Review - Mass Effect (XBOX 360)

When Mass Effect was released I wasn’t really riding the Bioware bandwagon. Sure Knights of the Old Republic (KOTOR) was incredible but what have they done for me lately? After a glowing review from Brad I decided to give Mass Effect a shot. I was glad I did. Mass Effect can best be described as “all the RPG quest and leveling elements from KOTOR but with the battle system written by a guy who played Gears of War once and tried to duplicate it from memory.”

In Mass Effect you play as Shepherd (either male or female), a soldier who is sent on a mission to apprehend a rogue agent. Within the first 5 min it seems like, you get a motley crew of aliens to join your cause. It happens so fast it reminds me of that season of Angel where new people are joining Angel Investigations every week. Your character and teammates can either be good at weapons, tech attacks (disarming/blowing up other peoples stuff), or biotics (lifting/throwing people). The battles happen so fast I ended up setting my teammates to automatically use abilities and it worked out a lot better. The storyline is great, the voice acting is excellent, the battles are fun, and the branching dialogue options are really cool.

Now to the nitpicking. This game has an inverse difficulty curve. I was getting wiped out almost every battle early on but by the end of the game I was redonkulusly overpowered. Here’s a tip, do as many side quests as possible in the beginning so that you will be better prepared for the main quests. My next complaint is the amount of driving in your little tank you have to do. A few times I would have been ok with but there was way too much driving overall. Lastly the inventory system was a pain to manage. I would pick up everything I found and then eventually get a warning message that I was reaching my limit so I would have to spend 10 min in the middle of a quest deleting items one at a time.

Despite it’s faults Mass Effect is still an enjoyable game. If you’re a fan of Knights of the Old Republic then definitely check it out.

Final Score: B+