Review: Mass Effect (PC)

Unlike just about anyone who ever owned an Xbox, I never played Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic much. I had also never played any game from developer BioWare, and I've never much been into RPGs. The last RPG that I can remember really, really being into was Fable. Well, that was until I played Mass Effect.

It is the year 2148. You are Commander Shepard of the Normandy, one of the largest, fastest, and most powerful ships in the Alliance fleet. You are sent to Eden Prime to investigate a mysterious Beacon, and the story takes off from there, I just don't want to spoil it. It really is a fantastic story. One of the coolest parts is that you can set your character's backstory in the extensive character creator. You can choose from things like being a War Hero, to a Sole Survivor of an epic battle. It doesn't really change anything except for maybe a few conversations scattered throughout the game, but it adds an extra layer to your character, which is nice.

Along with choosing your backstory in the character creator, you can also, duh, create a character. It can be either a male or female, and you can choose from several different classes, although you can't choose to play as another race, you have to be human. Honestly, though, with all of the other choices, it doesn't really make that much of a difference.

Through your travels, you will happen upon some NPCs, who, for different reasons, will join your crew. These are characters who you can take out with you, up to two at a time, on missions to help you, so you will be spending a lot of time with them. I became very, very attached to these characters, and it hurt when I had to decide the fate of some or more of them. There are very few games that actually make me have feelings for and sympathize with characters, but Mass Effect did it perfectly.

Like I said, I owned KotOR, but never really played it much. I just couldn't get into it very much, and the combat was one of the biggest reasons as to why. I never liked how it wasn't real-time, and your just sat and watched most of the time. Luckily for me, Mass Effect is nothing like that. The combat in ME is all played out in real-time, and it's not just your stats that decide if you will come out victorious. Since it's a shooter, it actually requires some bit of skill on the player's part, which I really liked. Don't get me wrong, you don't have to be the best Call of Duty 4 player to be able to play ME, but it's not passive like KotOR was.

Along with your regular guns, you also have Biotic powers to manipulate your enemies, such as Throw, Lift, and Warp. While fighting, you can hold the spacebar to bring up a menu of sorts to pause the game, and from here, you can pick your target, choose a Biotic power, and when you release the spacebar, your character and/or squad will carry out the action. You can also control your squadmates to an extent, not unlike Rainbow Six, but I can't remember one time where I really used this funtion.

I've talked so much about the shooter aspects, but I can't forget the RPG/exploration side. Just like any other RPG, you kill enemies, gain EXP, level up, invest Skill Points in your class-based skills, basically just typical RPG stuff. The exploration, though, is something else entirely. Using the Normandy, you can explore the galaxy, moving from solar system to solar system, finding resources, doing sidequests, and, well, exploring. Some planets will even let your land with the Mako, your land rover, so you can explore the galaxy, as well as some of the planets. One of my favorite sidequests is one that takes place on Luna, Earth's moon, just because it's so awesome.

The sound in Mass Effect is fantastic. There are so many talking characters, several different alien races, and I can't remember any of them sounding alike. There are so many recorded lines in this game, it's unbelievable, and on top of that, many of them were rerecorded for if you chose to play as a female. All of the lines feel very real and natural, which is very good for a story-driven game like this. The electronic music sounds just like something out of an old 70's/80's Sci-Fi movie, and always seems to set the appropriate mood.

Even while I think this game is fantastic, there are a few problems, even though they're fairly minor. First, is that while the graphics look great 99% of the time, in the close-up shots, some of the textures look very blurry. Second, there's no Anti-Aliasing. This just doesn't seem right for a PC game nowadays. Third, and this is a very rare glitch that I only experienced 3 times in my 30+ hours of play, is that sometimes when I hit the Quicksave button, it would crash the game. Again, it only happened 3 times, but it was frustrating nonetheless. Lastly, some of the sidequests feel a little repetitive. Most of them are of the "go down to a planet, find the base, kill everyone in said base, exit" variety. All of those can be overlooked very easily, even if they are semi-annoying.

Actually, I do have one more problem (and this is probably the biggest problem). The game just feels too short. Sure, it took me 25+ hours on my first playthough, but it was so awesome that it felt like 3. Thankfully, the game offers extreme replayability, because you can go back through with another class, make different choices, try to go to every planet, etc. The added achievements are nice, too.

Mass Effect is an amazing game, and one that every RPG fan/Sci-Fi Lover/Self-respecting individual should play. The story is brilliantly written, all of the voice acting is prefectly executed (although hearing Seth Green was a little weird, but only because I wasn't expecting it.), and both the RPG and shooter elements work fantastically. 5 out of 5.