Spoiler free. Here I intend on taking a more critical approach to the game than most, as much is said about how great the game is and how beautiful it looks, with many of its flaws being swept under the mat. Therefore the story is of little consequence here and is mentioned only in passing. There are plenty of synopses and screenshots available elsewhere for your delectation. I am also not taking in to account the age of the game, as that should not affect a review, in my opinion.
Before we get started, so you know my pedigree, here’s how I’ve fared: I’ve pumped at least 40 hours into each of three characters – one tech, one biotic, and one soldier. I played to paragon with the first, renegade with the second, and whatever I felt like with the third. I have obtained all achievements and played both DLCs. I have not, at the time of writing, played either Mass Effect 2 or 3, so cannot comment on how decisions affect subsequent games, or problems therein.
“
What they chose to call us is irrelevant. We simply... are.” (
Characters)
Inhabiting the world of Mass Effect are numerous persons of various race - all eager to have you do their bidding and listen to their bigotry and whining. This is something that the game has done exceptionally well. It is impossible not to be impressed by the rich tapestry of scum, drama queens and good folk that wander the corridors of power and lounge around in the bars (or, in the case of two members of your crew, spend the entire game sitting at a table doing exactly zip.) You really get a sense of the undercurrent that races are struggling to get on with one another and that political unrest is prevalent. The only thing that annoyed me about talking to people is the way they turn their head and then walk away when you’ve finished talking to them. That’s probably just me, though.
The six beings that make up your main team are an interesting lot with varying backgrounds that you can delve into should you wish. All have their own skill set which may be of use to you out in the field, with the exception of Kaidan, who’s so useless he makes Louis from Left 4 Dead look like Rambo. He spent most of the time he was in my party splayed out on the floor.
“
I can bludgeon pretty hard.” (
Skills)
Depending on which class you choose you have a list of various skills that you can learn. Updating your character (and comrades in arms) is pretty standard stuff – points are awarded for levelling up, and can be spent on any skill in your repertoire. The amount of skill points earned decreases as you get to higher levels, and you’ll never have enough for everything, so you have to put some thought into what you upgrade and when. The skills you upgrade can then unlock usable talents in battle, generally chosen via wheel selection. Annoyingly, as you unlock more skills the ones you already have change position in the wheel for some unfathomable reason. Your most used skill can be hot-keyed, though, so you’ll at least know where one of them is.
Early on in the game a councillor will inform you that “Spectres are not trained, but chosen” this is never more obvious than in the pretty much entire lack of any tutorial. You get taught to crouch, and there the lessons end. You may never crouch again. Since I played the games-on-demand version of the game I didn’t have the aid of a manual, which - one would hope - would contain at least basic information on how to use the various skills at your command. Instead I was left on my own, and as a result I’m still not entirely sure why running is sometimes an option, but mostly is not.
Amongst your usable abilities are ‘Charm’ and ‘Intimidate’: two skills that can be used to persuade people during conversation. Intimidate works very well for the most part, with Commander Shepard sometimes pulling out weapons and slamming people up against walls to make a point. Charm, however, doesn’t work so well. Often people who have seemingly deeply held beliefs will instantly change their mind because you asked them nicely. It just doesn’t really work.
“
Enemies everywhere!” (
Combat)
Before leaving the ship you will be asked to select 2 of your six companions. It’s fairly important which ones you choose, as pick a pair not suited for where you’re off to and you may struggle – you will almost always want someone trained as a soldier, as despite the game’s best efforts to introduce biotics and techs, combat is mainly built around the shooting of guns. Lifting people up and throwing them about is all good fun, but to dispense with enemies quickly and efficiently you can’t beat good old fashioned weaponry.
One problem that all six of your comrades suffer, however, is line of sight. If there is a wall between them and the enemy they will happily blast endlessly into it until kingdom come. Should you make the mistake of standing between them and an enemy, the same fate befalls the back of your head. Thankfully friendly fire is not a thing in the Mass Effect universe, or I doubt anyone would live long enough to complete the game. They’ll also stand in your way a fair amount of the time, and are real buggers for stealing the best cover spots. Thankfully you can literally tell them where to go, as long as there aren’t any boxes in their way. They’re not too great at traversing obstacles on their own. While talking of cover, in fact, it should be noted that there is no button for it – it is automatic - which means that if you’re shooting forwards and step too close to a wall on your left, you will take ‘cover’ against that left-hand wall, even though you’re not firing in that direction. This can get quite annoying, and I wish there were an option for turning auto cover off.
“
You have the right to remain silent. I wish to God you'd exercise it.“ (
Sound)
The voice acting is pretty much flawless, and the script has been exceptionally thought out – not just the words people say, but the way that they say them. Different alien races have different ways of expressing themselves and they all add a real depth to the world and a feeling that things were happening long before you joined the story. The sheer amount of conversation possible is superb, and changes from playthrough to playthrough providing you take different characters with you. A nice touch is the lift segments - whenever you get into a lift you will either hear a news report on something you’ve had a hand in recently, or your two crew members will have a spot of banter or discuss the missions. However, the problem here is that some of the lifts take ages, you use them fairly often, and you can’t skip it. I dread to think how much time I have spent in virtual lifts, but it’s multiple actual hours. Regardless, the only real quibble I have with the voicebank is that during fire-fights there are several things people shout, but there are two phrases people will yell the most – “I will destroy you,” and “enemies everywhere!” I daren’t think how many times I’ve heard both.
Music in the game does its job perfectly – in that it is mainly in the background, and that’s where it stays. There aren’t any outstanding pieces, but also they won’t get on your nerves and seem repetitive. It gives a good feel of the space nature of the game, but you won’t rush out and buy the soundtrack like you might with, say, Deus Ex.
“
You will be pleased I think! Very good things I have – you will see!” (
Items)
Each of your squad mates, along with your good self, have slots for four guns, armour, and sometimes grenades and bio/tech enhancers. Most with their own upgrade slots. There’s nothing too odd here – it’s pretty standard stuff. Each of the main mission planets will have venders, and there’s a guy on your ship who’ll get items for you. Money, as always with this type of game is skewed – you will be begging for it at the beginning and rolling in ludicrous amounts of it by the end. As you level up you will earn more from each mission and each enemy killed. Cash flow could have been made tighter by only rewarding credits for killing people or completing missions, but it’s a small niggle. The other option for getting rid of items you don’t require is to reduce them to Omni-Gel. This gel is a required element for fixing the Mako, and can optionally be used to break into weapons cabinets, etc. should you mess up/not be bothered with hacking them. The annoying thing here is that there is no easy way to turn everything into gel. It’s fine with weapons as they’re conveniently situated in the menu, but the enhancers are tucked away, and after you’ve turned one into gel the selector returns to the top of the list. So if you want to keep your first twelve items and reduce the rest you will have a lot of menu scrolling to do. Also, the items change order as you’re reducing them, so if you’re not careful you’ll get rid of something you wanted to keep, and in fact the button to reduce things changes between X and Y depending on where you are in the menus. Additionally, you need to have a character with you that can use the objects. If you want to reduce a biotic enhancer to gel, but don’t have anyone with you that can wear one, you won’t be able to get to it in the menus.
“
Stupid machine!” (
Exploration)
During your tenure as commander of the Normandy you will land on and explore many different worlds. The Mako is the supposedly unflippable all-terrain vehicle that you use to run about in. Its controls are bonkers. Also, as with most of the game there is no tutorial, so halfway through my second playthrough I discovered that it has a scope which is exceptionally useful. It would also be helpful to know from the off that you have to stop everything to fix the damn thing – no driving, no shooting, nothing – just fixing. For the record I did manage to flip it properly onto its roof once and instead of righting the Mako the game instead decided to invert the rest of the world, so I was driving on the ceiling until I got out again. Thankfully over time you will get used to the Mako - in the same way you get used to a bad smell - but when you really need to reverse urgently the thing will decide to turn around on you instead.
On top of that, for getting around there is no quick button to bring the map up, which, considering how much you use it, is unforgivable. Commander Shepard has got a tiny radar on your HUD, as does the Mako (although with a bigger area), but that doesn’t really help when you have a large section of planet to explore, or you just want to see the bigger picture.
The different planets you visit are fantastic and each different from the next - from ice plains to lava lakes to mountainous regions and everything in between. Buildings, however - not so much. Pretty much every building is a copy and paste of a basic layout, with boxes and other containers in a slightly different position. It’s a real shame there couldn’t be more variety in the constructions, but at least this negates the use of the map after a while, as you’ll know the layout of a strange dwelling by heart before you even open the door.
“
Message coming in… Patching you through.” (
A word on autosave)
Do not rely on the autosave. It will save when you land on a planet, and when you return to the Normandy. That is pretty much it. If you die and have to start from the beginning of the world, then fair enough - be more careful. However: glitches! Once I drove to my destination after a good length of time exploring, only to find nothing there. Getting out of the Mako suddenly a building appeared around me and I was stuck halfway through a wall, unable to get back into the Mako (which was jammed on some stairs anyway) and slowly dying from the toxic atmosphere (despite being inside.) Having then to restart from the drop zone is more than annoying. There are several other ways you can be screwed over by not having a recent manual save – game freezes for a start (I was playing the games-on-demand version on a brand new 360, so refuse to believe it was anything other than the game itself crashing) which has happened upwards of ten times to me. Also, on occasion Commander Shepard will just stop and not be able to move other than rotating in a circle. Once or twice crouching (oh, thank god for the tutorial!) got me out of this, but several times I had to reload a save. But by far the most annoying glitch is when you (or a team-mate) uses biotic skills that are heavily powered up, or a gun fitted with high-level high-explosive rounds. The simple fact is that they become too powerful for the game and you will launch someone through the walls, ceiling or floor, where they will remain. Again, on occasion it’s possible to dislodge them with a well placed grenade - or in fact you can just forget about them and leave them there, but there are sections of the game where you must clear out all enemies to continue, and when it happens then it’s another reload.
“
I’m in the middle of 9 things… All of them annoying.” (
Achievements)
Even the most die-hard Mass Effect fan would have to agree that the achievement list is unimaginative. There are many great opportunities for decent achievements (for example by saving so many civilians in a certain situation, or for keeping the Mako airbourne for a given amount of time, or punching enough people in the face during conversations) but all of them are missed. I spent a good deal of time saying to myself “There should have been an achievement for that.” Instead you have to grind out 150 kills with each of the four weapons (it doesn’t seem like much until you pick up the sniper rifle), use all the skills 75 times, and play through the game at least three times for the 6 character ones. The fact is, if you are going for achievements from the off it could well detract from the joy of the game, as you’ll feel you have to take certain characters with you, instead of who you want, and react a certain way to situations to either be a good or bad Shepard. It’s not until a third or even fourth playthrough that you can actually relax and do everything how you want to.
“
Do you need something else?” (
DLC)
There are two download packs for Mass Effect. The first, “Bring Down the Sky” is another fairly standard mission which introduces another race into the world who, I gather, become more prominent in later games. If you’re enjoying the rest of the game, you can’t go wrong here. The second piece of DLC – Pinnacle Station - is a slightly different affair, being of a more challenge orientated style. Many people seem to not like it, but I really don’t think it was all that bad. You have various situations (capture, survival, etc.) and need to come top of the in-game leaderboards for all of them. One good thing about this content is that if you ramp up the difficulty it gets really challenging. Whereas the rest of the game can become a bit of a cakewalk on the hardest setting as you near level 60, Pinnacle Station remains a challenge. It’s just a shame there are no friend’s leaderboards, or even a co-op mode. Both DLC packs can be played more or less anytime in the midst of the main storyline and both help level up your character.
“
Alright, see ya!” (
In closing)
The game has flaws, it really does. There’s just no way I can give it 5 stars because of them, regardless of how much thought has gone in to everything. Most of the bugs are lottery-like in nature, and I imagine it is entirely possible to run through the game and not see glitch one. That did not happen to me. The lack of a tutorial, pretty much useless autosave, bizarre menu systems and various random glitches mount up and do detract from the gameplay to varying extents. If it were most other games with the amount of flaws that I came across there would be no chance that I would endure them and finish the game, but the story, characters, ludicrously deep codex, dialogue and visuals are all fantastic and go really quite some way to pulling it out of the wreckage. It’s easy to see the potential of the series from this first instalment – and I hope that Mass Effect 2 has confronted a lot of the issues present here.
I’m torn between giving it 3 and 4 stars. 3 stars is, I think, fair. If it were just the badly thought out menus, horrible vehicle, and other in game odd decisions it would be four stars easily. If it were just the random glitches, and everything in game was great, it would be also easily be four stars, but the combination of it all together drags it down. It will annoy you in places, probably, and it will waste some of your time certainly, but you will keep coming back to it regardless.
However, I have decided that I will give it four, and that score in spite of all the problems I encountered is testament to just how well the rest of the game works. I have to admit that the game grew on me, and I just don’t think I would have poured 150+ hours into a three star game, nor would I play a sequel to it, but I am intrigued by where the story will go, and I want to see what happens to the people I’ve met and how the decisions I’ve made affect the future.
Call it 3 ½ stars, but add or subtract half a star depending on how much glitches get to you. I learnt to deal with them over time.
I will be playing Mass Effect 2, but not immediately. I need a rest from the world first.
3.5