Demigodess with a Conscience

After having been completely devoured by this particular series of games I couldn’t help but write a review of the games. I know that it has already been done several times, but I’d still like to share my feelings over the games with my friends, readers and corpmates.
I’ll begin today with a review of Mass Effect. The first game in a planned trilogy in the Mass Effect universe, released May 28, 2008. This review will not contain any major spoilers in case anyone of you haven’t already played the game and intend to do so. Revealing plot or deliver spoilers would literally spoil your experience. And boy, what an experience!

Mass Effect begins by asking you to log in as your character, Commander Shepard. Since Mass Effect is a role-playing game, you are given several options for you character. If you’re feeling lazy, you can always select the default male or female character and thus play as Soldier class.

However if you are more like me, wanting to fine-tune your experience, you are given several options. First off you choose gender and first name. The first name is mostly fluff for yourself since it’s never displayed in the actual game except on your character sheet. People will refer to you as “Shepard” or “Commander” regardless of your sex.

Next up is choosing your class, which is the most important choice. You can select any of six classes: Soldier, Engineer, Adept, Infiltrator, Sentinel, and Vanguard. They are arranged in one primary specialist group and one “jack of all trades” group, with Soldier being the Combat specialist, Engineer being the Tech specialist and Adept being the Biotic specialist. (Biotics are Mass Effects equivalent to fantasy games’ magic).

The other three classes are dual classes that combine two of the above into one class. Not as specialized, but more versatile. Infiltrator is the Combat/Tech combination, Vanguard being the Combat/Biotic and Sentinel the Tech/Biotic combination. In addition to the above classes, any class can choose to specialize further after reaching level 20 and doing a specific mission, thus further enhancing his or her power in a specific field.

After this you are asked to choose a background, which affects some side quests (called Assignments) and your Paragon/Renegade scores. I’ll get to these later. Once your background is chosen, you select your psychological profile, which again affects some assignments as well as Paragon/Renegade scores. Both the background and psychological profile will also affect dialogues here and there in the game, and serve as an identifier for who Shepard is. (Since I’ve played Mass Effect 2, I can let you know it carries over to dialogue here too.)

Once you’ve made your choices you are treated to an intro where you overhear a couple of voice discussing you (Shepard) for a special assignment, while watching yourself staring out a window on a spaceship or space station with a planet looming below. Then you are pretty much tossed right into the story where you have been chosen as the XO of the “Normandy”, a secret stealth vessel of combined alien and human technology that is now having it’s shakedown cruise. Things rapidly change, and you are told this is no shakedown cruise at all, but a covert pickup on a colony on the far fringes of space. Things quickly go bad from here on in.

I won’t go more into detail here, but Mass Effect treats you to a rather cliché-ish “Save the Universe” story, but with many unusual twists and refreshing details that makes it all feel new and creative. The Mass Effect universe is ripe with interesting races and cultures, and will inspire you to read codex entries, talking to aliens and whatnot only to find out more about this cast universe.

Something I particularly like is the way they solved the fact that you have the right to use any means necessary and have clearance to go through almost any logs, something that is generally overlooked in these kinds of games. In Mass Effect, Shepard is, after a while given a special rank that allows her to step outside the law in order to do her job in Citadel space. In most games, you simply do as you please in spite of it being illegal, but none seem to react. Small detail, but adds to the whole believability and immersion.

Immersion is something Mass Effect definitely doesn’t lack in any amount. The graphics are very good, even though some of the character textures looks slightly blurry up close,and runs fairly well on a modern gaming computer. It’s also available on the Xbox 360, but from what I’ve heard, the revised PC version is miles ahead of the Xbox version, unfortunately.

What really sets Mass Effect aside from “Generic RPG #2097″ is a combination of an engaging story, spectacular voice acting and a unique feeling of companionship. During the course of the game you will recruit others to help you in your venture and every character adds something unique to the group, not only through their skills but also through their personality. You’ll find that you are just as engrossed in their back-story by talking to them as you are exploring the universe. You might even develop an affection for them. In fact, the game even allows you to develop a relationship with some of them.

Mass Effect offers a blend between an RPG game and a first person shooter. All combat takes place in real time in a FPS fashion. You can, however, pause the action in order to relay directives and tell your squad members (who can only be two active at a time, chosen prior to the mission) to use their powers and abilities at specific targets. If you find this micromanagement to detract from the action, you can simply set your squad mates to “Full power use” and let them decide when and where to apply their powers, while assigning your own abilities to quickslots and blast away without ever having to pause.

It’s fairly well balanced and I found that playing on “Veteran” was “just about right”, with “Hardcore” (available after finishing the game once) was offering me a challenge and “Insanity” (available after finishing the game on Hardcore) was really tough, but doable. I am by no means a FPS god so this should be true for the casual player.

Mass Effect also treats you to a gigantic universe with races, cultures and plots peeking at you from every nook and cranny. Once you are given your own ship you may travel the universe, land on pretty much any planet that isn’t a molten rock or a gas giant, and explore to your heart’s content. You do this by landing on the planets in the “M35 Mako”, which is something of a combination of a tank and a terrain vehicle. While on planets you can discover usable gear, weapons or more lore. You also gain experience, which will make the game a little bit easier to finish. The Mako does have the unusual ability to scale almost vertical mountains, which makes for some rather hilarious moments sometimes.

You are free to advance the story at any time by flying to any of the Mission Planets and progress, but you’ll be missing much of what Mass Effect has to offer if you do. There are lots of assignements to do, planets to explore, people to meet. I think I spent some 50 hours on the game the first time I played it. Of course, I’d finished it once by then but there was so much I’d missed, so much to do different and still other classes to test. To this date, I’ve still not played neither Engineer, Soldier or Sentinel.

What really makes Mass Effect feel so real is that your choices matter, and I mean really matter. The choices you make throughout the game will follow you, not only through this game, but through the other two games in the trilogy. Yep, you heard me, you can import your ME1 character into ME2 and have all your history brought with you (in addition to some bonuses, depending on how well you did) and your ME1/ME2 character into ME3.

Now, this wouldn’t seem half as awesome if I didn’t tell you what overwhelming choices you can make. You choices can mean the difference between life and death for a teammember, wether the universe will radically change politically, the life and death of an entire species (!) and much more. Mass Effect really does a good job making you agonize over choices since they will come back and bite you in the hind end. As always, there are no “right” choices. There are simply bad and less bad choices, which makes the whole thing much more interesting.

Bioware (that made the game) also thankfully let go of the tired old “good/bad” mechanic where everything you did was on a sliding scale of good or bad, which usually ended up with me being somewhere in the middle. In Mass Effect, most choices give you “Paragon” (diplomatic and helpful, “no one gets left behind”) and “Renegade” (selfish, callous and efficient) points. Being a renegade doesn’t mean you are a bad person. It’s kinda “get the job done, no matter the cost”, while paragon is more trying to find the best for everyone involved, and let the mission suffer.

With giving you the ability to amass both kinds of points, Mass Effect really lets you tailor your experience and choose differently in situations without suffering for it (ie losing “light” or “dark”). You simply amass whatever points resulted from your choice. More points in either will grant some bonuses, such as Ability Cooldown reduction (Paragon) or Increased Weapon damage (Renegade).

So, in closing, I can’t really say anything but “PLAY THIS GAME!”

Seriously.

 

 The Good Stuff

• Exceptionally well thought out and presented story that really pulls you in
• Fantastic voice acting allows incredible immersion
• Smooth and mostly problem free combat system
• Vast universe that actually seems to work together with its history and cultures
• Unique and creative aliens
• Sounds and music flows well with the action and doesn’t get in your way
• You get the feeling that you really do, in fact, matter in the scale of things
   

The Bad Stuff

• Might be tough on old computers
• Has some annoying texture popping when loading new scenes
• Long elevator rides (loading times)
• Assignments tend to feel a bit copy&paste at times (main missions are however excellent)
• Enemy combat taunts can get really repetetive when you fight mercs.
   

Final Verdict: 8

• Gameplay 9
• Graphics 8
• Audio 8
• Replayability 7
• Controls 7
• Entertainment 9