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 I love sci-fi. I love shooters. I love role playing games. I love Bioware. And for the first hour, I enjoyed Mass Effect and was ready to sing its praises from the highest of rooftops.
I just want to get that out of the way early. I'm sure that some of you have already glanced at that review score before reading the full review, and you're preemptively arming yourselves with pitchforks and torches in preparation for a sacrificial burning. So please make no mistake: Mass Effect is a game that, normally, would have been more than up my alley. And after reading the early reviews for the game, all of which were exuberant about Mass Effect and its place in a year of Triple A titles, I was reinforced that Mass Effect would be more than worth my time and money. I wanted to love this game. I should have.
But after that first hour, the problems, the bugs, and the puzzling design issues started to creep into my gaming experience more and more. And now that I've completed a single playthrough of the game, it's clear that some of the game reviews are glossing over the problems with Mass Effect, and that they're not being entirely fair with it. Don't get me wrong, Mass Effect is a good enough game. At the same time, it's not a great one. This dramatic space opera is hindered by technical issues, poor pacing, problems with the general game interface, and a poorly implemented party A.I.
The game's not a total loss. It's not a train wreck. This is a title that gamers will want to play. But it's far from the pinnacle of Bioware titles that others claim it to be, and it's time for someone to be honest about that.
Strap yourselves in, the Mass Effect jump is ahead.
Mass Effect places you in the role of Commander Shepard, a member of the Alliance military in the late 22nd century. As Mass Effect begins, As Commander Shepard and crew are en route to Eden Prime to collect an unearthed Proclaimer artifact, they receive a distress call. Eden Prime is under attack by the Geth, a race of A.I. constructs that have been unseen for years.
As if it weren't bad enough that you've got to go down and save a colony of scientists, you also learn that Nihlus, a turian Spectre, will be accompanying you. Spectres are an Elite group of enforcers, answering to no one but the Citadel Council. They are above all laws, there is no other authority higher than them. They can go anywhere they want, and do whatever it takes to complete a mission, no matter the cost. And it seems that Nilhus has taken a special interest in you.
Commander Shepard is a customizable character. Although the game will initially try to get you to play as a male, you're able to play as a female Shepard as well. Shepard has both male and female versions of all spoken dialog, meaning that either gender is going to play the same. The game offers you a default template for the faces of both the male and female Shepard, you're able to customize your facial appearance in an editor similar to the one found in Oblivion.
Shepard is joined on his/her quest by six additional characters, most of which you'll meet early in the first few hours of the game. You're able to pick any two of these to accompany you on any missions, planets, or derelict ships you come across. The party structure is similar to the one you might recall from past Bioware games. You're able to interact with these characters in order to learn more about their pasts, uncover their secrets, and in the right case, get busy with them. But with a few minor exceptions, Mass Effect only lets you interact with these additional characters when you're aboard the Normandy. If you're out on a mission, you can't talk to those other characters. Because you have to actively seek out those characters on the Normandy, and go through a few loadtimes just to get near them, it makes it more difficult to connect with the other Space Musketeers. And it's unfortunate, because a few of them have interesting stories. But after the first few hours, when you've realized that just navigating to them isn't as easy as walking down a hallway, it's an actual process, you might reach a point where you just give up talking to them on a regular basis.
The 'main' storyline in the game is about 6 - 10 hours worth of content, depending on how fast you play and the difficulty level you play the game on. The main game is surprisingly short, consisting of about five planets and the Citadel itself. Bioware does their best to flesh this out by giving you a whopping 20 hours of side quests and supplemental content, but very little of that ties into the main storyline (hence the 'supplemental' notation). Completionists and power levelers will find themselves right at home here, though, with plenty of extra planets lying around for you to explore. Unfortunately, those extra planets don't look nearly as nice as the 'main' ones.
The storyline is somewhat compelling. On the surface, it's explained as a masterful plot by a corrupt Spectre named Saren, intent on working with the Geth to destroy all organic life in the galaxy. The actual execution leaves something to be desired, though. Your interaction with Saren is limited to a few bits towards the end of the game, and even then, you never truly understand what's going on with him. Readers of the Mass Effect: Revelation novel will have the backstory explained to them, but the lack of a deeper explanation within the game itself is a grave oversight. The problem isn't that Saren is a weak villain. As far as bad guys go, Saren's backstory should be enough to earn him the title of turian badass. But you see so little of him in the game that it leaves you wanting more. It's not that the game teases your appetite for bad guys. It's that it doesn't quite give you enough to appetize you.
Interacting with characters is done through a new game feature called the Dialogue Wheel. It's designed so that instead of selecting the exact, word-for-word dialog from a list of choices, you choose from a general list of concepts & ideas. On the surface, this is meant to counteract the mundanity seen in past RPG titles from the company, where your interaction with NPC's and other members of your party was performed through various selections that didn't pop up until the other person had stopped talking. By allowing the Dialogue Wheel to appear mid-phrase, it lets you pick out your general direction of conversation in advance. The intention is that by doing this, it keeps the conversations flowing and avoids those pauses that come up while you're looking through all the choices to find just the right response.
But the Dialogue Wheel isn't without its problems. Conversational paths are consistently laid out on the wheel so that the good/evil dialogue choices are always in the same place, letting you quickly skip through the choices without even looking at them. And that's exactly what Bioware was trying to do away with, the ability to skip over these lengthy conversations. And those choices on the dialogue wheel give you a clear idea of what you're about to say anyway. Instead of being revolutionary in the way it allows you to interact with other characters in the game, instead of surprising you with what Commander Shepard says, the Dialogue Wheel almost feels like it's a middle man, getting in the way of an otherwise smooth transaction and serving no real purpose other than to get its moment.
The combat system is best described as a shooter with a few RPG elements mixed into it. Depending on your character class, you'll be able to tote some combination of pistols, sniper rifles, shotguns, and assault rifles to use against the enemy. Just equip your weapon, aim down the sights, and fire. Weapons are upgradable with items you'll purchase, or find off the enemy corpses you just blew away. If firearms aren't your bag, baby, select classes will also be able to access Biotic abilities. Similar to the Force abilities found in Knights of the Old Republic, Biotic abilties are like magical powers that help improve your character, or hurt the enemies. You'll be able to lift enemies in the air, hurl objects at them, or even improve your shield strength.
Each member of your party can level up, for a maximum of up to 60 levels. Fortunately, Mass Effect maintains the Bioware standard of characters earning XP even if they're not in the party. This helps maintain a power balance within your party, ensuring that no matter which characters you choose, they're never behind one another. At each level threshold, Shepard and the party members can apply skill points to improve their skills in various talents and traits. The level of customization is better than what you saw in KotOR, and lets you really dig deep and try and find the 'best' configuration for your character, to make sure they're powered up correctly (especially in the earlier levels).
While the general shooter mechanic in the game feels a bit on the light side, with no real 'meat' to it, the biggest problem in combat is the general lack of brainpower in those computer controlled compatriots of yours. The Party A.I is positively ignorant at times, to the point where having these extra characters with you almost feels like a liability. It's frustrating that you can order a party member to attack a target, only to be stymied when that party member refuses to attack because they're unable to navigate around a box. A BOX. Not some sort of stasis field, or mortal trap. No, it's the impending dangers of a 3 foot tall box, sitting in their way unmoving, that can bring your assisting party members to a screeching halt. In many cases, you'd probably expect the A.I. to figure out that it has to move around the box. In Mass Effect, you aren't troubled by such smooth thinking. Instead, the party member will often reach that box, stop in their tracks, and then do nothing. Oh, the joys of living in 2183!
The Mako, an ATV that you pilot on the uncharted planets in the galaxy, is a good idea with poor execution. It's meant to navigate over any type of terrain (sans lava) and work as a mobile weapons platform as well. The problem is, when you first get dropped on a planet, you get no explanation or tutorial on how to control the vehicle. It's absolutely confusing at first, and because the Mako is an easily damaged vehicle, that gap in knowledge can hurt you.
The overall game difficulty seems to waver, as well. The early levels of the game leading into the Citadel are comfortable, and feel balanced enough to welcome any player. The experience on Eden Prime, the first level in the game, is smooth and enjoyable. After that, it's just a crapshoot. Part of this is because the game gives you multiple possible destinations once you're able to travel, with no idea on which is the best direction to take. Part of this is because certain key portions of the main storyline aren't meant to be tackled right away, yet are immediately accessible to you. After finding myself in a particularly bloody battle with the forces of Lady Benezia that left me replaying it over and over again just to figure out how to beat it, I reluctantly checked in the Bioware forums to find that I'd entered the area about 10 - 15 levels too early. And the game had given me zero indication of this.
The clunky inventory system from past Bioware games is back in full force here, and it's still as unfriendly as you remember. Item organization isn't particularly comfortable, although you do learn to see past the clutter after a few hours of gameplay. On the plus side, you don't have to loot individual enemy corpses anymore, meaning you spend less time running around just to see which of the bodies on the ground is searchable. But as much as that helps maintain the pacing of the game, it comes to a screeching halt when you go into the Equipment screen and see a MASSIVE list of the items that got looted. This is further hindered by the fact that you can only hold 150 total items, and there are so few points to sell equipment in the game.
Visually speaking, the game is a mixed bag. On the one hand, the default models for the male and female Commander Shepard are extraordinarily detailed, more than any other character model in the game. Although you're able to design your own Shepard, none of them will come close to comparing to the default selections. Some of the planets are richly detailed and colored in a vivid and striking manner.
But then there's that nasty, god awful texture pop-up problem. Every time you talk to an NPC, every time an in-game cutscene starts, every time you enter a room, it takes a few seconds for all of the textures to appear. It's absolutely absurd that, in a second generation game on the Xbox 360, we have an issue like this. Some reviewers say you can easily look past it, others say it's not that bad. But after the second hour in the game, you will definitely notice it. And it's definitely a problem. As we mentioned in Episode 55 of the UncleGamer podcast, we have our suspicions that this is entirely because of issues within the Unreal Engine 3, but regardless, they're present in the final product. And they shouldn't be.
But worse than this is the amount of load times in the game. By now, you've probably heard of the horrors of the elevators in Mass Effect, and I'm here to tell you that those stories of extensive loadtimes in elevators is entirely founded in truth. Most load times take from 20 - 45 seconds, but in areas like the Citadel, when you need to take an elevator to get anywhere, or on some planets where there's an elevator at each end of a building, it's absolutely annoying. Those seconds add up, and they'll pull you out of the flow of the story far too often. If the game would just offer some kind of install option, to cache important files to the hard drive, this wouldn't be a problem. Ironic, isn't it? In this situation, a release on the PlayStation 3 might have done Mass Effect some good.
The music in the game is meant to be reminiscent of science fiction films from the 70's and 80's, with a heavy focus on synthesizer elements. As you're walking through the Citadel in the early part of the game, the music will sound so much like the Vangelis soundtrack to Blade Runner that you'll wonder if a Replicant is just around the corner. The music isn't particularly compelling, but at the same time, it's enough of a sly wink that fans of the genre will get a chuckle out of it.
Readers of Mass Effect: Revelation will find plenty of links to the prequel novel, with Captain Anderson making a wonderful peripheral character that plays a key role in the story towards the end of the game. It shouldn't be considered required reading for anyone, but it also places a few more pieces of the story for people curious about where the sequels will be going.
In the end, seeing Mass Effect with the problems it has makes this gamer shed a tear in sadness. This could have so rightly been my pick for Game of the Year. It has the chops for it. The collection of ideas, the mixtures of gaming genres, the development company that holds a string to my heart... Mass Effect had a lot going for it.
But this game feels rushed. It feels like Bioware needed four more months to get this working correctly, and what we ended up with was a beta release. With any luck, most of these problems will get fixed in forthcoming patches, or in the inevitable PC release. If they do, I want to be there for this game. I want to play it again, with the problems fixed. Mass Effect isn't a bad idea, nor is it a total loss. Mass Effect is a game that would normally enthrall gamers, but instead ends up having its siren song distorted by the flaws within.
Final Score: 8/10
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