Mass Effect

Sam Hart

2007-11-27 15:50:07

Having just finished Mass Effect, BioWare's epic new action-RPG for the Xbox 360, I felt I really had to get on my site and rave about it. This is one spectacular RPG, easily one of the greatest RPGs ever and definitely tied with Oblivion for best RPG on the 360. If you own a 360 and have even a passing interest in RPGs, you should get this title without delay.

For those who don't know, Mass Effect is a galaxy-sprawling action-RPG from the creators of the legendary Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic series for the original Xbox. In it you will find a rather sizable universe, replete with entire worlds to explore and aliens to meet. You'll have a mountain of content in the form of side-quests, exploration and resource location (such as finding mineable metals on planets or identifying gas giants with harvestable fuels). And you'll see gorgeous graphics rendering intricate and beautiful alien worlds.

The bottom line is this game is great. However, it's not perfect, and does have some problems. Read on for all the great things this game has to offer as well as some of the nitpicky problems it does have.

What the game has going for it

Mass Effect has some incredible things going for it. They easily overshadow the few flaws it has and make it worthwhile to play.

• RPG meets the squad-based shooter

  
  The gameplay takes a unique direction compared to other RPGs in that it's essentially a squad-based shooter. You pick your teammates from a stable of characters (once those characters have joined your crew) before each mission (or, each time you exit your ship). You then guide and direct your teammates using some rudimentary squad-based commands (such as "Hold", "Go to target", or "Group up"). The squad-based action isn't as satisfying as a pure squad-based shooter should be, but for an RPG it's a very nice change.
  
  The battles can be paused while you issue orders which allows for some decent micromanagement if you're so inclined, or you can just sit back and let your teammates do their own thing. Either work and your teammates aren't entirely stupid when it comes to using their powers and abilities on their own.
  

• Well written branching Sci-Fi story

  
  At its core, Mass Effect is an epic space opera. The story is sprawling and filled with many side-stories and details that fill in the backstory. BioWare has really outdone themselves with Mass Effect's story as it is easily one of the best in all of videogaming.
  
  But the more amazing aspect of this game's plotline is how much it can (and does) branch depending upon your actions. First, you get to pick your character's backstory, which alters (in some places, significantly) how others in the game deal with you. Then you get to pick your character's responses to things. Be an asshole and you'll earn a reputation for it in the game as well as change the course of events dramatically. Be a paragon of justice and you'll earn the respect of those around you as well as significantly alter major portions of the storyline.
  
  The divergences in the story based upon your actions practically demand multiple playthroughs just to see how things would have turned out had you done something else. Could you have solved the hostage situation without the hostages dying? Does this particular main character have to die? Whereas in other games you wouldn't have the freedom to radically change story elements such as these, here you can.
  

• Gorgeous graphics

  
  The level of detail in this game is almost astounding sometimes. You'll wander around the ruins of some ancient civilization as shafts of golden sunlight fall delicately on the flora and fauna below. You'll tool around violent lava-filled planetscapes as the blackened sky showers meteors down all around you. You'll run through the derelict corridors of a spaceship drifting unbound from the pull of a planet as shots blast over your head from pursuing enemies. But all of these details would be nothing without the strength of the underlying graphics engine.
  
  Aside from a few problems (which I will detail below), the graphics engine is gorgeous. It renders realistically everything from the blotchy skin of a crewmate on your ship to the wave-crashing shoreline of an alien world later in the game. It defaults with a grainy overlay that is probably supposed to lend it a more cinematic quality (and also probably to cover the few graphical flaws), but this overlay can be disabled for those of you (like me) who prefer to see as much detail as possible. Remove the overlay, view this game in HD and you'll be impressed.
  

• Rich and detailed world to explore

  
  This could easily be the biggest draw to this game. Mass Effect's world is big... really big. A couple of dozen solar systems filled with planets, asteroids and other anomalies to explore.
  
  Many planets can be landed on using your Mako (a land-based, six-wheeled ATV with mounted machine gun and cannon turret). These planets are large and moderately diverse; some contain life, others cannot support it. Each has places to explore and things to do, and they often involve side-quests.
  
  You begin to get a feel for the scope of the game when you fly into a system from someplace else in the galaxy, land on a planet, spend twenty minutes or so exploring the surface of the planet only to discover the entrance to a sprawling underground complex. Being able to effectively "zoom in" on more and more detail is terribly impressive in a game, and so much to explore and do can make it nearly impossible to pull away from planet exploration to actually finish the game.
  
  Trust me, this is a very good thing.
  

Flaws the game has

As good as this game is, there are a few problems. However, as you read this, bear in mind they become small irritations when Mass Effect is taken as a whole. Really, for most of these, I'm just nit picking.

• Half-assed minigames

  
  Maybe I'm spoiled. So many great games have come out lately that include great minigames (see Bioshock) that when you play the minigames in Mass Effect they really suck. Perhaps if Mass Effect wasn't so good in its other gameplay elements these crappy minigames wouldn't be so bad. But they are, and they mar an otherwise incredible gameplay experience.
  
  Every locked object, computer terminal, or item to be scanned in this game is guarded by a randomized "Simon Says"-esque sequence of timed button mashing. Each has an associated level of difficulty ("Easy", "Average", "Hard", etc.), but this difficulty doesn't seem to mean anything. You'll find "Easy" locks that take a dozen button presses to complete as well as "Hard" locks that take only three. Furthermore, most of these locked items cannot be attempted again if you fail, meaning that some things simply can't be obtained if you make a mistake unless you can reload a previous saved game, or start over.
  
  Other than this "Simon Says" minigame that dominates the game, there is one other minigame to be found. Sometime in the first third of the game you'll likely encounter a "Towers of Hanoi" puzzle that's used to reactivate a computer. This might seem like a nice thing to break the monotony of the "Simon Says" ones, but it's only used once.. and even then it's pretty crappy.
  
  At the end of the day, the best way to describe the minigames in Mass Effect is "uninspired". They aren't especially terrible, they just aren't good either. They are average in every way. And in a game that's as impressive as Mass Effect is, that's not a good thing.
  

• Shooting elements are "broken" until you level up

  
  I'm sure this was the result of many meetings at BioWare. How do you reflect the natural skill progression you find in normal RPGs when your RPG is also a shooter? Well, the answer BioWare chose is an irritating one.
  
  At low levels, your character can't shoot dick. In fact, the game will actively fight you as you try to fire. Case in point, the sniper rifle. My first time through the game I was a job class known as "Infiltrator". This class specializes in stealth and has training with the sniper rifle. Well, at low levels, when you zoom in using the sniper rifle, the game will jack your view all around the place in erratic and random ways. It's almost as if your character has Parkinson's and hasn't taken their medication. This means that actually using your sniper rifle at these low levels is frustrating at best, and infuriating at worst.
  
  This also kind of ruins the story since you can pick certain backstories for your character where he or she was some big hero of a past battle. It makes it hard to believe that someone who can't hold a damned gun still could have possibly done any of the crap everyone says you did.
  
  Now, as you level up, you become more and more adept at sniping, which means the game fights you less and less. By the time your sniper level is capped, the game controls like a "normal" shooter would with regards to sniper rifles. But that's not the point, you shouldn't have to slog through level grinding just to be able to not shoot like a retarded monkey in the middle of a stroke. A far better solution to the whole "leveling up your shooting" problem would be to not fight the player, instead give them more and more enhancements as they progress. Maybe make the crosshairs more precise, or give additional zoom levels. In my opinion, that would have been the better solution to this problem than what BioWare picked.
  
  But at least this retarded shooting doesn't last long. As long as you do as many side-quests as you can on the first major non-combat area in the game you should be able to level up enough that the sniping is manageable.
  

• Graphical glitches

  
  The graphic engine in Mass Effect is impressive, however it has a rather irritating problem. Often the game will render the objects on-screen while it is still loading (or streaming) the textures for said objects. This means that many times in the game you'll be staring at blurry objects that suddenly snap clear as their textures load.
  
  Most of the time, this isn't that bad (and I think it's why the static overlay is there, as it masks it a bit), but during fast-paced cutscenes (especially the ones at the end of the game) it's really noticeable. If the cutscenes are fast enough, they can usually finish before the textures for them have actually loaded.
  

• Poorly timed loads

  
  In games like Mass Effect, modern game designers usually like to hide load times by placing elements in the game that cause the player to slowdown or stop while the next area is loaded. Often they use things like slow moving elevators, doors, airlocks and things like these to cause the player to have to stop before proceeding. This masks the load from the player's perspective and makes them feel like the game is "seamless".
  
  Well, Mass Effect seems to do the same thing, but somehow doesn't. You'll find countless elevators and slow opening doors in this game that would be perfect for streaming in data for the next area, however you'll often be stopped as you leave said elevators and doorways while the game loads its next data. If I have to stop and wait for the load anyway, why have the fucking door or elevator impede me in the first place?
  

• Crappy Xbox Live Achievements

  
  Getting all the achievements in Mass Effect will be hard. Really hard. Unfairly hard.
  
  In order to get them all, you will have to play through the game a minimum of seven times. And even then, you'll only get them all if you're really diligent and work at getting multiple achievements each run.
  
  Considering this is a Role Playing Game, having to play through at least seven times to get everything is intimidating. Granted, the game is fun with a branching story you wont be able to completely mine your first time through. Also, the game itself can be completed in 10-15 hours if you skip all of the side-quests. But this doesn't change the fact that in order to get all of the achievements you're looking at easily a hundred hours or more of playing this game.
  

• Poorly placed auto-save triggers

  
  My final nitpick for Mass Effect is the placement of most (but not all) auto-save triggers. Often you'll find an automatic save that takes place just before a cutscene that starts some battle. This means that, if you die you'll have to repeat the same lengthy cutscene again.
  
  Elsewhere, you can go for upwards of forty-plus minutes without any auto-saves. If you forget to save on your own, and die, you'll have to start the area over again.
  
  Long story short, the auto-saves seem schizophrenic. Sometimes they are fine and save at reasonable intervals. Other times they will save at the worst possible moment.
  

Conclusion

At the end of it all, the things Mass Effect has going for it far overshadow the problems it has. Each of the issues I've mentioned here don't detract from the overall awesomeness that is this game, and I recommend it highly.

Just know that you will be annoyed by the minigames, and that the shooter elements will suck for a while. Oh, and that the final cutscene will be weakened by the fact that the textures can't keep up with the action. Other than these, the game is pure gold, and worth a spot in any 360 owner's game collection.