Mass Effect

Mass Effect

Remember all that stuff I said yesterday about StarCon 2? Yeah, Mass Effect blows it out of the water on almost every level.

As Commander Shephard, you use your unique skill set to bring a rogue cop to justice and eventually save the galaxy from a threat beyond time. Along the way, you make some friends, make more enemies, and learn more about Krogan testicles than you probably wanted to. Saren, a galactic James Bond-type, has gone missing and stolen some pretty valuable information, information you too accidentally came into posession of, a warning of doom from beyond. The race is on from the very first scene in the game to save the galaxy, though the shape of that galaxy once the major crisis is averted is up to you and your actions entirely.

First, here's everything that's wrong with Mass Effect: Needless wandering across planets in a difficult-to-control MAKO all-terrain tank, squadmates that require constant supervision, an occasional chugging framerate, repetitive "dungeon" assets and a storyline that honestly isn't all that branching, compared to Star Control II.

I'll address these in turn:

• I personally loved the MAKO sections and running across the different planet types. With hundreds of detailed descriptions on everything, there's so much going on it's ridiculous. Planets have their own identity, even minor ones with little or no quest-related activities.
• Your squadmates are actually a lot more competent than people give them credit for- Mass Effect is the first game ever that I felt comfortable letting my teammate operate a sniper rifle on.
• The chugging framerate is the price for such a dazzlingly beautiful game; Mass Effect is what people mean when they say "next-gen game." There's so much going on, with so much intricate detail the game occasionally simply demands you stop a second and just take it all in.
• The repetitive "dungeons" I thought were sufficiently explained by the economies of standardization that would be required for any sort of interstellar colonization, and besides any "storyline-centric" planets got their own, fully-realized designs.
• The non-branching storyline is due to Mass Effect being the first of a planned trilogy, and now that the engine and many art assets are already banked, the sequel should be beyond fantastic.

The music is so far beyond anything we've had in games before; it's evocative of Vangelis (composers of the Blade Runner soundtrack) as well as the brooding of more menacing sci-fi films like Aliens and Life Force. Each area has its own permutations, but like a great opera, they all tie into the main theme.

Gameplay-wise, it's a testament to the game's quality that the only bad things people have to say are about bugs, which are present in every game, and far from game-crippling in this one. It's so easy to get lost in this game, running around, visiting with people who have interesting tidbits of information for you, none of which is integral to the plot. I've spent hours in the Codec just reading the various entries into species' histories and triumphs.

Combat in this game is satisfyingly visceral, and there is a real learning curve to it. Fortunately, right around the time you get the hang of it on your first playthrough, you become an unstoppable killing machine assuming you're paying attention and specializing your squadmates for their normal roles.

I'd like to take a quick aside here and bemoan the death of the Instruction Manual. With the notable and thankful exception of RockStar games, the art of a well-crafted, in-universe and evocative instruction manual that comes packaged with a game has fallen by the wayside, and in this case, it's a glaring omission. Most times, a game has a ham-handed tutorial shoehorned into the first half-hour of gameplay; Mass Effect does nothing of the kind, and without a manual that really breaks down your options, most common complaints I've seen of the game are from players who don't know how to wring the most from it. Mass Effect is ironically one of the tighter and more interesting squad-based third person shooters out there, despite being firmly in the RPG camp.

I sunk more hours into this game than any other in all of 2007; it really was simply the best thing you can possibly play on the system up until the release of Fallout 3. The ending was suitably satisfying, whether you were playing as a paragon saving the universe or a renegade just getting by and surviving the best s/he can.

Graphics: Perfection. Enemies, locations, vehicles, all had a strong and evocative design, from the top down fully realized. 5.
Sound: The best score in video games easily since Silent Hill 2, although some NPC chatter can be inane, and the Male Shepherd voice-actor, while not bad, is demonstrably worse than the female one. 4.
Controls: Slick use of all the buttons on the controller, though the menu system is abysmal. 4.
Tilt: This is a sci-fi epic, and I have never had an experience as glued-to-the-screen fantastic as the last three hours of this game, a rollercoaster of epic proportions. 5.
Overall (not an average): Tendrils' Top Pick.