Re: Mass Effect
I love Mass Effect. Right now I'm trying to get through all the side-quests before finishing up the main story, and I've put a good 30 hours of gameplay in to it. Also, the depth of the story, along with the wonderfully written dialog and character modeling, really keeps me entertained while I'm playing.
It does suffer from some technical problems, however. The AI is really terrible, running randomly from cover to cover or just attempted to swarm you and kill you from point blank range (even the snipers!). Also, in the cut scenes you will sometimes experience the "texture-pop" that plagued Halo2. Long and frequent loading times mean you'll want a snack or something nearby while playing, but for the beautiful character models and textures, it is worth it.
The cookie-cutter combat spaces can be kind of obnoxious (who knew every space ship in the future would have the exact same interior layout?!) and detract from the realism, along with the brightly painted weaponry. I mean, nothing says "Hey, look at me!" like a bright red assault rifle.
That being said, the weapon models are awesome. The animations when you swap weapons is also really neat. It was a great idea to have the weapons use a "compact" mode when stored, and then expand to their full size when used. Of course, the fact that all the races store their guns in the exact same pattern (armor designers must apparently follow very rigid industry standards in the future as well) is a little odd, but easily overlooked.
The depth to which the universe, the technology, and the various races are fleshed out and explained is very interesting. If you don't talk to all the members of your party frequently between missions, and explore all the dialog options, you're really missing out on how deep this game can be.
In my opinion, this game beats the KOTOR series (to use a previous comparison) hands down. The characters are much more likable, the story less cliched, and it manages to feel fresh and new, which is really surprising in a sci-fi game today. And I don't find myself trying to rush through overdone dialogs as fast as I can.
If you expect Halo or COD4 level of perfection out of the FPS aspects, prepare to be let down. However, for being a hybrid-genre game it really shines. If the combat was more like what they did in Shadowrun, it would be Game of the Year in my book. However, the tech problems and the sometimes-clunky combat are going to put Mass Effect somewhere in the top5, but not number one. If you haven't picked up Assassin's Creed or COD4, then those should be first, but if you are looking for another single-player game that will consume a lot of your time with a wonderful story, get Mass Effect.
4.5/5
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