Mass Effect Review
Score: 3/5
As technology continues to exponentially improve upon itself, videogames reach new levels of sophistication approaching parity with other, better established mediums. Many videogame developers challenge themselves with the inevitable difficulty of harnessing technology to create something that either mimics as closely as possible a cinematic experience or carving out something completely unique and unattainable through any other medium. BioWare is one such developer that has established a reputation for creating games that embody this collision. Unfortunately, we find in Mass Effect a clumsy juxtaposition where story and the technology used to present that story are truly unique and captivating, but a game that is deeply flawed.
Mass Effect immediately thrusts you into a massive universe full of history and culture. Many games create a universe in which they place the player, but that universe is an abstraction hidden in the background. Mass Effect, on the other hand, gives you everything, the whole universe at your fingertips. As you progress through Mass Effect, the universe is revealed to you in any number of ways: Conversations with characters, completing side quests, completing main story quests, exploration, and examining points of interest. Just about everything you come across, every little tidbit of information, is stored into a codex. By the end of the game, if you bothered to be even moderately thorough, you will have accumulated a near bible’s worth of information. Mass Effect is a remarkably well fleshed out piece of fiction from one corner of the universe to the other, coming closer in scope to an epic sci-fi novel than it does a movie.
Character interaction is one of Mass Effect’s better aspects. When speaking with the fully voice acted characters of Mass Effect, multiple conversation paths open up. If you’d like to be an ass about something, you can choose that option. The resulting line of dialogue is typically a lengthier expansion of that direction. Solutions will fall roughly into either Paragon or Rogue methods, the high road or low road respectively. Some of the decisions will result in drastic actions, and the range of outcomes for any particular scenario really elevate the game as a whole. In particular, playing like a Rogue will result in some brutally harsh outcomes at your hand, causing you to really think about what you’re doing. Mass Effect hurtles you towards critical plot points and demands the player make brutally difficult decisions. At one point, I spent what felt like a very long time genuinely conflicted over what to do, what course of action to take, and, ultimately, who would suffer as a result of my decision. My feeling of regret afterwards was equally as genuine. This is Mass Effect’s greatest achievement.
There are also less impactful yet very unique and welcome touches woven throughout the game. Characters in your crew that you pick up along the way all have their own stories. They reveal bits and pieces over time that eventually paint a complete picture.
Exploration of the Mass Effect universe is another particularly impressive aspect of the game that compliments character interaction in further expanding upon the generous heaping of story and immersion. Navigable through an impressive looking Galaxy Map, clusters of solar systems and the planets revolving within them are all explorable… sort of. A handful of planets can actually be landed on and traversed either by vehicle (in the Mako) or on foot. While the landscapes of these worlds aren’t particularly well structured (they appear as though they were created by some random terrain generator), they provide a palpable sense of being on a barren planetoid in sometimes extreme conditions. Atmospheric effects often go a long way towards totally impressing upon you that you are in a mostly unknown and hostile environment, and look absolutely stunning. The very design of the Mako, a space rover-like six wheeler assault vehicle, lends even more of this very space-like exploratory feel as it bounces around generously and believably. All together it captures a feeling of watching an episode of Nova on PBS, and I mean that in a flattering way.
There is no doubt in my mind that Mass Effect does all of the aforementioned unlike any other game before it, and it accomplishes these things with great success. But whereas the story elements and mechanics involved in conveying that story and universe are practically unmitigated, all of the other parts that make Mass Effect a game are mildly to deeply flawed.
Your characters support varies specialities and abilities, and each is quite varied. Through these,there’s a palpable sense of your character becoming increasingly more powerful. Most notable amongst your abilities are your biotic powers, which might as well be Star Wars’ Force powers. There are, for instance, a lift and a push biotic power, which suspend enemies in mid-air and knocks them backwards respectively. These are interesting additions to battle, though you will likely only use a handful due to their effectiveness in relation to the others. Each power takes a considerable amount of time to recharge, which opens up a problem when playing with characters specializing in biotics: while waiting for your powers to recharge, you will have to resort to conventional weapons that you are under-skilled with.
Besides abilities, all of your characters can be fully outfitted with a legion’s worth of gear. There is a tremendous amount stuff here, from weapons, to biotic implants, to armour, to different types of ammunition and other numerous upgrades for all of these. Much like the character specialization and ability progression, this is a satisfying and compelling aspect of the game that has real consequences during combat. But given the rather large task of managing your many crew members simultaneously and the reams of equipment, the menu system is woefully inadequate and downright frustrating to navigate.
But really, these are minor criticisms compared to Mass Effect’s greatest disappointment: the actual real-time combat. Here, Mass Effect falls apart. Mass Effect offers fully real-time third person shooter combat. Given this direction, Mass Effect attempts to implement all the trappings one would expect from a third-person shooter, but bungles most of them. There are moments when the combat is just fine, and you’re progressing at a satisfying pace without issue. But that’s not often, and even then there isn’t much that feels really great, if at all. More often than not, you’ll be completely overwhelmed by bad level design, a broken cover mechanic, just god-awful AI, and any number of things too numerous to get into.
Enemy AI is the biggest culprit here. Your opponents will do typically one of two things: stay behind cover or come rushing at you. If they’re staying away and behind cover, it’s boring. When they’re running at you, it’s frustrating. On many occasions I found myself completely surrounded by enemies, who seemed to come from nowhere, beating me, shooting me, and throwing any number of biotic assaults my way. It seems entirely unrealistic, quite unbalanced, and terribly confusing. Moreover, level design, especially on side-quests, has you repeating the same freaking building design over and over again, which typically starts you out in a cramped space without any immediate options for maneuverability. Could you move in any direction, you might be able to figure out a spot to send your squadmates for a flanking maneuver, but the idiot AI are up in your face in mere seconds.
One shouldn’t expect Gears of War perfection. Hell, one shouldn’t expect even Lost Planet’s mediocre gameplay. But one should expect a game that at the very least does not unreasonably frustrate, and when even set at these low expectations, Mass Effect frequently disappoints.
To soothe your battered mind after combat you can rest your eyes on beautifully rendered worlds and character models. Employing the Unreal 3 engine, Mass Effect is stunning in many respects. Sheppard’s mug is phenomenally detailed, and witnessing his expressiveness is one of the games’ high notes. Some alien races like your Krogan crewmate Rex, look phenomenal and are animated with great sophistication. Since so much of Mass Effect involves conversing with characters, you will come to greatly appreciate the artistic effort that went into the characters.
It is really too bad that the visuals are marred by constant frame rate interruptions and level of detail loading issues. Mass Effect never stops stuttering for long. Even the title screen skips a beat for goodness sake. To be fair, it appears as though this may have to do with how the game streams its data, as the disc drive is in a constant noisy state of activity. Despite what appears to be perpetual loading, you’re still subjected to long loading times between areas, and the kicker is that none of these areas is very large to begin with. Mass Effect also repeatedly loads texture maps well after any particular scene is entered into, be it conversation, levels, or cut scenes - textures spawn in one after the other as though the world were constructing itself one Leggo block at a time.
Sound design is yet another area of the game that equally ‘wows’ and frustrates. The soundtrack is a beautifully ethereal and subtle synth mix, reminiscent of something from obscure sci-fi films of old, but more akin to 2001: A Space Odyssey and nothing like Star Wars. This, coupled with the film grain visuals, gives Mass Effect an atmosphere purely distinct unto itself, and it works. Moreover, all character dialogue is fully voiced, and shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone familiar with BioWare. This, since KOTOR, remains a very impressive aspect of the game. But there is one sour note with the voice acting, and it is a big one: the voice actor for the male version of Sheppard assaults your ears like a rogue Q-tip. He is bad, Resident Evil bad, and only barely tolerable and best.
There is an art to storytelling, and an art to gameplay. Mass Effect is nearly masterful in interactive storytelling, weaving together so many disparate parts of a universe with so many well executed methods. Indeed, in this respect, Mass Effect does inspire awe from time to time. On the other hand, Mass Effect is routinely amateurish and frustratingly so in its execution of combat gameplay. This is impossible to ignore.
High expectations put aside, Mass Effect is a good game worth experiencing. But Mass Effect is a game better experienced than it is played.
peachey @ November 20, 2007