Vitals – Players: 1 // System(s): Xbox 360, PC // Release Date: November 20, 2007 (Xbox 360) May 27, 2008 (PC) // ESRB: Mature // Genre: RPG // Developer: BioWare // Publisher: Electronic Arts
Hands down Mass Effect is one of the best RPGs you will ever play. Scratch that, Mass Effect is one of the greatest games you will ever play. Don’t be fooled just because Mass Effect is labeled as an RPG, this game houses some fantastic shooter elements that any action fanatic will love. The gameplay has a 80s vibe to it – the top notch soundtrack and visual film grain really give it that 80s feeling. When interacting with characters it feels like a movie, the angle of the shots and the voice acting are nothing short of incredible.
The real beauty of Mass Effect is how believable the universe is. BioWare has gone to extreme lengths to make sure that you believe in the game. There is so much information to read but is completely optional and is not needed to understand what is going on – though reading the extra information will satisfy the more hardcore RPGers. Characters feel alive, you care about your actions and how they may affect the world around you and believe me your actions do sculpt the world – I had different characters die from my first time through the game compared to my second time through. Mass Effect will grab you by your shoulders and take you for a 20 or so hour roller coaster ride; you will not want it to stop.
For those of you on a tight budget you are in luck, Mass Effect only runs around $30 brand new and even less if you can find a used copy – used copies are surprisingly hard to find. Once you have played through the game multiple times you can carry over your saved Shepard character over to Mass Effect 2. The choices you made in the first game will carry over to the second so playing through Mass Effect is a bright idea if you ever plan on playing Mass Effect 2. Do yourself a favor and play Mass Effect, you will thank me later.
Score:
10/10
Having played Mass Effect long enough to make 5 fully leveled characters, I agree with the score. Games like this deserve perfect scores.
I wanna be all ME1 fanboish. I really do. I absolutely adore the game with all my heart and soul. But it definitely has some glaring problems.
Highly repetitive gameplay (especially w/ Spectre weapons), an item management system that could only be described as evil, one or two real BS enemies (I'm looking at you, Rocket Geth), idiotic ally AI (How can you be stuck? You're in the middle of the floor surrounded by air! Being shot, I might add!) and a questionable difficulty curve (Across multiple playthroughs the krogan at the end of Therum is consistantly the hardest fight in the game, bar none).
Of course everything you said is quite true. There are a couple more positives I'd like to add. 1: The final hour of the game is worth the price of admission by itself. 2: Bring Down the Sky DLC. Despite the fact that it makes the repetition in the main game that much more glaring.
Robert, Bioware raised the bar with Mass Effect. Nitpicking flaws in a review for a game of this magnitude is not fair. Bioware was innovating with state-of-the-art technology and building a new game from the ground, up.
However, some of your comments aren't completely accurate. It sounds like you didn't use Biotics or Tech to fight your enemies. The Krogan are tough, but you can easily handle them with Biotics or Tech. The repetition is greatly reduced by the way you take out enemies. The ally AI is not "idiotic". The inventory system could have been really evil, but it was really very generous. Getting the best weapons and armor was pretty easy. You can turn anything into Omni-gel which enabled you to take short-cuts in the game. And, money was easy to come by. On successive plays, everything you owned was duplicated.
Don't misunderstand, I'd still say 9 out of 10 easily. And I'm really not trying to nitpick against the review either. But calling a game essentially perfect when flaws do exist just seems premature. For games of this magnitude, sometimes you need multiple playthroughs before the problems really make themselves apparent. If you're arguing against nitpicking flaws in the game itself however, I REALLY disagree. Every game has them, the biggest and best only have minor ones. Regardless, I think they give context and room for improvement to look forward to later.
And for particulars: Yes I did use Biotic/Tech where applicable. I only have 4 complete characters but all 3 main types were accounted for. I'm not commenting on Krogan in general, but that particular "boss"ish krogan. Surrounded by various types of geth. At the early point you can fight him, he always tends to shrug off practically everything I did to him. Especially on the highest difficulty. I can't agree on your argument about the repetition either but I'm not gonna argue your point. And I honestly felt the AI was the game's weakest feature. Didn't you ever direct your party to advance to a certain point only to watch one or both then run across the battlefield to rejoin you for no apparent reason? Or watch as someone stood in the middle of a firefight despite cover being 2 feet away. Lastly, just to clarify, I meant the inventory implementation; not the system itself. You know the whole resetting cursur when you went to clean up the list thing? I really thought "everyone" hated that, which was why they supposedly "fixed' it for the pc.
To close, let me just say that if I really am coming across as unfair or arrogant, I do apologize. It isn't intentional I promise.
I only wish Mass Effect 2 was half the game the original was. Thankfully Alpha Protocol is even better than Mass Effect in some ways, as it provides stats based skills like ME did. But why Bioware went for least common denominator and stripped out most of the RPG elements from a game that was so good as Mass Effect is hard to understand.
Robert, since you finished 4 characters, you certainly know what you are talking about. I think we simply have different play styles, and you saw weakness that I haven't. I rarely commanded my squad to move. If I did, it was only to keep them out of the line of fire (only req'd on the highest difficulty). I agree with you, that discussing weaknesses is a good thing, but there is a line in over-emphasizing weaknesses in a review (unless the game is really trash).
I've just seen many bad reviews rip innovative games without recognizing the contribution being made. Deus Ex 2 was commonly accused of having "pillow" physics, and that Half-Life 2s physics were better. However, HL2 came out 1 year after DE2! The physics were amazing and were revolutionary for the time.
Shenmue was ripped for having bad voice acting, but it was one of the first games to have full voice! And, you could speak to every character and they would always have something new to say with each new event! And, every character had something to say regarding every location.
On the flip side, you get games like FFXIII or Heavy Rain that seem to get a pass for using 20 year-old mechanics. If I reviewed those games, before I popped it into the console, the score begins at a 7 and can only go down.