Reviews

Mass Effect

mass-effect

Brought to us by the guys at Bioware. The Mass Effect series was one of the staples of the last console generation. The first game in the series would start life out as an Xbox 360 exclusive, but a year later the PC would see a port and then in 2012 the Playstation 3 would also get caught up by getting the first Mass Effect game to go along with Mass Effect 2 and 3 which were also released for the Playstation 3.

Story & Presentation

The story of Mass Effect is that of a sci-fi epic of the highest scale. Bioware are known for crafting great stories and they certainly did that with Mass Effect. The story sees you playing the role of Commander Sheppard. What is really cool about Commander Sheppard is that the character really is an extension of your own personality or what you wish you were like. You have a great deal of control over the appearance of Commander Sheppard you even have the choice of male or female. One thing I liked was the way that you could give Commander Sheppard a back story as well as other things like picking a class for him or her to fit into.

The Mass Effect story is set in the future and sees mankind finding all of this cool ancient alien technology on Mars. This technology was able to control space and time. Now mankind can travel to the furthest galaxies and see all the wonders of the universe. Through your travels you get drawn into a conflict with a robotic race called The Geth and this sets forward the events of the game. The story is just amazing and what really makes it special is that the game throws so many choices at you. And your decisions really do mater. I do not want to spoil the story at all for you guys, but at times it can be quite heartbreaking to tell a character no and then see the effect your decision has on them. Mass Effect from a story point of view is amazing and it’s so good and has so many branching paths that you will want to play through it again.

The games presentation is amazing. Sure after a few years now looking back the game has aged, but it still is very easy on the eyes. The environments and the characters are very well detailed, but the game (the Xbox 360 version in particular) does have a few issues loading textures. You can be standing talking to a guy for a few seconds while the game is still loading some of his textures. It does not happen all the time, but it can take you out of the moment when it does.

Gameplay

Mass Effect if you had to put it into a genre would be a 3rd person shooter. At a glance you may think that it is similar to a game like Gears Of War. The game does have a kind of Knights Of The Old Republic feel to it in terms of its game play. The adventure sections of the game where you will be exploring and talking to non playable characters are really fun and you will find yourself interested in what they have to say. The combat parts of the game are cool due in fact to the way that you can customize you Commander Sheppard. Weapons, tech abilities and special powers are just a few of the things you can get and upgrade to make yourself the ultimate solider.

While the game is fun to play there are a few balancing issues. The game seems to have no middle ground when it comes to how tough the enemies are. Sometimes you can just rip right through a horde of enemies with no trouble at all. Then others you will have to try a section of the game over and over again as some enemies do feel a little overpowered and in some cases pretty cheap with how easy they can kill you. Now at the time the game was released this was not as much of an issues, but after playing the later two games in the series it is really notable.

Final Thoughts

Mass Effect was a great start to what would become one of the best trilogies of its generation. The game has a ton of things for you to do and see, and the game play has held up fairly well over the years as well. Still with that being said if you want to get into the Mass Effect games and want to play them all. Then you must play this one first as if you play 2 or 3 first you will notice the flaws that the first Mass Effect game has. Still this is a game that is well worth picking up, and you can do so for practically nothing now.

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