Mass Effect for Xbox 360

After the incredible success of Jade Empire and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, developer Bioware decided to shift directions and instead of creating another Star Wars game (which they would eventually do), they opted to produce a sci-fi trilogy all of their own design.

In doing so they’ve incorporated elements of those two games--intense and frenetic combat from KotOR and dialogue-driven story from Jade--to make something that’s truly the next evolution of gaming. Mass Effect is the result of this effort and also one of the best games for the Microsoft Xbox 360.

You star as Commander Shepard, a decorated soldier who must stop an ancient alien race from exterminating the Council and taking over the universe. After a rogue mission occurs, Shepard finds out who he can trust and distrust and sets off to either help the situation or join it--you decide.

To be fair the storyline is very vast and full of ins and outs that are determined slowly as you play through the game and the way you play strongly effects how the game plays out because of the decision-based impact of the story.

You can either aid people on certain missions or refuse to help and let them suffer. Through the Paragon (Good)/Renegade (Bad) system you are rewarded for how you treat others and this creates a specific course your game will play. Unlike in other games that use this similar premise you have a wheel of responses that give you not only more options, but can change the total tone of your approach. That said, there's no such thing as a purely good or bad decision as this game sympathizes with both sides of the spectrum. However, that still doesn't mean some humorous aspects of being a renegade aren't available for you...

The audio of Mass Effect is one of the best reasons to play this game. Sure, some of the in-game music is a bit repetitive save for some very exciting moments, but the voice-acting sets the bar for what games are capable of doing. While you may select a certain response your character will say something different along the same lines--forcing you to stay engaged so that you actually care about what is being said. Couple that with how many different voices there are in the game and a dazzling array of characters and you have one part to the total sum of awesomeness that this game is.

The gameplay is very similar to KotOR and many other Bioware games, but with guns instead of swords and lightsabers. I think of it more like Gears of War if it were an RPG mixed with Star Trek. You have a variety of weapons at your disposal that you can upgrade and become better at as you level up and each enemy that you kill grants you and your party experience towards higher levels thus making you stronger.

There are two people you can have in your party at a time with others that you meet as you continue your game. Instead of the click and wait sort of Bioware tinkering seen in their prior RPGs, you use a cover system a ton firing on assailants and a ton of other clever techniques that makes combat exceptionally fun and exciting at all corners. To tell you the honest truth I never once got tired of the enemy encounters because of how challenging they were sometimes (depending on the difficulty level you set at the beginning, of course) and cool I felt while I was gunning down bad guys.

Some parts of the game weren’t very exciting to me such as the infamous Mako missions where you are forced to drive a vehicle a la the Warthog stuff from Halo as the controls are very clunky and glitch out as you fight swarms of bad guys with a terrible aiming device as a gun and shoddier driving controls. These missions don’t happen very often except if you decide to undertake the variety of side-missions.

The actual game is sort of short, which could probably be completed in ten hours or so, but I chose to play through all of the side-missions so the entire experience took about 25-27 hours total. These side-missions are given to you from talking to others and exploring the universe via the Mass Effect device, which makes exploration possible as it shoots you from place to place.

I still wish the game was longer not just because I was having fun, but I felt like it ended much too soon than it should’ve--story-wise--because there wasn’t much of a build-up and while the story was still very well written it wasn’t structured as well as it could’ve been.

You are in full control of your ship, the Normandy, for the larger part of the game, which you don’t manually control, but navigate via a galaxy map on board. The controls themselves are ridiculously responsive and by the end of the experience, you’ll feel like a space cowboy yourself. Better yet, the menu screens are easy to navigate through especially during combat where the game pauses while you tell your squad what you want them to do and which weapons to use.

Mass Effect was released in 2007 and still boasts graphics that bring the Xbox 360 to its highest peak. The character models all look great and the overall stylistic tone of the movie is quite original and pays homage to many of the greatest sci-fi movies and television shows out there.

The only real problems I had with the graphics was that sometimes grains and textures would bug out on me and my character would be a big blob of nothing for a little bit during cut scenes before correcting itself. Couple that with some staggering slowdown during enemy encounters and glitches that make you stuck in objects, which forces you to restart from your last save and you have a few problems on your hands. Granted, these events didn’t happen often, but when they did they weren’t just noticeable, but frustrating.

At the start of the game you are given the option to choose your own character and how you want them to look or keep the default Shepard character. The cool thing is that if you choose a female character there’s a completely different voice actress and more events in the game change--including a sultry little love subplot you can opt to take.

I really dug Mass Effect. It’s one of those games that’s like a summer blockbuster that’s full of a ton of fun, awesome moments of narrative, and a very satisfying story that sucks you into the world Bioware has created.

© Jason Haskins, 2012