Second Story Gamer

Sorry for the wait between my first impressions and my full review.  Not only is this game quite long, but I also was pretty busy the past few weeks.  So my review is finally up after I finished the game last night.  I know this game is a few months old, but I only recently acquired it and I have to post a review of the game, because I know there are people who haven’t bought this game yet.  And I’ll tell you whether you should or you shouldn’t.

Story

I know I usually start with the gameplay element when reviewing games, but this game’s story warrants it being first.  I’ll try to keep this paragraph spoiler free so I’ll just say that it is absolutely fantastic.  The world that is created is deeply thought out and enormous.  I find myself craving to know more about the fictional universe that Mass Effect is set in and the different species in this world.  That being said, Halo also had a huge, detailed universe but failed on the storytelling part.  I was utterly confused throughout Halo 3.  Mass Effect flushes out every corner of this world without confounding me.  I know exactly who I’m fighting and why I’m fighting.   And the ending was great.

Gameplay

You would expect a game that is so driven by story and dialogue to be lacking on the gameplay level.  I’m here to tell you that you are completely wrong about that.  Mass Effect has the gameplay of a very good shooter, with great cover elements and some interesting biotic powers (nothing as interesting as Bioshock’s plasmids though).  One problem of mine is that grenades are mapped to the back button on the controller, which is pretty awkward, but I didn’t use grenades that much so it wasn’t a huge problem.

Graphics

Mass Effect is based on the Unreal Engine 3 and it shows.  It is another gorgeous game that came out the end of last year.  Everything looks lifelike and characters’ faces display very believable emotions.  You truly feel like you are in real universe, as you do when you watch Star Wars.  It has a bit of a problem with textures popping in a few seconds late, but it’s nothing terribly distracting.  And the graphics keep getting better closer to the end of the game.

Sound

Whoever wrote the score to this game is a musical master.  It has all the sounds of a high class movie soundtrack, with the sad moments when characters die, to the high cinematic climactic music.  The music really adds to the movie-like atmosphere you get when you play this game.

Characters

Again like a movie, Mass Effect had highly developed and flushed out characters.  Shepard’s (the protagonist) character was your choice as you could make him as ruthlessly efficient, or as good as you wanted through different dialogue options.  My first run-through I made him a good character, saving anyone I could.  My second play-through of the game, I’m going to try to use a girl character and make her ruthless.

All of your squad mates have very detailed backgrounds that you can investigate when you talk to them.  And the voice acting is this game is the best I have ever seen.  Everyone sounds believable, and the characters’ emotions make the whole experience breathtaking.

Miscellaneous

There are a few minor problems with this game though.  First of all, the load times.  It seems like, especially towards the end of the game, there are load times everywhere.  The elevators are very poorly disguised load times and I would almost have a load screen more than those elevators.  This game could really use a caching system like Oblivion had.  It would make the whole experience much better.

Another one of my issues was the inventory system.  The items are hidden in menus that take many clicks to get to and there is a 150 item limit that is reached extraordinarily fast.

The monetary system becomes almost useless about halfway through the game.  By then, you acquire so much money that you could buy anything you want.  It makes the side quests seem even less appealing because most of them give you money.

And speaking of side quests, most of them were totally unappealing to me and it’s not just because of the fact that you only get money from them.  They are scattered and there are an overwhelming amount of them.  But this point is subjective as I’m sure many people really enjoyed them.

I have to mention the dialogue trees somewhere in this review.  These were one of the biggest parts of most of the previews of this game.  The ability to forge your own way through this story by making you own decisions is highly appealing and it does work.  You will find yourself making decisions that could destroy whole species.  This level of control is another layer of immersion.

I can’t overstate how cinematic this game feels.  It’s dialogue, music, and graphics are great and the experience is amazing.  And on top of that, the gameplay is top-notch.  Sure it has a few faults, but they are nothing that hurt the game much.  If you haven’t gotten this game yet, don’t make the same mistake I did and wait any longer.  Go to your local game retailer and grab this one off the shelf.  Just make sure you pay for it.
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