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Mixed impression

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 0 / 1
Date: February 24, 2008
Author: Amazon User

I have mixed feelings about Mass Effect. On one hand it has an awesome story, but on the other the gameplay is pretty weak. The strongest thing this game going for it is the engrossing storyline which engages players by allowing them to change the outcome of the game with its decision based system (although talking sequences can often be very long). The weak aspect is the shooting because it's really hard to get used to it and even after getting the hang of it it's very unsatisfying. I really believe that if Bioware had tweaked the shooting this game would have been a perfect five-star game. The other problem I had was that since this game is an RPG, the game's world is very big so a better map system would have really come in handy. The marking scheme included in the game doesn't really tell you when you are going to run into a wall so I frequently lost a sense of direction and found myself backtracking more often than not. Besides that, Mass Effect has everything going for it and I definately think people should give it a shot.

Has some slow parts.

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 0 / 2
Date: February 24, 2008
Author: Amazon User

Lots of running between areas, going up or down in elevators (with time for a sound track!!!) come on guys focus on game play.

Not a fan.

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 0 / 3
Date: February 21, 2008
Author: Amazon User

i thought this was going to be a big open world like Oblivion but its not. its really lame and the cover system sucks really bad. i think the voice actings good and the graphics are nice but thats not enough to make this game enjoyable.. the fighting is just anti climatic and when you kill somone they always fall in this sortof wierd arching position its really wierd and hard to exlpain but i guess that means that there still using canned animation which is kindof lame.

Look it's Knights of the Old Republic but without Lightsabers!

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 0 / 1
Date: February 15, 2008
Author: Amazon User

I enjoyed Mass Effect for what it was; the same style of game Bioware has made for consoles since Knights of the Old Republic.

Despite having major hardware issues with my 360 and having to return my box (older 360 models will encounter a large amount of disc read errors particularly with this game) I did enjoy the conversations . The dialogue is witty, and a refreshing change of pace from the linear dialogue that Oblivion gave. It is nice to have many different ways you can approach subject matter, and much of the subject matter touches on the modern issues many face today such as racism, homosexuality, and inter-race relations (should the real-world ever encounter alien life).

Despite the dialogue, I can't say I enjoyed much else. The story line is the same from every other console game I've seen Bioware make. Your character eventually becomes a Jedi, I mean Spectre, and you get to travel the Milky Way saving the universe from an evil guy named Darth Revan, I mean an evil spectre. You encounter many different enemies along the way, and you must choose whether to follow the path of the light side or dark side, oh sorry, I mean Paragon or Rebel.

The combat system is supposed to be a new step for Bioware games. I'd like it a lot more too if there wasn't massive slowdown when more than two enemies are on screen, or the occasional loading frame studder that completely disorients what I was shooting at. If you've played shooters even seldomly on the xbox, you'll go insane with disgust about the jumpy frame rates. The game forces you to use the pause feature frequently, not so much to figure out what Jedi power, I mean Spectre power to use, but because the combat system is too rough to be used completely as live action.

The game has many frustrating parts that I didn't understand. The long elevator rides masking the load times for areas were very frequent and boring. So many areas looked the same, forcing me to use the map feature frequently. A mini map would have solved me back tracking as much as I accidently did. The Mako transport rides were the biggest frustration I've ever encountered. I don't get why if I roll up too close on an enemy, I have no way of ever shooting them. Getting adjusted to the sci-fi environment of the game was awkward too. I kept getting the feeling I was being thrust into the second part of a story with no real background being developed.

Bioware makes great games, but I just get the feeling they would have done a better job making Jade Empire 2 or Knights of the Old 3. They also should release smoother copies of their game; not mask the frequent hardware problems this game has been having on crappy xboxes. Perhaps I'm expecting too much from gaming companies to come up with something in a new format rather than a rehash with prettier graphics. This game is great on story, and any Star Trek fanatic will have a field day with the depth, but it isn't for someone that's looking for a good gameplay experience.

Amazing experience

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 0 / 1
Date: January 24, 2008
Author: Amazon User

Mass Effect is an amazing role playing game. The highlight of the game is the graphics and the story. The depth of the characters, the plot line twists, deceptions and betrayals are unrivaled in any modern computer game. The combat system is new and unique to Mass Effect. It takes awhile to get used to the new mechanics but once you are over that learning curve the combat is as frenzied and charged as any FPS, leaving you complete control over your entire party. To top it off there are a host of side quests that can be played that all expand the Mass Effect galaxy plus the ability to play through the sequences as a Renegade or a Paragon, so save the galaxy or burn it down, its your choice.

The only downside to this amazing game is the inability to skip ahead in the dialog. On the off chance you die and need to replay though a sequence again you are forced to listen and watch and run through the entire dialog sequence as it is spoken, yet again. I have experienced no bugs or glitches as others have commented on. This one issue holds me back from giving the game 5 stars, I would give it a 4.9 stars if I could but I feel this oversight is significant enough to hold back the 5 star rating. Another issue that you need to be aware of is to save often. But if you are already an RPG fan (especially on the PC) they you should already know this.

If you enjoy depth of story, compelling game play, and an experience that will last you for hour upon hour (unlike almost all current FPS games that have <8hrs of play) then this is game is a must have.

Now THIS is how a game should be.

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 0 / 1
Date: December 31, 2007
Author: Amazon User

It is difficult for me to explain exactly how completely incredible and entertaining this game is.

I will keep this brief, otherwise I could go on and on. The story for this game has everything; Action, Adventure, Romance, Drama, Suspense.

Gameplay is excellent and flows well into the cutscenes and story.

The exploration of planets is incredibly fun. It makes you feel like you really are in charge of an actual spaceship. How freaking cool is that? If exploration gets too boring...go on a mission and blow crap up with believable advanced technology.

I absolutely love this game. Worth every penny...and even if you buy it and DON'T like it, there are plenty of people that will be willing to buy it from you for a little less than what you paid (think of it as a rental fee). You won't be disappointed with this game.

The only single gripe that I have about the game is that it doesn't go on longer. The story gives the ability for ENDLESS sequels and that just gives me that little burst of stupid grin/giggle gamer joy thinking about the possibilies. Consider the awesomeness of multiple unactivated stations that go to uncharted/unknown areas of the galaxy, or a new type of station that sends you to OTHER galaxies. Now imagine an almost open storyline of multiple new galaxies or species to find who are either hostile or docile.

if your looking for an rpg as good as kotor dont look here

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 0 / 18
Date: December 31, 2007
Author: Amazon User

replay value is none
gameplay is ok
dialog boring
basicly this game is no where near as good as kotor or kotor 2
my advice is wait for this games price to go down

Massively Effective

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 0 / 1
Date: December 28, 2007
Author: Amazon User

In a nutshell, Mass Effect was not only worth the wait, but it is one of those few games that actually lives up to the hype behind it. It simply is the best game that I have ever played, largely because it has every element that I like to see in game like this: It is epic, with a sprawling story arc that covers thousands of years of galactic history, it is heroic- the character you play fits the mold of a hero in every way- depending on the choices you make determines how `light' or `dark' he or she becomes, the art, graphics and music are first rate, and unlike Halo 3 or Gears of War, Mass Effect might actually be the `killer app' the 360 has been waiting for. Above all, it's fun. There were lots of places to go and explore- something I can't get enough of in these so-called role playing games (If you are familiar with Bio-Ware's Knights of the Old Republic or Jade Empire, a lot of Mass Effect will seem instantly familiar). I will grant that the story is not entirely original, and the game borrows a lot from Babylon 5 and Star Wars, though with a pedigree like that, it's hard to go wrong, because they took all of the best elements from both. What it does achieve is an immersive story that provided me with hours of entertainment.

The human race is a johnny come lately to the galactic stage after discovering an alien data cache on Mars that advanced a lot of our existing technology at least 200 years. Namely, the "mass effect" which is created when an electrical current is passed across a material known as "element zero"- a negative current and the object becomes lighter, a positive current and it becomes heavier. That alone would enable ships to overcome the nasty effects of relativistic space travel. They also discovered in the ice on Pluto a small mass relay- essentially a space catapult that transports ships vast interstellar distances almost instantly. A nice little draw back is, relays can only send to other relay. In so doing mankind discovered a host of other races already in place and in charge and promptly went to war with one of them- the turians, a short conflict the humans won. The other races have been in space, some for as long as 2000 years and established a sort of cooperative empire based on an enormous deep space station known as the Citadel. Everything- the mass relays, the Citadel were already there waiting for younger races to find them, having been built by a long-dead species known as the Protheans.

You play as John Shepard (or his female counterpart, Jane), no, not Joe Flannigan from Stargate: Atlantis, a Systems Alliance commander and second in command of a brandy new starship called the Normandy sent to investigate a Prothean artifact discovered on the human colony world of Eden Prime. The Normandy arrives just as the colony is under attack by an unknown alien spacecraft. It's your job to uncover why the colony was attacked, the vision given to you by the Prothean artifact, eventually save the galaxy, and prove humanity's worth. You will be joined by numerous human and alien NPCs, some of which have their own agendas, but all of them are useful in one form or another. For example, if you take on the Soldier class for your character, you will likely take NPCs on missions who are more capable in tech based skills or biotic powers. Biotics are another mass effect product developed when a fetus is exposed to an element zero reaction in-utero, a process that has limited success. Either you get cancer and die or super powers.

Mass Effect is, in my opinion, the killer app that the 360 has sorely been lacking. The Xbox 360 has been out for a year and a half now and most of the games do not interest me and those that do haven't been all that great. Mass Effect is also an RPG that thankfully doesn't fall into Final Fantasy trap of static `wait your turn' combat, but instead allows you to move about the battlefield, issue orders to team mates, duck for cover, switch weapons and more. The game gives you lots of things to do- side missions, exploration, surveying mineral deposits, following up on clues, computer hacking, and lots and lots of bad guys to blow up. There are a thousand points of achievements to boost your Live! Gamer Score. The graphics and sound are first rate, with some of the best character and face modeling I have yet to see in a game. Mass Effect and Halo 3 are two completely different games, but for my entertainment dollar, Mass Effect is better. I finished Halo 3 in maybe 6-7 hours, Mass Effect took me 22 hours to finish and I still hadn't completed all of side missions, which took another 24 hours in my second run through.

I love the fact that you can upgrade virtually all of your equipment. Guns get enhancements that make them more accurate, less recoil, and different kinds of ammunition. You can also improve your armor with better kinetic shields, better first aid equipment and more. There are only four basic weapons- pistol, shotgun, assault rifle and sniper rifle, but there are dozens of variants of each that get more powerful as you gain levels. You also get to outfit all of your NPCs including where they put their skill points, and that doesn't always mean keeping the best kit for yourself, depending on your class, etc. you may find armor that you can't wait because it's made for a krogan or a turian. All in all there are hundreds of upgrades.

The game is not without its problems, however, but most of them are of a technical nature. First, it uses the DVD rom drive constantly- on my 360 it never stops reading from the disc and gets so loud that my girlfriend commented on it from across room. It also fails to load all of the textures, leaving objects as black silhouettes- usually crates, but some of the NPCs on Feros were also rendered this way. Also, the short load times means it takes several seconds to load all textures when the action does start, leaving surfaces with only their primary texture layer. In the end, Mass Effect provided me with over two solid days of play time and I'm still not finished with it yet, I still want to try the other character classes and see how the game changes accordingly. They left it open for a sequel and my hope is BioWare won't pawn it off to a second-rate developer as they did with Knights of the Old Republic II.

The Wait is over.....

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 0 / 1
Date: December 26, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (KOTOR) and Jade Empire stand out as two of the best RPG's ever made for the original Xbox. Bioware (the game developer for both) struck gold with their epic, morally charged RPG's, and when it was announced that Bioware would be releasing another game in the same vein on the Xbox 360 (Mass Effect), fans went rabid. Two years before its official release Bioware hyped up Mass Effect in various magazine interviews, and soon demos were released showing off the graphics and gameplay.

As with every A-list video game, Mass Effect was going to be THE next generation video game experience. Bioware boasted a massive universe; one that featured many planets available for exploration, an extensive and unique conversation system, and their usual good/bad choices. They also boasted a squad-based combat where you could control your AI team mates. Bioware also promised a slew of side quests and missions, which included a vast array of uncharted worlds to explore.

Now, I have come to accept the sad fact that most of what a developer promises will never see the light of day, but in the case of Mass Effect it seems that some things were literally cut short without any reparation or reason.

Before I get into my review, I would like to state that Mass Effect is a really fun and engrossing RPG that offers a really fun conversation system, a fully realized universe, an awesome story-line, and real-time combat a la Gears of War. Mass Effect offers a character creation system that allows you to customize your character and level-up him or her as you see fit, not to mention you get to choose from a handful of job classes (Infiltrator, Soldier, etc..)

The graphics of Mass Effect are true Next Generation splendor. Everything we have come to expect of modern video game graphics is present, from realistic and lifelike character models to fully rendered and detailed backgrounds and items. In the graphics department, Mass Effect truly exceeds and surpasses most games. Optional grain filters and blurring effects are available as well.

However, due to marketing schemes by Microsoft, the game is marred rather frequently by long load times, texture pop ins and the occasional jitters. What is this marketing scheme I speak of? The core Xbox 360 system that does not feature a hard drive.

The soundtrack is very atmospheric and reminiscent of old school Science Fiction movies, and it does a great job of immersion. You will feel like you are in some strange science fiction movie. Sound Effects are pretty good as well. No complaints here...

The control is very similar to KOTOR and Jade empire, except that Mass Effect has real-time combat instead of Turn based. Similar to Gears of War, there is a cover system, thought it is often very clunky and unnatural feeling, and you will probably spend more time just standing behind cover than hiding behind it. Weapons follow your standard shooter fare - pistols, machine guns, sniper rifles and shotguns. There are some grenades and such as well. The really draw however, is the biotic and tech powers; the meat and potatoes of the combat. Each character (your team mates included) have a range of biotic powers (Mass Effect's version of magic) available to them, and they all kick butt. Depending on what character you create and how you level-up that character, various biotic powers will be made available. Tech powers work in the exact same fashion.

Mass Effect also offers a quick menu that pauses the combat, allowing you to use your team mates tech and biotic powers, as well as change their weapons. This is a handy feature as there are more than enough intense battles where you will find yourself outnumbered and out-gunned.

The biggest feature of Mass Effect has to be its story-line and extensive background information. Through various "codex" entries, through conversations and surveying planets, you will learn the history of the Mass Effect Universe. The story line is perfectly intertwined with the history, and succeeds in being a deeply engrossing and involved story with a pretty interesting plot.

The conversation system is truly unique in that it allows for perfectly seamless conversations that feel like cinematic cut scenes, or at least that is how it would feel if Bioware had put more time into it. While the conversations do have a somewhat interesting and engrossing quality to them, the characters facial and body movements are very repetitive and boring, and the conversation scenes hardly serve as the games cut-scenes (as Bioware claimed they would). They basically consist of a still scene showing your party and whoever you are talking to, with the occasional close up of a characters face or body movement. YAWN...

Since a good chunk of Xbox 360 owners own the core version that has no hard-drive, all developers must create their game to run off of the game disc only; this leads to problems galore. Mass Effect is a HUGE game, and Xbox 360 discs are relatively small - do you see where I'm going with this? My guess is that in order for everything to fit on the game disc, and to keep the disc number down to 1 Bioware was forced to cut things out. This is evident in the "explorable" universe. The limitless universe that Bioware bragged and hyped about during development is NO WHERE to be seen. Sure, there are still various planet systems to travel to, and they all host about 6 planets, but you cannot actually "land" on all of them. In fact, the player will spend more time "surveying" (which involves pushing a button and reading the text that pops up) the planet or even reading a wall of text associated with the history of the planet rather than actually exploring them. There are only a handful of planets that the player can actually land on, and these explorable planets comprise a good majority of the side-quests.

On these planets, the player controls a vehicle (called the Mako), sort of like a dune buggy, and can explore a very limited portion of the planet (which usually is a big square area surrounded by an invisible wall). Not only is the Mako incredibly annoying to control, there is literally NOTHING to do on these planets. Besides the occasional enemy outpost, the ability to mine for minerals (a push of a button), and a confounded sense of "WTF?" these "uncharted" planets offer little in terms of side-missions.

Not only is there nothing to do on these planets, but their design is exactly the same. Every uncharted planet has the same looking sky (though the color may change from planet to planet), and they all boast the same boring mountainous regions and rocky terrain. Seriously, this very lazy on the part of Bioware, though I feel that the poor design of these planets has more to do with time constraints than sloppy developing.

Another big issue is the moral dilemmas that your character faces during the game. Instead of aligning with a "good" side or an "evil" side, the player can either align themselves with the Paragon side of the Renegade side. Essentially, the character cannot join an "evil" side, or even play a "bad" character, the choices boil down to this - what would you do to save the universe? Will you slaughter mercilessly for the sake of the entire universe, or will you play by the book? Don't get me wrong, this is a really neat concept, and if Bioware had more time I'm sure they would have perfected it.
My biggest gripe with this Paragon/Renegade dynamic is that, either way you choose, you save the universe; the Paragon (good)/Renegade (bad) conversation choices and decisions really only serve as replay value, and only a few of these choices alter the course of the game.

What's worse, is that your team mates don't really even question your authority if you do something horrible (like murder innocents); in fact, your team mates don't even really feel "alive". The only time you really get to know your team mates is on your space ship (The Normandy), where the romance plot lines and such take place. Other than that, there is little to no conversational exchange between your character and your team mates on missions. Not only does this break the engrossing quality of the Mass Effect world, but it makes for some very boring game play as well. Considering KOTOR and Jade Empire both featured extensive dialogue between the characters, the lack of such feature in Mass Effect can only be chalked up to a rushed development.

Another tell tale sign that this game was rushed is the fact that you can only talk to certain NPC's (usually those associated with a quest). I may be spoiled by high profile RPG's like Oblivion, but you SHOULD be able to talk to various NPC's, they should have their own lives and daily routines. I mean, we are in the Next Generation of video games, the Xbox 360 CAN support this feature. In essence, the NPC's should be interactive; another missing feature that severely breaks the engrossing factor of Mass Effect.

Negatives aside, Mass Effect is a truly fun game that is worth playing, just don't expect what Bioware promised.

Art

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 0 / 1
Date: December 20, 2007
Author: Amazon User

*intro*

Humanity is ready to take that next big step, with the aid of alien technology found on Mars, humanity found the means of traveling faster then light, armed with this new tech, humanity is ready to settle the new and ultimately last frontier...

And found that it was already settled by a dozen other alien races.

A generation later after some bumpy first contact and cooling tempers, Humanity has join Galactic society and is ready to take a stronger leadership role. This is were you come in.

*Story*

A human colony has been attacked by an cybernetic race called the Geth, they're after a specific piece of Alien tech, a beacon that was left behind by a long dead Prothean race. On arrival Shepard and his or her's squad finds that most of the colonists are dead and that a member of the Galactic community's top military agents, Saren, is leading the charge. After fighting off the Geth Shepard gets a haunting vision from the Prothean beacon of massive genocide that would make even Hitler sick.

Shepard realizes that there is something very dangerous afoot, what ever whipped out the Protheans fifty thousand years ago might be coming back, with the help of Saren. Becoming the first Human "Specter"--an ultra elite military/police unit answering only to a few, Shepard and the crew of space ship Normandy are task with haunting Saren down across the galaxy, which also in tales saying every living thing in the galaxy.

*Appraisal*

From the same folks that did Knights of the Old Republic, Jade Empire, and Boulder's Gate, BioWare creates a completely original and epic science fiction yarn. Using the same character creating methods used in Elder's Scrolls games; the player can customized the main character, Commander Shepard, face and gender, back story and special skills.

Using the Unreal engine, Mass Effect as near photo realistic animation, although the character facial expressions are as wooden as the acting in the Star Wars prequel trilogy, the drawing and rendering of the characters is a work of art.

The only under performance in the graphics are the out side environments, where Far Cry and HL Episode 2 have masterfully render flora and particle effects, Mass effect doesn't.

What really pulls this game along is the story, a well written and well executed narrative. With each character having a back story and a large dosage of some what believable pseudo-science BioWare has created fancies that could rival star wars(ignoring the fact that BioWare and Lucarts just closed a major deal.).

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