Mass Effect

It is so very convenient how all the races of the galaxy happen to speak English. The Canadian RPG makers, the people of BioWare, probably thought so too when making their elevator simulator, which some may know as Mass Effect.

Eventually, I learned to port with the fast travel thingies of the Citadel, though, but I did use the elevators for quite some time anyway, only because of the hilarious elevator music. Mass Effect excels at the sound and music aspect otherwise as well.

In fact, at the moment at least, the game's soundtrack is on the top of my all-time favorites. It gave me occasional TRON: Legacy vibes, and the orchestral tracks kept surprising me with their grandeur time and time again. And the end credits song just nails it, leaving you with a feeling you have just finished a great game.

All the dialog of Mass Effect is voice-acted, and by what a cast. Some characters are even voiced by an actor known for his/her tv role; Seth Green (Oz from Buffy) is Joker and Marina Sirtis (Star Trek's Deanna Troi) is Matriarch Benezia. I often mix up voice actors to some other person but this time I got those two right. Also, Jennifer Hale, a long-time game voice actress veteran (just look at that list of games she is in!), gives her voice to the female Shepard.

Visually, Mass Effect is pleasing, running on the Unreal Engine 3. I wonder though, what is up with the grain filter. I thought something was wrong with the game before I found the option to turn it off. Surely such a thing should not be on by default. The motion blur I left on. It was bit weird at first but I got used to it.

I am glad BioWare decided to step out of the already existing franchises for a while. I cannot really blame them for real originality of ideas in Mass Effect but the setting and how stuff works makes a lot more sense than in many other popular scifi universes. Their experience with Knights of the Old Republic is visible but at least there is no freaking lightsabers.

The alignment system is there again, this time as Paragon and Renegade. However, advancing in one doesn't reduce the other, and the effect your alignment has is supposedly smaller than in BioWare's previous titles. I cannot really tell, though -- I ended up gaining points equally in both. I also maxed both conversion skills, Charm and Intimidate, just because.

Some reviewers seem to regard Mass Effect's story as a great one. Well, it begins pretty interesting; humanity wants to get more involved (and power!) with the Council that sort of rules the galaxy. Commander Shepard, your character, is pushed by the Earth Alliance to be the first human Spectre (a special agent of the Council). And then you start chasing a bad guy who is going to destroy the Universe. Nothing we haven't seen before.

The developers made sure to borrow everything from past science fiction movies; and after everything has been revealed towards the end, Mass Effect becomes a straight copy of Babylon 5: Thirdspace. Shepard seems way too enthusiastic about preventing all this happening; I couldn't identify myself with the dialog options at times because of this. Regardless of all the clichés, the finale gripped me and I was really feeling it when approaching the final confrontation.

It is funny how the actual story isn't that long; much of the game's length (I totalled at 30 hours) comes from flying around the galaxy and doing all the side quests. Side quests which are all of the same: you land on a planet/moon, drive about with the Mako shooting stuff, then dismount and enter a building you've entered so many times already and shoot stuff. The option to land at least on one planet in every star system gives a small sense of freedom (and is somewhat cool) but I wonder how much tighter the game would be without all the planets to "explore".

Once again, you carry a bunch of NPCs with you. At first I felt like they were way too many to be interesting. Then I got to know them better and regarded them somewhat unique. Then they were done with their stories and my first impressions returned. I was happy to sacrifice one of them when the option rose. The decision was hard, though -- I did not know which one I disliked more.

The gameplay itself is third-person, over-the-shoulder shooting. I'm not a fan of shooters and Mass Effect is no exception. At least the game's an RPG so your shooting gets better with levels. But man did the assault rifles (the only weapon my soldier Shepard used) feel inaccurate and ineffective in the beginning.

The cover mechanic felt sometimes fiddly and sometimes great. When I got my skills maxed and bought a top-notch weapon, however, I started staying less time in cover and more just charging straight ahead with the Overkill talent active.

I found the whole squad commanding way too bothersome and just made sure they were using a weapon they might hit something with. And most of the time they were being pretty useful on their own. There were times, though, when enemies would charge right into melee distance and the squad mates would just stare at them.

Mass Effect was first developed for the Xbox, and it shows; typically for a console game, inventory management is horrible. I hear they fixed a lot of issues in the Xbox version for the PC port (released half a year later) but evidently not enough.

Mass Effect has a very strong presentation, and thanks to that, it provides an excellent gaming experience. The game has some flaws but they fail to take aways its immersiveness. I just wish they made these kind of games for PC only -- console-driven development simply hampers so much.

One more thing; I understand the Asari are an all-female race but where the hell are all the female Turians, Krogan, Salarians, and whatnot?