Turns out we were lied to: I COULD replace my (third) broken 360 at the
store without sending it in, so we went down yesterday and got a new unit.
The damn thing went belly up while I was playing "Mass Effect" and it turns
out that it crapped out with only a half-hour of the game left!
"Mass Effect" is a game that reminded me, in execution, of "Grand Theft
Auto". Similar to GTA "Mass Effect" does very little really well, but the
game itself is significantly more than it's often somewhat broken parts.
The game is a hard sci-fi space opera action role-playing experience. I
beat the game, doing all of the side missions I could find, in about 33
hours. You can make positive, good ("Paragon") or negative, evil
("Renegade") decisions or just accept a middle path. I choose the Paragon
route and many side-quests play out differently depending on your choices
(for example you may choose to save innocents, which may be more difficult,
or mow them down).
You can choose your career from a list of several pure and hybrid classes,
but career choice only affects available skills, not the story. You can
also choose to be male or female and can customize your character's
appearance should you like.
The most successful aspect of the game is the one you've probably heard the
most about: the conversation system is well-implemented and all dialog is
spoken. Voice acting is, for the most part, well casted but much of it
suffers from the dramatic doldrums that tend to plague games like this.
Many of the actors seem to be sleepwalking through their lines (probably a
side effect of recording hundreds of lines of dialog with no context).
More interesting is the rarer contextual dialog. You can only choose to
bring two of your several companions on any excursion. During idle times
these two will sometimes have side-discussions and will often add comments
to your primary discussions. This adds subtly but distinctly to the feeling
of immersion.
The story itself is well-constructed and set in a rich universe of alien
races and history. As you play you build up a completely useless, but
utterly fascinating encyclopedia of facts and tidbits about the worlds you
visit, the races you encounter, technology and other information.
The sad part is that overlaid over this fascinating foundation is a rather
mediocre game.
One of the most annoy aspects to me was the purely weapons-based economy.
EVERY SINGLE crate, box, safe, locker and "malfunctioning device" that you
open contains weapons, armor or upgrades. Find a crashed communications
probe? It could contain a sniper rifle and incendiary rounds for your
pistol. Plunder a garbage can? You might find a complete suit of powered
armor.
With all of the potential for collecting alien artifacts, technology,
trading interplanetary commodities and so forth it just feels like such a
missed opportunity.
The interface for managing equipment is attractive, but horribly unusable.
There's no way to see all of your equipment at once and you can only outfit
those companions with you or, if you're on your ship, you can outfit others
by accessing their "lockers". This is remarkably tedious and really makes
you appreciate the refinements made in the better role-playing games.
Graphically the game is impressive, but nothing amazing. There are many
graphical glitches and texture popping is rampant, but nothing that affects
gameplay.
Combat works, but is wonky as all hell. There's no "lock-on" capability and
it's very easy to lose your targets. The various powers in the game tend to
be flashy and further add to the confusion. For all that however combat is
also on the easy side: you'll rarely be killed (although when you are it'll
almost always be a pretty cheap death).
More damning is the fact that by the end of the game combat becomes, well,
boring. There are very few enemy types and even fewer attacks. Nearly all
enemies either stand dumbly behind cover or charge straight into you. After
30 or so hours of this combat becomes just something to get out of the way.
Much of the game is exploration in a your tripped out six-wheeled rover.
This drives like a combination hovercraft and rubber duckie. You can only
repair the vehicle while it's stationary and this process takes upwards of
15 seconds. Coupled with the excruciatingly slow shield recharge rate and
combat (which is almost exclusively against stationary targets) becomes a
long-distance snipe fest. You should also save often as I "died" many times
just from deviating slightly from the path - although there was no obvious
cause.
This is also a missed opportunity. Despite the importance and game-spanning
use of the rover it never changes. You can't find, buy or create any
upgrades, enhancements or better models.
It's not as glaring an omission but for a space opera there are no actual
space battles (well, except for some cut scenes). You're given the clichéd
"best ship in the fleet" but it's used as nothing more than a base of
operations and a taxi service.
There are a grand total of two diversionary mini-games in the experience.
One is encountered only once and involves "rebooting" a computer by stacking
columns in a specific order. The other is encountered (seemingly) every
three-freakin' steps. It's a very simplistic button matching game and is
used throughout the game whenever you need to override a lock, hack a
computer, recover an artifact, etc. It's simple but essentially nonsensical
and simply not enjoyable.
Gamer score hounds will not appreciate this game: many of the achievements
can only be obtained on subsequent play-throughs. At a glance it looks like
five-to-eight play-throughs would be required to gain all of them.
For all the bad however Mass Effect is still greatly enjoyable for the depth
of the story and the reality and depth of the universe we're presented. If
you ignore the side quests you'll find the game more challenging (as you
won't level up as much) but you should also be able to complete the game in
under 15 hours - this might actually be the best way to appreciate the
game's best features.
Jim Davis
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