Mass Effect Review

BY Mohammed Al-Balushi | POSTED: 20 August 2008

A fantastic port of one of the best RPG game.



Bioware are very well known for making fantasy based RPGs that span huge and complex elements and worlds and their foray into Galaxy and futuristic worlds created a huge buzz. First released on the XBox360 platform, Mass Effect from Bioware was a huge success. A few months later and PC gets its version released but not as a direct port, rather an updated version of the Xbox 360 release.

Mass Effect starts by first allowing you to create your character. You can either select the preset one available to you which is a male soldier class with the name John Shepard. Or you can create your own character by choosing gender, look, first name and class. Whichever way you want to go, you get to start as the lone survivor from an ambush in a planet called Akuze. For that you are selected to be the human candidate to join the Specter group. Specters are the hidden hand for the council, a large organization that includes humans in addition to the many races in Mass Effect universe, which get to solve problems by any means necessary and that all laws are bent for them to complete their missions. Of course things go wrong and you are left in charge to figure out what's happening.

As simple as story might sound, it really is deep and includes some interesting twists and surprises as you navigate through the galaxy on the state of the art frigate, the Normandy. Through your journey you will meet up with people from other races, and your own, who will join up with you on your trip. Each character that joins you has his own agenda and reason for following Shepard and through interacting with them you get to know more about their background. The frigate itself is huge and has a crew that is running it, though interaction with them is very limited as they go on their tasks to keep Normandy running.

You start off by doing some quests in a huge spacestation-like construction called the Citadel. It houses a huge population of different races which are united under the rule of the Council. After that you are free to either go finish the main missions or go check out other planets to find or complete side missions. Visiting other planets is very simple; you get a hologram on the Normandy ship which shows the Milky Way galaxy. Zooming in shows all the systems you can access and each system has its own planets which can be surveyed for minerals or artifacts and possibility of landing on if the atmosphere allows it. When landing on a planet, you are propelled from the Normandy in a vehicle called Mako. The vehicle can traverse harsh and steep terrain in addition to its mounted cannon which is needed to fend off any threat you may find while driving the Mako. You can leave the Mako any time and go on foot but since most of the planets are large empty deserts with far and separated locations of interest, it is wise to stay in the Mako until reaching a location that requires you to enter.

Mass Effect allows the player to make choices in which can affect his alignment, opting for the good choice shifts your alignment to paragon, doing the evil choice shifts it to renegade. The alignment does have some effect in the game by opening up side missions related to your alignment but doesn't affect the main story at all.

The conversation system used in Mass Effect is simple yet deep. Rather than show a list of dialogues, the player is presented with basic keywords that are aligned around a circular shape. Selections on the right can advance the dialogue while the ones on the left allow you to learn more about a certain topic but not necessary to advance.

CONTINUED ON PAGE 2 »

PREVIOUS   [1]   2   NEXT