Daimon's Lair

Mass Effect has become one of my favorite RPGs to date--one which I hope many future titles will emulate (not copy).

Immersion: The single greatest innovation Bioware introduces is the dialog system. Unlike many old and new RPGs, ALL dialogue is voice-acted--that includes NPCs and your own character. And, considering that you can play as both a man and as a woman, that means Bioware invested in a considerable amount of voice-acting. Which is, by the way, top noth--but that's not the innovation. There have been and will be many games with fantastic voice acting.

The truly ingenius innovation is that, upon being prompted for a response, you don't have to read the literal word-for-word response your character is going to say. Instead, you're presented with a number of 'gut responses', allowing the actual dialogue to be interesting. There were sometimes that choosing a certain gut feeling produced dialogue I wasn't expecting, but I loved the system overall. It makes the game feel more like a movie, especially since both voice actors (male and female) for Commander Sheppard are quite good. Also, while much of the game is third person with the camera parked behind you, in dialogue it pans to a more theatrical perspective, showing Sheppard and/or the person he/she's talking to.

Gameplay as a whole is good and while some of the side quests become tedious--especially the buildings, which all have the same floor plan/architecture for the most part--the plot is pretty good. As a fan of shooters, I liked the combat system, though the tactical commands are pretty barebones. I wish you either (a) had more control or (b) your allies had better AI and were pretty much self-sufficient. That said, some of your allies (the asari in particular) are pretty badass when leveled up. Nothing like seeing five enemies simultaneously being picked up and tossed around a room. Sweet. . . .

The graphics are quite good and the excellent sci-fi soundtrack only adds to the ambience. It's clear that Bioware is intentionally recalling older sci-fi influences from the 70's and 80's--especially Battlestar Galactica, something which my wife and I were talking about when we watched the new series recently.

Replay Value:

Negligible. I tried replaying it a second time through, but there are too many fetch and story quests and ultimately not enough variety in the combat to keep it appealing. But that doesn't give a knock on the game as a whole--very few RPGs have a lot of replay value, simply because they are so story-intense. If the story branched more, maybe there would be some replay there, but it's just not happening for me.

Balancing:

In general the control scheme is good. I thought the mechanic of never running out of ammo but continually worrying about weapons overheating was an interesting way of making the combat like a shooter without constantly having to scurry around scrounging for ammo. That said, I didn't like the difficulty level settings for combat. The first time through I thought normal was ok--a bit boring, but hard was too difficult. The second time through (for as long as I put into it), even hard was a bit too easy because I knew exactly how I wanted to level up my characters.

I guess the main problem is that even though the geth are supposedly a formidable enemy, they're not much of a challenge (with the notable exception of their equivalent of a tank, which is WAY too powerful). At one point a NPC (the quarian I think) states that the geth are smarter when they have greater numbers, but that's not terribly evident. For the most part, they site there and shoot at you without ever trying to flank you or even use any kind of tactics whatsoever. Though it's not exactly as if Mass Effect is a run and gun, and you have to keep in mind I'm writing this after not having played the game for quite a few months.

Final Impressions:

Even though it lacks replay value, it's definitely a must-play. Normally RPGs lack the degree of immersion a FPS or more action-oriented game has, but this one is in a class by itself on immersion, which I think is the most important criterion for a game. This is an overused phrase, but it really plays like a movie. Buy it or rent it (it takes about 20 hours or so to beat)!