Massively Effective

Not to mention impressive.

I can't believe it's taken me until now to realise what a superb game Mass Effect is. I can't explain why I didn't play it sooner other than that I just thought it would not be my cup of tea. Which, when I think about it, is absurd because I knew what Mass Effect was and what it offered and in retrospect, knowing what I know now, there appears to be nothing about Mass Effect not too like. It's all very strange but I just seemed to develop an early aversion to it.

I was surprised and astounded when I actually started to play Mass Effect last week. I was instantly transported into this new galaxy and found myself wrapped up in the story line within an hour of starting the game. For an RPG it's easy to get into, the interfaces are easy to use and intuitive and there are no, not one, random encounters! Huzzah!!

If you can’t tell already, I think Mass Effect is fantastic! It's immersive, has a believable graphical style and score that create one of the finest gaming atmospheres around. There's a sense that Mass Effect doesn't take itself too seriously. The grainy graphical effect, that can be switched on or off as you choose, creates a kind of retro TV show feel. So much so that there’s a real feeling of being in a cult sci-fi TV show like Blake's 7, Space 1999 and Star Trek all mixed together, baked in the oven for 40 minutes at gas mark 6, allowed to cool and then topped with a layer of Star Wars and a dollop of that 8 bit classic game Elite.

I've found the game quite tough going in places and had to restart a couple of missions many times. I attempted to take down a former Alliance officer, Major Kyle, numerous times before I’d done any of the story beyond The Citadel. I got my ass kicked and kicked and kicked some more. I’m never one to quit though so I just sort of gave up and slinked back to my spaceship with my tail between my legs. I returned to this mission later in the game and to my surprise, and thanks mainly to my charming manner, Major Kyle agreed that he was off the rails and surrendered. Yay! No bloodbath and a nice example of how the game can develop based on how you level up and what approach you take to situations. If I’d gone back to Major Kyle with a lower charm rating or perhaps been more renegade than paragon it could’ve been quite different.

I've heard complaints about the main story being shorter than Halo 3 and that people think this is unforgivable for an RPG but considering all the side quests and the exploration of the galaxy I have to disagree. If you're the kind of gamer that wants to rush through the story then you're missing the point. The game constantly challenges you to decide what to do next. It forces you to examine situations and prioritise what you’re going to do next. Your decisions change your character and shapes future events as with my experience with Major Kyle. As I'm progressing through the story, so far I've completed the Prologue, the first visit to the Citadel and have been to Noveria and defeated whatsername the funny looking alien, I'm also attending to other events, helping people and generally enjoying flying around the galaxy in the Normandy.

I decided to follow the potentially more difficult route through the game by playing as a paragon. In other words a goody too shoes. My character, Matt Shepherd, is all for upholding the law and being generally understanding and helpful but some of the more sinister, suspicious missions are just too intriguing to ignore.

The game has a couple of annoying features. It doesn't kindly drop you back where you were when you die, oh no, it's back to the start of the mission or the last auto save! Most annoying until I started manually saving. It's a bit of a pain, just like not being able to skip cut scenes that you've seen 20 times already, is mind numbing, but because the game is so much fun and challenging in enjoyable ways these faults are forgivable and seem to grate less the more I play.

Still, let's hope Bioware iron out these oversights in Mass Effect 2.

Paragon, Renegade or just general riff raff? Gameov3r is never one to discriminate on his FORUM.