Between March and May of 2008, I played and finished Mass Effect.

"Mass Effect" by Microsoft

Given all of the hype that preceded the game, it was a bit of a let down. (One of the reasons I dislike all the pre-launch hype in the video game industry.) But I did finish the game so that says something.

If you are dying for a sci-fi themed RPG, Mass Effect is worth it. If you are looking for the best RPG for your money, you would be better with Oblivion.

While I liked the game enough to finish it (after a break), most of my notes are actually complaints...

Overall

The graphics are both good and bad. They are certainly not up to the level of PC graphics and Oblivion but they are good. The characters are well designed and interesting. The space ships and cut-scenes and environments are also good.

My only complaints with the graphics are performance-related. There is a really annoying texture "pop" that never stops -- a character will load and then the textures will "pop" in. There are also noticeable artifacts in shading and an odd blue line that appears fairly regularly accross part of the screen. Not a deal killer but definitely a distraction.

In terms of gameplay, this game has action but it is not an action game or an FPS. Much of my time was walking around listening to the people talk, especially the first part of the game.

The pacing is not a necessarily a bad thing. The voiceovers are top notch and the story/backstory is quite interesting. On the other hand, the quests are a not that interesting and some of the collection missions are just plain terrible. In fact, the entire "visit random worlds for random encounters" aspect of the game is repetitive and lousy.

Overall the game reminds me a lot of KOTOR - a game I played but never finished because it bored me so much. The art direction is similar to that game as are many of the character models. Several times I felt that Mass Effect was just KOTOR in 3D.

The 3D is well done. Having listened to the reviews I knew this game was not Halo. As an RPG played in a 3D world, it works quite well. I never felt bad that pulling the trigger meant "throwing a dice" to determine a hit. The combat itself was fun.

Complaints

In addition to the graphic pop'ing, another detraction from the game is the strong similarities to other games. Did I see that In Halo? Did I see that in Gears Of War? If you have played those games, the apparent re-use of assets becomes distracting. This is especially true for the voices like Captain Anderson, and some of the commercials that sound right out of Crackdown. (You are forced to listen to the commercials when you are forced to spend time in the elevators.)

I got lost a lot. The environment is not nearly as believable as Oblivion and the in-game map is not helpful. Perhaps it is harder to make a modern world believable. In the main city, there are NPC people around but most of them are just mannequins. If you dig just a little bit you find that the whole game has a thin veneer over a limited world.

Another niggle is the equipment screens. I dont really understand them and how they relate to the quickload inventory during combat. I never really know what my team is using so changing gear is a major time sink. (I heard the PC version of the game revamped this.) This is a big problem with an RPG where gear is a major aspect of the "fun".

The lockpick minigame is terrible. The entire first missiion i was unable to open a lock or understand what i did wrong. (Basically what I did wrong was be old - the mini-game is about lightning-quick button-pressing reflexes.) Eventually I got the hang of it and then it got really easy and boring.

You have a squad of teammates throughout the game but the screen for choosing a squad is inexplicable. You meet a character for the first time and *ding* this screen appears out of nowhere with no explanation. You are only allowed to change characters in certain fixed spots and then you are stuck with them until you get to another spot. The whole thing is quite artificial and dissatisfying.

One of the main things advertised about the game was its "revolutionary" dialog system. Well dont get your hopes up. While the system is ok it has a major flaw in that it does not tell you dialog you have already done. As the dialog trees get more complex and you maybe forget what you said to different people, not being able to see your dialog history (like colored hyperlinks in your browser) gets annoying fast.

As I mentioned, the planet exploration missions are silly. point here, click here, click A, go back and repeat. Do I really want to find minerals? Do I really want to read these descriptions of planets? And if you are really unlucky, you will actually have to land and drive the stupid car around looking for probes and more minerals. I guess this could be fun to someone but my impression was that only the most anal-retentive achievement whore would do it for very long.

Which leads to one of the worst parts of the game- the silly vehicle. If God had wanted us to drive cars with joysticks, he would not have created the steering wheel. The vehicle missions are absolutetly terrible - and you do them a lot. *blech*

With all that said, the most disappointing aspect of the game was a plot decision.

The game attempts to get you more involved by forcing you to make decisions (and presumably branching the story). At one point, I was given the choice: save the person I like or save a person I dont like along with his whole team of innocents. Well I picked the innocents and totally regretted it. The person I liked died and the game never mentioned the team I was trying to save... all I got for the sacrifice was the irritating guy I disliked. Im still pissed about losing my fav character and it did not get me more involved in the game.

I played the entire game through basically as Paragon (good guy). I've heard that it is hard to play the game through as Rebel (bad guy). It's unlikely I will play it again to find out for myself.