July 9, 2008
Worth $49.99 (What I paid)? : YES!!
Addiction Rating: 9 (out of 10)
What's Good
- Nearly perfect combat gameplay (for this type of game)
- Biotic and Tech abilities (equivalent to “force” abilities in Knights of the Old Republic) are extremely fun to use -- read below for further details
- Graphics and physics are exceptional
- Enemies are complex and will keep you interested and motivated throughout the game
- Storyline and NPC involvement are very good (although maybe a little too sci-fi-ish for my taste...which is saying a lot)
- Very long game...but you'll be happy it is.
What's Bad
- Some cut scenes are a little lengthy and can't be skipped which can be a problem if you keep getting killed right after the cut scene and have to watch it over and over again. Thankfully, I only ran into this problem at one or two spots in the game.
- I wish you could sprint at any time during the game, not just during combat
Tips
The first thing you’ll want to do is go to the options menu and disable your squad’s autocasting ability. There’s nothing worse than entering a battle and finding that your comrades have already used their best abilities on the weakest enemies. Also disable the “Auto-level-up” for your squad…you’ll want to pick which powers and abilities your crew members have so that they can complement each other well. My advice is to play this game as a “soldier” class, meaning your specialties will be in weapons instead of casting abilities. Your squad will have all the special casting abilities you'll need anyways, and that will leave you to finish off enemies the fun way. This way, you'll feel like you're playing a shooter, but you'll also have all the elements of a great RPG.
Details
Mass Effect is the first RPG I’ve ever played that does not compromised with its leveling-up system. When you start the game, the skill level of your character is truly disappointing, almost to the point that it's frustrating. Your guns are very inaccurate (eg. approximately 1 in 5 machine gun rounds will hit their target), your biotic and tech abilities are weak at best, and a few rounds from an enemy pistol will be enough to kill you (quick-save often by the way). However, as you gain experience and find new weapons and upgrades, you'll soon feel like you can take on anything the game throws at you. Don't get too comfortable though, as you'll soon find out that different enemies are both resistant and susceptible to a wide range of ammunition, weapons, and powers.
For most of the game, you're accompanied by two squad mates who will attack enemies automatically but will only use their special abilities on your command (if you disable auto-casting as I recommend). By far the best part of this game is using your squad's abilities cooperatively to demolish what would be extremely difficult groups of enemies. I'll give you an example: You walk into a room of five fairly difficult “bad guys”, press spacebar to pause the game, assign one of your teammates to suck the “bad guys” together in a vortex, assign the other teammate to use his/her biotic skill to take out their shields, and then release spacebar. After the smoke clears you now have a semi-disoriented group of “bad guys” in one area, without shields, and you have a loaded gun with armor-piercing bullets ready to go.......Yeah, it's a nice feeling. Of course I'm being vague on purpose to avoid revealing to much of this awesome gameplay before you get a chance to play it yourself.
I gave Mass Effect an addiction rating of 9/10, and let me just say that I spent a 10 hour, non-stop gaming session playing this game. Thank-you Mass Effect for reminding how great it is to watch the sun set and rise while playing a video game. The only way to score higher than this is to not stop playing until the game is finished, and if Mass Effect wasn't such a long game that probably would have happened.
