"Mass Effect" Review

Genre:  RPG

Publisher:  Bioware

Summary:  As the first human Spectre, the elite agents of the galactic council, Commander Shepherd must hunt down rogue Spectre Saren and his mechanical geth and foil his plans to summon an ancient threat.

Gameplay:  Combat is great fun and quick-moving.  I'm a bit miffed I have to hold down the pause button, and waiting for weapon and ability cooldowns can be annoying, but the mix of technical, biotic, and combat abilities makes for fun and interesting battles.

There are a wide variety of guns, armor, grenades, and ammo as well.  The inventory management is somewhat frustrating, especially considering you can only access other party members' inventory from your ship, and you can only level them up when they're with you.  I enjoy seeing everyone in different armors, and to some extent even switching out various ammo and mods, but having multiple levels of different weapons, ammo, armor, grenades, omnitools, biotic amps, armor mods, and weapon mods is a bit much.

Extra equipment can be sold or made into omnigel for healing or lockpicking in lieu of a simple Frogger-esque game I don't mind.  I don't always succeed at higher levels, but it's never crucial to do so, thanks to the omnigel option.

There are driving sections of the game in your tank, the Mako.  I prefer the free-range planet sections over the track sections that make up the main missions.  It's more interesting to try to get the Mako up a mountainside to mark a metal deposit than to shoot the same turret in the same location the ten millionth time.

Style:  Although somewhat stiff now, Mass Effect's graphics are colorful and detailed enough for me, despite an issue that causes textures to sometimes take a second to pop into place.  Cutscenes are dramatic, with spaceship scenes in particular being stand-out.

I love seeing the alien skies of the worlds I explore, despite finding the exact same structures on those worlds (which at least has a good justification in that everyone is using pre-fab buildings.)  Rain doesn't get depicted well, but there is blowing snow and dust.

I do wish some of the alien ruins visited looked more alien.  For the most they look far too much like your usual post-apocalyptic depiction of Earth thirty years after the bomb.

Story:  Mass Effect has an entire setting to introduce, and it does a pretty good job of it.  The usual space opera tropes are present (plus general favorites like zombies), but with enough of a twist to seem like its own thing.

The overall plot organization is, as not unusual for Bioware, several main plot hubs that can be visited in any order, with sidequests scattered about elsewhere.  The game does a good job making it so you can truly visit them in any order.

The characters are good, although some have more awkward dialogue than others, and some will be developed more in later games.  And certain sequences are always epic no matter how many times I play them, such as a heart-wrenching decision, or the endgame, which is the best I've yet seen.

Conclusion:  I feel Mass Effect has somewhat been forgotten in all the discussion of the later games, but it's still a good game with some true strengths.  Despite the irritations of the inventory and other minor awkwardness, its overall interesting exploration, fun combat, and strong story make it a great game.