The Title is a Misnomer

Author's Rating:

Pros: Fun Battle System, Interesting Plot and Universe

Cons: Very Short. Character classes other than soldier are essentially useless.

The Bottom Line: 
While Mass Effect is a decent game overall, the short campaign and problems with mechanics make take away heavily from the experience.

Author's Review
Mass Effect is the latest science fiction RPG Hybrid to come from Bioware. For one thing, the creation of an entire universe of brand new aliens and planets is something that should not be looked upon as an easy task, and its one thing to create them, and one thing to make them seem real.

So here comes Mass Effect, creating a completely new universe with unfathomed species and new planets and a daring, bold new attitude. The question is though, can it hold up as a game.

For the most part, Mass Effect is successful in attempting to do what it intends to do. It comes complete with a compelling plot line, a fun battle system, and some very memorable missions and alien species and of course, spaceships. However, the game is not complete without its mishaps though. These will be highlighted later.

Story
So first off, let's talk about the plot of Mass Effect. Essentially, all the science fiction staples that you're already familiar with are there. The universe is in trouble, there is an evil nemesis that is trying to destroy it with an ancient weapon of mass power. To be perfectly honest, the plot line will remind you of some of those dime a dozen paperback novels that you might see in the used bin at Goodwill, but who really cares. Mass Effect does an excellent job with immersing the player into the storyline so that rather than seeming ridiculous or trite, the plot line, the characters, and the events that are all intertwined within it become real.

The result? A compelling plot line that while admittedly isn't the most original thing that you've ever seen (although to give them credit, so its hard these days to come out with anything that doesn't borrow from something that you've already seem or have become familiar with), is still real enough to make you want to keep coming around to play through the game until its epic conclusion. The story line involves controlling Commander Sheppard (the playable character that you can customize) and with your crew and fellow comrades, you have to save the universe once and for all.

There are some quips with the story and plot that I have, and I am not sure how to exactly state them in this review, as they would pretty much be spoilers (or close to them), but point to be said, let's just say that its well... a bit predictable.

Game play
Of course, at the heart of any game, beyond the outer shell or story or characters, is the real mechanics of the game. The first thing that needs to be said about this game, is that the game play and the battle system, is that they are a real blast to play with.

First of all, the game features a sort of hybrid RPG/TPS sort of deal. It plays action-wise like a third person shooter (which is coincidentally my favorite style of shooter), but has RPG elements, such as experience points, leveling up, and that sort of thing. However, you have to be able to rely on your wits, as this game is rather action packed, and unlike most hybrid RPG shooters, this game takes a larger emphasis on the third person shooter aspect of the game rather than the traditional RPG elements. For those not used to shooters, you will find yourself dying quickly. You have to be able to know how to use stealth to your advantage, use cover, flank your enemies etc.

Aside from the battle system, the character interaction is very similar to KOTOR. The game does a decent job at offering a few more choice options of interaction between Sheppard and the rest of the characters. The way of selection involves using the mouse rather than just selecting from a bullet list of choices (although it really is the same but with more confusion to ensure from those who aren't expecting it the few first times).

However, while the battle system is fun, and the interaction between characters is worked out well, there are some mechanics that keep this game from being as great as the previous mentioned high points.

One of the biggest quips that I have with the game is character class. If you customize your character (don't just choose the basic soldier class) you can select different classes, some focusing on tech skills or focusing on biotic skills. Unfortunately, unless you choose soldier, you'll have a much harder time defeating your enemies. Why? Well, the game is obviously very geared towards being the straight up soldier class. There is really not that many skills for the other classes, and you can't use the big weapons with the other classes as well. One specific example, the infiltrator uses stealth and long distance tech skills to fight. Sounds good right? Except that in the game, since most of the encounters are close quarters, there really is almost no way to use stealth, and there are only so many tech skills that you can use, and then you have to wait for them to recharge. And most of the time they are essentially useless anyway.

The inventory system is also poorly done. The inventory screen is clunky, and very inefficient with getting to specific items that you might be looking for. The item list is very small compared to anything else, and it takes forever to have to scroll through a large amount of things, especially towards the end of the game when you just about fill up your inventory and have to start converting everything into Omni-gel.

Finally, the other major quip that I have with this game is the pseudo-squad action. You can "command" your allies to do things in the game, such as sending them to move to different points or attack the enemy, hold their ground, etc. Unfortunately, in doing this, the allies stop being functional allies, and become useless, animated computer droids that are about as capable of performing a simple task as my pet rock is capable of jumping through a hula-hoop. Also I wish you could switch to other characters, especially if one your allies has a gun that you need but are not able to train in (see the section above about character classes). Another annoying thing is that when Sheppard dies, the game ends, but your other characters can die off fine. Especially when they all revive after you exit combat mode. KOTOR had a system that was much better than this, and I hate to compare this to another game made by the same company, but really, this is one system that did not need reinvention.

Graphics
The graphics of Mass Effect look great on the computer. I have a decent enough computer, and got the game to the maximum resolution that my monitor could support (1440x900) and at the highest possible textures and filtering. The characters look crisp (although there were some jagged edges every once and a while and a bit of choppiness on the faces, but its hard to tell whether or not that that is the game itself, or my computers graphic card drivers doing that) and life like. The cinematic sequences stay within the same sort of graphical style as the rest of the game play, and the two intertwine with each other smoothly, but still enough that you can tell a difference between the two.

Mass Effect isn't going to blow any other current generation game out of the water, but it is much better than you could've hoped for even a few years ago. There are not bad marks towards this department from my end in this review.

Sound/Voice Acting
For the most part, everything seemed to fit well into the game and the universe and tone. The gunfights sounded real enough, and the effects that you hear during the game are believable. (Sometimes it bothers me when you hear things explode in space though)

The voice acting of the game is done well enough that it is believable, and that none of the voices sound out of place with the characters that they were casted for. I do appreciate the fact that not every alien in the game had to have some kind of deep, growly voice like they often do in Star Trek. Some of the voices were very human like, but it had enough diversity to make the aliens seem like foreign species, rather than humans dressed up in funny little suits.

Music
The music of the game isn't anything to write home about. It fits with the epic nature of the game well, and for the most part, the music didn't seem to contradict the tone or the style of the game. Nothing really stood out to me as I played through the game, but there wasn't really anything that sounded out of place or incorrect either. Think of this as a neutral section.

What Else?
I don't really think this is a spoiler (as this would have been surely mentioned in other game reviews of the game, and the chances of people having known about this since it was released a rather long time ago on the 360), is that the campaign of the game is very short. Like, it is really short. There also isn't any multi-player (not necessarily a bad thing, but it is when the game itself is so short). After having beaten it, I didn't have the burning desire to play through the game again (probably due to my disillusionment of not having chosen a soldier to play through the game).

You can take more time to go through the game if you go after some of the side quests of course. However, the game didn't do all that great of a job of encouraging you to do side quests, especially since the main quest of the game is essentially a race again time. The side quests that you could do seemed kind of pointless, and there really wasn't any incentive to do them, nor was the results of having done any of them really worth the time that was spent in having to do them in the first place.

Overall
I'm sort of on the borderline about having to rate this game. Overall, I'd say that I'd give this 3.5 stars, but I decided to give it a 4 rather than a 3 because I felt a bit more positive about the game than I did negatively. There are a lot of flaws in the game and there are some mechanics that really could use some major improvement in my opinion.

For those who are wondering how the PC version compares to the game that you've already played on the 360, the simple answer for all you folks is that to be perfectly honest, I have no idea. I don't own a 360 (in fact, I haven't even bough a next-generation console yet, and I'm still playing through some older RPGs on my PS2 currently), so if you want some comparisons, I believe Gamespot wrote a decent review that addressed some of the differences between the two.

Anyways, while this game is overall a decent amount of fun, for the price that you pay for it, it isn't worth getting. Wait until the price comes down, or get it used. (It is on the price that I decided to put that I wouldn't recommend to somebody. If the price were lower, I would reconsider.)