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Knights of the Old Republic. Battlestar Galactica. Babylon 5. Star Control 2. Will it blend?
YES IT WILL!
I finished playing Mass Effect yesterday. Even though it borrowed heavily from pretty much everything out there (up to and including Ender's Game), I thought it was a fantastically original game. I had a sci-figasm that went through the roof, particularly in the last two or three hours of the game. The plot just keeps getting better and better as you go along.
Knights of the Old Republic. Battlestar Galactica. Babylon 5. Star Control 2. Will it blend?
YES IT WILL!
I finished playing Mass Effect yesterday. Even though it borrowed heavily from pretty much everything out there (up to and including Ender's Game), I thought it was a fantastically original game. I had a sci-figasm that went through the roof, particularly in the last two or three hours of the game. The plot just keeps getting better and better as you go along.
The gameplay has some issues, the most significant of which has to do with the Mako, the ground vehicle you use on uncharted worlds and at several other points throughout the game. It's like the Warthog from Halo, but it handles like a narcoleptic, pregnant whale. Fighting in it, you only get 1/3 the XP that you would fighting on foot, and it only seems to hit the targets some of the time even though you're aiming directly at it. The game interface wasn't bad, but when it came to inventory management, it could have been better. Especially with regard to dumping inventory when you begin to reach the 150 item limit.
Now on to the good parts. The game has an incredible amount of depth and backstory. It's even a little overwhelming how much there is. But it never felt as though the plot was reaching too much to find adventures within the setting. Saren, the villain of the piece, was a complete badass. The voice acting and dialog were really, really great. The great majority of the time, it didn't feel forced or unnatural. Despite how much I love dialog trees, however, there did seem to be quite a bit of talk, even to the point of tediousness, towards the beginning of the game. Jack Wall, who did the soundtrack for the BioWare game Jade Empire, also set the musical mood for Mass Effect and did a very good job of it there, too.
The party members you gather are pretty well balanced. There's three basic classes: Soldiers (combat oriented), engineers (tech oriented), and biotics (the equivalent of Jedi or magic users). There's three hybrid classes which are simply combinations of any two of the above. It's very simple, but it works out very well. Aside from occasionally wanting to choke a bitch (*cough* Ashley and Kaiden *cough*), I liked the party members and their oftentimes checkered pasts.
I played through the game with the out-of-the-box female version of Commander Shepherd, a soldier, but you can pick whichever class you like when you begin the game. You can customize how your Commander Shepherd looks, of course, but you can also select the personal history and service record for you character as well. The backstory you choose is referred to throughout the game, so it's not just for show. Throughout the game, you have to make choices—real choices that can affect the outcome of the game and even perma-kill party members.
Perhaps the best feature of the game, however, is how well it sets up for a sequel. Please, please don't disappoint me, BioWare.
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