Mass Effect Reviews

Two more Mass Effect reviews have appeared online, deeming the game a must-play yet also citing some caveats. Shacknews likens playing Mass Effect to “driving a Lamborghini, but with your mother’s Buick V6 installed under the hood.”

It’s not that the combat is overly difficult in a tactical sense–in fact, most battles require little forethought. It is the unbalanced, random nature to the fights that ultimately disappoints. The rate at which you can be killed is stunning. One particularly flawed boss encounter will likely have most players reloading the game dozens of times before achieving a bitter victory. Smaller surprises found in other missions can require the same amount of trial and error. Reducing the difficulty only lowers the amount that enemies scale with your character’s level, which does not always alleviate the problem of enemy behavior and level design.

None of this would be quite as painful if the combat itself was fantastically entertaining, but no one aspect stands out. Spells are limited to a standard issue of immobilizing abilities, force powers, and other blasts. They’re fun at first, but nothing to get worked up over. Popping off a few rifle rounds from behind cover is enjoyable enough, but the overall experience is no more exciting than any average shooter. Players should expect to be breezing through the vast majority of missions. The rest of the time, after you’ve been utterly crushed for the 20th time in a row, you’ll be wishing you could just sit down with your enemies and calmly convince them to surrender.

Read more for thoughts on items, characters, vehicular combat.

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Mass Effect is a decidedly strange beast. The combat can be downright depressing, but I always knew that just beyond that last barricade was another brilliantly orchestrated exchange–or, at the very least, some guy I could shoot in the back. While the core gameplay is nothing new–sometimes disappointingly so–Mass Effect represents a generational jump in storytelling artistry. It succeeds in spite of its faults, and by the end, I was left excited with the idea of an improved sequel. For that reason, it’s a game that every RPG fan should play.

ActionTrip also has some caveats but is overall impressed, giving it a 9.1.

Finally, while the main campaign will lead you through exciting encounters and many cool locations, the side quests are taking place on extremely generic planets, which make it totally anticlimactic to steer away from the main story.

Even with the aforementioned drawbacks, however, Mass Effect is still a title you’ll want to own. Though BioWare has had some omissions in this one, the stuff they’ve done for the story, the character modeling and animation, and especially the combat system, make Mass Effect an extremely captivating experience. It took me around 18 hours to finish the game. I haven’t been flying through the main campaign though; I spent some time doing side missions and exploring as well. Nonetheless, it doesn’t hurt to reiterate that this segment of the game (side missions and the locales they’re placed in) is underdeveloped, but such are the constraints of producing a title like Mass Effect. This, naturally, somewhat diminishes the replay value.

And speaking of which, in typical BioWare fashion, the designers made sure that the thread of the main story remains linear throughout, no matter what your choices are. I deliberately replayed certain parts and aside from being awarded Renegade or Paragon points depending on my actions, the course of the main plot remained unchanged. This all changes as we reach the finish; but, again, I don’t want to spoil it for you.