect your squad). That said, it's a whole lot of fun! While by the end of the game it starts to get kind of tiresome, but some excellent weapon upgrades (I love the weapon mod that literally freezes enemies solid!) keep things fresh. And it keeps the RPG elements from weighing down on you too heavily but throwing you some action now and then.
The vehicle segments, on the other hand, could have been cut from the game entirely. When you've got cartoony games like Jak 3 and Ratchet and Clank 3 that get vehicle control down so perfectly, this kind of loosey-goosey Halo-style control just doesn't cut it. Add in the fact that nothing you destroy with the stupid vehicle matters anyway (all you have to do is get to your next objective, not destroy anything), and you have recipe for a game element that you'll likely skip past as often as possible. Fortunately, once you get to your main game planets, you rarely need to use the awful off-road vehicle. You will however, miss out on side-quests if you do just go for the main game.
The graphics in this game are pretty nice. Personally I don't care for the film-grain effect, but you can easily turn it off. The frame-rate drops pretty low during combat at times, but nothing nearly as bad as KOTOR (to me it felt more like a Ridley-Scott choppy-camera effect that just made the combat feel even cooler). You'll never see the frame-rate drop to nothing and suddenly find yourself dead not knowing what happened. The music is generic 80's style synthesizer music for the most part, pretty darn bland, maybe even a little annoying. Thankfully, for the critical points in the game (boss battles, ect) the music far better. Passable overall I would say. The cinemas in the game are likewise passable, but Square/Enix has no reason to worry about competition from Mass Effect.
With all that negative stacked against it, you'd think this would be a 3, or even a 2 star game. But what saves it is the Bioware style, the way the game is played. Because like KOTOR, some of your conversations are wildly entertaining, some of the action scenes are incredibly memorable, the characters are awesome, and despite the bland gameplay world the execution nails all the elements exceptionally for the most part. And of course, with all the classes, branching dialog choices (with moral implications), gender choices, ect, you can play this game multiple times and see things work out multiple ways, which adds a huge amount of replay value. And while the story isn't exactly the most original in the world, it still manages to pack the classic Bioware plot twist (who the true villains are) and tell it in a very mature way (while there is some rough language and blood, the game is at about the level of a typical PG-13 movie, and it's maturity is in its more realistic handling of real-world issues instead of cartoonifying things.
While this game isn't as long, or as good as Knights of the Old Repblic or it's sequel, it is a bold new direction for RPGs, and very exciting indicator of what they will become in the future (free-roaming action games with RPG elements like the aforementioned Jak and Ratchet series, but with far deeper storylines). If you are craving a new RPG in the style of Bioware's former triumphs, this is literally the only game in town until Mass Effect 2, the KOTOR MMORPG, or Alpha Protocol (which has me the most excited actually). If you love the new breed of western-style RPGs, and like to play them through multiple times, buy it now. You'll trip over it's design flaws, but grow to love the heart of the game, it's well-story story and great characters. If you've never played a Bioware game before give a rent first. You may find yourself becoming a fan and itching for the sequel.
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| "awesome game but..." | 2009-09-12 |
| - Reviewed By User: A1IR4V8H3KMVNZ |
it's definitely not for everyone. combat is exciting, but for those who love shooters, battles may seem repetitive after a while. especially since the sound effects for the huge arsenal of weapons stay the same for each class. another aspect of the game that may become VERY annoying is item management. weapons, armor, upgrades, etc are found frequently throughout the game, and they become excessive in your inventory. what's worse is, each item has 10 models, each a higher level than the previous, and they are painful to scroll through and organize/scrap.
that being said, the single greatest thing about mass effect is its storyline. from the second the game starts, the game immerses you in an INCREDIBLE universe. the detail is simply amazing (there are "codecs" found throughout the game that provide background information on eeeeeeeeeeeeeverything, from weapon systems to alien races) and the dialogue is epecially intriguing. even the music has you on edge.
i myself fell in love with game, even with all it's flaws. mass effect is another game that has shown how jawdropping a good sci-fi story can be.
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