Mass Effect
Developer: Bioware
Publisher: Microsoft Game Studios
Reviewed Platform: XBox 360
Release Date: November 20, 2007
Posted: April 27, 2008
Coming from the creators of Knights of the Old Republic, otherwise known as KOTOR, and its sequel The Sith Lords, one would think that a similarly styled game would assuredly be just as great. Unfortunately, Mass Effect does not quite reach that bar.
Mass Effect opens with a rather customizable character creation. A few background traits give your avatar a head start in a good (paragon) or not-so-good (renegade) direction; and a class choice provides three different play styles: physical damage (soldier), magical damage (adept), 
While there is no ammunition to keep track of, the player does need to keep in mind how quickly their wepaon is overheating.and passive battle support (engineer.) Three additional hybrid styles are also available: physical and magic (vanguard), magic and support (sentinel), and support and physical (sentinel); offering a wide variety of playable options.
The physical threat is master of the four types of weaponry: sniper rifles, shotguns, pistols, and assault rifles. They are the brute force of the team, and by the end of the game can one-shot-kill most enemies. Adepts are trained to use mental abilities known as biotics, such as throwing and lifting to otherwise cause enemies to ragdoll. Oddly enough, these abilities are blocked by physical obstructions. Engineers play a more subtle role in battle, using their abilities to overheat weapons and manipulate mechanical enemies. Outside of combat, they play a vital role in unlocking containers, doors, and saving the player multitudes of omni-gel. However, the “hacking” or “unlocking” button-hitting mini-game feels like an after thought.
On top of the class selection, after completing a moon mission, the player opens up a specialization depending on the main character’s primary class; this grants a boost to certain abilities. The physical customization of your character is extensive, yet lacking. As in Oblivion, you are granted the ability to modify nearly every wrinkle, nip, and tuck on the character’s face, but contrarily the hair selections are dull, few in number, and uninspiring. Not to mention all of the styles are short; fear of moving hair textures perhaps?
The Normandy, top-end ship of the Alliance fleet.
Post character creation, the game opens with the player on a large, high-end military spaceship called the Normandy. You are informed by your commanding officer that there is trouble brewing with a race, the Geth, who have not been seen in quite some time. Also, you have been suggested to be considered for a position in the elite and very secretive Spectre group that exist above the law and answer only to the Council; the government of the known universe. Only three individuals represent the Council: an Asari, a Salarian, and a Turian. The first mission planet you land on acts as a tutorial to guide you through combat and using tech skills. However, there is no explanation for the use of biotics, and you will only see a small blip of information about them if you happen to enjoy clicking random buttons on the controller and accidentally find the biotics trigger. Combat is simple enough, although the aiming is not very forgiving at times. Meleeing is more suicide than useful in the beginning stages of the game, leaving all physical damage dealing to gun weaponry.
With the amount of weapons and armors that the player will collect from looting enemies and crates, one would expect to find more useful items. Unfortunately, upgrading items does not happen very often, and when it does the upgrade is generally very minor. Not to mention there are very few reasons to purchase equipment from a vendor, as they are greatly overpriced generic junk that you already have better of. Not that you 
Planetary traversing surrounded by intense lense flare.will not have the money to purchase vendor items if you so desire; as there is no reason to stockpile looted items, most everything you collect will be sold. That is given you empty your inventory often, as it is quite easy to hit the 150 inventory item limit that the game fails to mention until you near it. There was no display of it anywhere in the user interface, making it, at times, an annoying burden. When the player does reach the item limit, you are forced to breakdown the items that you were attempting to loot, and only those items. And no, you are not allowed to merely put them back. Did I mention all of the game’s equipment looks the same?
Despite the disturbingly similar equipment, graphically the game was quite stunning; that is, when the textures actually loaded. At every turn throughout the game there was something new loading and taking its time doing so. Character textures could not even retain being loaded during conversation, and each time the camera would ping pong between chatting characters everything would have to reload. On top of that, corrupted textures would pop up frequently, especially on the vehicle levels, and there we an extreme blue lends flare that appeared throughout
Dim representation of the annoying blue lens flare while conversing with Ashley on the Normandy. the game cutting through people’s faces. Outdoors, indoors, and most notably evident during conversations with Ashley on the dimly lit ship; the blue lens flare was everywhere.
Conversing with others makes up a decent portion of the game, and it is all voice acted. Everything in the game is spoken to the player, even the primary section of the codex that contains all of the information on the separate races, planets, and histories. On top of that, the facial expressions and movements are smooth and beautiful, even with the varied alien species. The time spent during the development of each of the races is clearly evident in their extensive backgrounds, behaviors, speech patterns, and physical appearances. Each truly are unique, and do not simply stem from the basic human.
(For a graphical reference, xboxgazette.com has created this image.) The Asari are a gender-less species, although they are physically represented as blue skin toned human females, and are the most human-like in appearance. Throughout the game the player’s Asari companion, Liara T’Soni, will mention human boys having strange attractions towards her race, almost playing off of anime-fans’ obsession with young Japanese girls. Elcor, which are not pictured, can be physically described as elephant-like and are very slow in speech and movement. When they speak, each sentence begins with a remark as to what kind of tone should be applied to their words, as they are unable to vocally add it. Think of an Eeyore-like HK-47 driod. Most of the enemies you will come across in the main storyline are of the Geth race; a species made up of groups of AIs created by the Quarians. The Hanar are giant, purple, and made out of squishy-looking material; they can also be behaviorally compared to evangelists. Krogans are large reptiles who are quickly becoming extinct due to a biological weapon developed by the Salarians. Your team’s Krogan, Urdnot Wrex, shows very little emotion towards his race’s problem and is concerned about little more than being a mercenary. Tali’Zorah 
Garrus, your party's own Turian.nar Rayya, the party’s Quarian, joins the group because of her racial obligation to perform a Pilgrimage; a rite of passage that all Quarians must follow through with to learn more about the world outside of their spaceship colonies. Her entire race are required to wear life support suits at all times outside of their colonies because of their susceptibility to just about everything. The Salarians appear rather amphibious, and are renowned for their mental prominence. Turians are by far my most favored race, with some of the most unique racial styling. Their demeanors, voice acting, and speech patterns all scream believable egotism, but that could just be the displacement of feelings towards humans. Garrus Vakarian is the Turian party member, and unlike other Turians he warms up to the main character through a joint disapproval of Saren. Lastly are the Volus, stout mole-like creatures that pride themselves on their resource gathering and massive trade economy.
Another note about the Asari race concerns a hyped-up lesbian sex scene
A quick glance with a light touch.that the player can trigger in the early stages of the game. From the reports on how distasteful this brief moment in the game was, you would expect full frontal nudity and noises that one would imagine coming from a barnyard. Instead, to male players’ disappointments, the split second of eye contact that the main character and Asari share only eludes to the actions that they supposedly perform on one another. Additionally, near the end of the game if you have been following your romantic subplot, your character and romantic interest share an intimate scene with one another. Claims were made that considered this scene a sex simulator, when in actuality it is no worse than a prime time television show. After all, this title did receive a mature rating; should parents have been carelessly purchasing it for their children anyway?
While each race is fairly different from each other, the characters that you run into and join your team are even more so. They are so different that the group feels more forced together, as if the developers were just trying to give the player all of the party members are quickly as possible. It is not that you need them anyway, as their combat AI is tipped to the dumb side of the scales. On occasion, they may be able to kill an enemy, but in general they do not even attempt to protect
The galaxy map on the Normandy allows the player to decide where to take the crew next.themselves or take cover. You do not have to take the any certain team member out into the field if you do not want to. Unlike KOTOR, you only have to speak with everyone on the ship after a mission to progress their conversation dialogue, back story, or romance side quest. Not only do you not have to take your potential lover on any missions, but both of your initial romantic interest options throw themselves on you after the first mission, even if you have yet to give them a second thought. I suppose being highly desirable is not entirely a bad thing, it just makes that particular side story feel rushed.
The main storyline, however, does not fall into the same category as the side quests, and is much more fulfilling to play. As the player hops from planet to planet, the plot progresses steadily in a well-controlled and enjoyable manner. Unfortunately, going renegade or paragon has virtually no affect on the main storyline; be it through the places you go or the quests you do. The quests presented instead have slightly different procedures resulting in the same outcome. Paragon and renegade do not differ much either way, as paragon is merely more sensitive and renegade are more rough-n-tough. The lack of affect that reputation has on the game play causes an overall loss of replay value, and a general feeling of disappointment.
Side questing all in all was more repetitive than anything else. At first, the non-player characters send your party out to a range of planets to do various tasks; but as you progress it becomes obvious that every quest, world, and enemy are exactly the same. Each planet is 
The planet exploration vehicle, complete with instant death if the vehicle gets flipped over.covered in irritating-to-scale mountains painted with a small selection of textures, contain a side quest, a random fallen or broken container of loot, and two to four of the collectable items. Additionally, the majority of planetary exploration is done in the moon traversing vehicle, the M35 Mako. The first few uses of the car are fun, as it is a learning experience. After that, its charm wears off and its true, terrible colors are exposed. We have already established the monotony of these levels, but on top of that the car turret aiming is even worse than character combat aiming; leaving absolutely no room for error. Even if your target is directly in your crosshairs, more often than not you will miss him entirely. No forgiveness whatsoever. Eventually the player will come to the realization that when in a vehicle, unless absolutely necessary, it is much easier to run over and pass by hostiles than stop every five feet to mow them down with an ineffective machine gun.
In comparison to KOTOR, Mass Effect can not hold a candle. While they are separate games, it is important for developers to move forward and create better and new games rather than fall backwards into a mediocre slump. On its own, the spaceship captain, secret Council agent premise is enjoyable to an extent. Outside of the main storyline everything grows repetitive. Unfortunately, besides the class differences, there is little possibility for replay as the story remains unchanging. And with the story play through lasting little more than 8 hours, I would hope to find more compelling game play in a title from Bioware.
TLDR: While it is definitely no KOTOR, it was not a terribly poor space action role-playing game all around.
