Here at Planet Xbox 360 we try to review games fairly but at the end of the day there is always going to be someone out there that doesn’t agree with our take on a game. Luckily this time we are pretty certain that most people who give Bioware’s new “RPG” a chance will walk away feeling the same way that we did, that this is one hell of a game and well worth the wait. Opting to create an entirely new IP instead of banding onto something already well established was a huge undertaking for the Canada based development company. Bioware is a company that is used to working with storylines and characters that already have huge back-stories created for them (Star Wars and Jade Empire). We can only imagine what their previous games would have been like had they used original stories in their past games; probably as great as Mass Effect. Mass Effect is a science fiction RPG game that is scheduled to take up an entire trilogy on the Xbox 360. It is kind of tough to use the term “role-playing game” to describe Mass Effect because while it defiantly has plenty of RPG elements it is also available to play as just a plain old action/shooter game, or with some combination of both genres (probably the best route to take). Bioware has always been known for the quality of their games, not everything is perfect but so much is that it is hard to ever score one of their games below the “perfect” range; this being said read on to find out why Mass Effect is easily their best title ever made as well as one of the most interesting story arcs created on the Xbox 360.
Without listing any spoilers a quick run-down of the storyline is pretty difficult to explain. The time period is far in the future, alien species have been found and humans co-exist with them in a huge multi-verse connected by multiple “portals”. There is evil in Mass Effect and his name is Saren (and maybe others), a spectre that has gone a bit crazy and is out for world domination. If it were possible to go into more detail on the story we would but because it is one of the best parts of the game we would hate to spoil it for anyone. All that matters is it involves multiple galaxies, species, story arcs, and side quests; very detailed and is one of the best overall stories we have ever seen. Basically you start out as Commander Shepherd, male or female, and create a character to your specific personality or play-type. Once you get past the physical customization (nothing too fancy but plentiful enough) it is time to choose Shepherd’s character class. Available are a number of different options, the main three being soldier, biotic (magic), or tech (engineer); or you can choose some combination of any two of these types. We decided to go with soldier in one of our games and soldier/magic in another, just to check out how different the game was dependent on the class chosen. Besides the aesthetic effects of this choice it also has a huge impact on what weapons Shepherd can wield, what special powers he/she can execute, and some small impact on how the storyline plays out. After some final small personality tweaks are made it is time to jump into Mass Effect, and by jump in we actually mean jump in.
There is literally no tutorial level of any kind in the game, at times some small words will show on screen telling you how to take cover or zoom in but as far as most of the gameplay in Mass Effect goes it’s up to you to learn it. Some people will find this a breath of fresh air; others will find it an annoyance because they will not figure out how to use the circular battle system until 5 hours into the game. To use the battle system in Mass Effect to it’s full potential would take one hell of a tutorial and we think it works better to just learn it on your own, at your own personal pace. It is time that game developers stopped including that stupid “hold your hand” level that explains everything and treats gamers like small children. First of this game is rated mature so anyone who is playing it legally should be able to figure out how to play fairly quickly. The game allows you to have three characters in your party at any time (selectable from a choice of 5-10 total) and either the computer controls the other two or you do through a number of commands. Moving Shepherd throughout the game is easy enough by just pushing the analog stick (also allows you to cover), the face buttons control things like health, interact, etc. Because all of the action in Mass Effect happens in real time the right trigger fires your gun, left trigger zooms in, RB is the battle menu, and LB is the weapons menu. One weird decision was to map grenades to the Back button, causing multiple accidental grenade tosses.
All of these controls come together really well to form one of the best and most innovative battle systems any RPG has ever seen. For example if you run up on a group of bad guys (Geth) you have a choice, straight run-and-gun or stop and use cover/strategy. Once this decision is made you need to decide if you are going to allow the computer to control your teammates or if you’re going to take over the reigns and tell them what to do. We used a mix of both; mainly running and gunning with Shepherd but still stopping the action with the RB button to give orders to our squad mates. As we said earlier in the review there are three different main types of characters to choose from when creating Shepherd. Because of this the game plays completely different dependent on which type you chose. The biotic (magic) class can toss enemies in the air while the engineers can disable turrets; lastly the soldier has the best armor and guns. There is a lot more depth to the class systems (like combining your favorite two) but we need to move on and cover something else as Mass Effect is so huge in it’s gaming scale we could go on for ten pages about just the battle system. Overall they did a really good job with the battle system, other than some AI issues with your teammates the game is very polished and we have a feeling other RPGs’ will take notice with their future development. The game also features a small amount of driving gameplay where you get behind the wheel of an off-road vehicle and traverse across otherwise impassible land. Atop the vehicle is a machine gun and rocket launcher; these few levels are fun and add some variety to the overall gameplay mechanics.
