Haven't gotten too far yet... I'm at the point where I have to save this Quarian alien thing... oh, well. I'm glad I finally have a good sci fi squad type game in my collection. :)

I want mass effect so bad; I just don't have money.

This game looks like a 3rd person squad shooter/RPG combo or something. All those choices in the conversation... And while I've got a ship now (with crew included) along with a few people I can use in my squad (you can only take two others with you), I'm still stuck on a quest involving scanning certain creatures that are illegal to scan according to the local authorities....

And then there's that "fan" who I gave my signature to...

I'll just wait for the PC port. (99.999% probability)

That or the hopefully-but-probably-not-going-to-exist PS3 one. (9.99% probability)

More like Ass Effect, amirite?

Back on topic, fantastic game.

Terminal
More like Ass Effect, amirite?

Funny about that. After getting instakilled a couple of times because I didn't spend time leveling up by doing subquests that was kinda what I was thinking at the moment...

I personally can't wait to put Big Angry Black Guy in outer space. It looks like the create a player is in depth enough to let me make him, but it looks like you always wear that same generic outfit.

Saints Row and WWF games remain the only games that have his actual wardrobe. If only.

I really want this game. Looks damn good. I saw a video review where he said he upgraded his weapon to vaporize guys, at which point he shoots a guy with a phaser gun that literally vaporized a guy.

It looks like it has that old style of party system, where some guys get stuck on the ship or whatever and you end up playing with your favorites. I know in the star wars game, I used the robot and war veteran guy exclusively once I had them. I hope I can kill off half my team at the end of this one too.

I've carefully avoided story spoilers thanks to video reviews allowing me to skip shit. As soon as they begin describing any type of story elements, I said fudge them. They ain't spoiling this one for me. Avoiding the gaming forums with Mass Effect threads is proving difficult. As this game looks like a really great game.

Gamespot and Gametrailers (who have their heads significantly less farther up their asses than gamespot) both said the menus were clunky and over complicated. From what I've seen it looks like basic radial menus.

I'd say it's decent, but not great. One of the things I haven't liked about the recent Bioware games is the stupid amounts of dialog and dialog trees. This game seems to take them to new heights. What makes it even worse is that you can't save in all locations, so in some places, you might di in a boss fight and it will take you back two conversations before the boss fight. You hav to reequip your team and got through two conversation trees all over again before you fight the boss again. Now for a hard boss, multiply that by five or six times and things can get a little frustrating.

The combat is OK, but I find for the most part Bioware is more concerned with their RPG system than actually melding a decent action game into it. The shooter elements are there, but never feel as good as in an actual dedicated squad-based shooter. You've only got four commands for your team, they often make poor decisions and get themselves killed quickly (I really hate when they take my cover spots before I can look around a corner). The cover system, although easy, is a bit spotty. I've been killed through walls and ground more than once. I absolutely hate driving around in that little buggy/tank thing when you land on planets.

Space travel could bestreamlined a bit. It's annoying that the game has to load halfway through what basically boils down to a prettified menu. It is also kind of annoying having to go from planet to planet within a system looking for the one you can land on or scan. I will admit I like the amount of world building they do with the various races, I just wish that kind of transferred over to the planets you explore. The majority seem to be the same block of dead land with an artifact, a wreckage site, an ore, and a point of interest.

Thanks for crapping all over my hopes and dreams.

It sure does look like a decent action game.

Revised opinion after beating the game. Mass Effect has its moments, but also has a large quantity of issues which really keep it from going beyond mediocrity. The most obvious issue is the graphics. Righ from the getgo you'll notice the frame skipping and the various graphical glitches which make Mass Effect look more like an original Xbox game. The 360 has been out long enough that they should have been able to work out some of the lighting, texture, and caching issues, as it is, the game looks pretty half-assed.

Presentation-wise, characters look pretty wooden. Mouth movements for some reasn look pretty good, but characters don't usually have more than one or two expressions and have a number of set motions they go through during conversations. There were PS1 games which weren't this cheap on the animation.

Once again, Bioware tried too hard to meld their RPG system to some random genre, resulting in an action game that isn't all that fun to play, but has a nice level and skill system. The cover system can be tempermental, especially when one of your AI characters decides to get in your way. While you can give them commands, they don't always know how to follow them and for the most part, it's just easier to stick with non soldier AI classes so you don't have to worry about positioning them.

The game is stupidly easy. The harder difficulties supposedly scale the enemies to your level, but once you start hitting the 30s, everything, even the boss fights, become a cake walk. While there is a newgame+ mode, it's almost completely worthless since your second playthrough, even on the hardest difficulty, can literally be done without you even having to fire shot (your AI companions get so powerful, they can beat the enemies, even bosses, without you).

Some elements of the game get very repetitive. You have a number of collection subquests which pretty much boil down to jumping from planet to planet to perform quick scans for emblems, elements or whatever else is on your list. Sometimes you can go down to the surface, drive around on the frustratingly rocky terrain and survey some rocks and ruins. There are a number of sub quests that involve landing on planets and taking out some enemy to uncover some conspiracy or something of the sort. The problem, though, is that there are four generic dungeons in the game and those are repeated over and over for the subquests with minor variations coming in the form of boxes littered around each map (the maps range from four to six rooms, each, so after a while you get kind of sick of them).

You're limited to four categories of weapons, even though your enemies have six. While the weapons you have work well enough (except the sniper rifle, don't even bother unless you've leveled that skill all the way), it would have been nice to see a rocket launcher and that shield eliminating energy weapon as equippable weapons in the game. It could have added some variety and strategy to fights and opened the door to possible larger scale boss fights.

And last, but definitely not least, this game is short. All told, with completing all of the sidequests, not using any faqs or guides, on my first playthrough, it took 20 hours. And this was with me talking to everybody I came across, making efforts to open every container and explore every planet. I'd say a good four or five of those hours were spent wandering aimlessly. Skipping all of the sidequests, it is entirely possible to finish the game in 10 hours or less. Now, I have no problems with action games being short, but Mass Effect is billed as an RPG and this seems like a bit of a let down for that particular genre. The story isn't really anything special. It also wouldn't feel so bad if the game had a real ending. As it is, it feels like the game ends at the half way point.

I for one still play original xbox games.

So do I, but I wouldn't pay $60 for one.

This game is probably the main reason I'd by a 360. If only it was cheaper...

Well, Isukun... thank you for wasting your time so that I don't have to. I mean it, thanks for the in-depth critique.

I still might like the game, since I'm an RPG fanatic.

But this and Blue Dragon aren't enough to make me want a 360. The thing just doesn't have enough RPG's for me to want it.

*sigh* I'm with Lord Shplane on waiting for a PC port... *hopes and hopes and hopes*
Customizability is my one of my favorite aspects of an RPG (Secon only to storyline, and even more important than combat). I cannot wait to see how Mass Effect's character creation goes.

Customization is actually pretty limited. Sure, you can customize your appearance, choose from one of three back stories and choose a gender (all of which have less effect on the story than you'd expect), but as far as classes and skills go, there are basically three base classes and three classes which mix and match skills from the three base classes. Each of your party characters represents one of those classes, so you don't even get any variety out of them.

Once you've chosen a class, you're set with those skills. You can choose where to put your skill points, but in the end, most classes will play the same no matter how you level them. What makes matters worse is that the game doesn't let you do a character reset on the newgame+ mode. You're stuck with the same appearance, background, and class, forcing you to start a completely new campaign if you want to get all the skill specific acheivements.

Also, every character in your party is limited to four weapons (a pistol, an assault rifle, a shotgun, and a sniper rifle) and even with a number of brands of each, they're all basically pallet swaps of the four base weapon types. In terms of gameplay, a shotgun is a shotgun and a pistol is a pistol. It doesn't matter which version of the weapon you equip, they all perform the same, just with more or less damage.

I actually found Blue Dragon to have better customization options with the characters. I liked the class system they had where as you leveled up you could add new classes and mix and match the skills you learned from those classes. Mass Effect's character building is actually pretty lightweight compared to other games where you can choose your appearance. If you want a good character builder in an RPG, get Oblivion.

I for one look forward to the adventures of big angry black guy in space. I always tend to make him, the popular character from penis, in all of video games. He's been the WWF champion and won the x-games and he's even closed some oblivion gates, but I don't think he's been in a space shooter yet.

I'm leaning more towards buying Gears of War.

Also just to restate my stance on achievements, their nice, but if someone just rented and played a lot of games they would have thousands of points for achieving nothing. I've played maybe twenty games and have about five thousand useless points.

Started playing Mass Effect at the weekend. So far I'd say it's very similar to the two Knights of the Old Republic games (not surprisingly as it's made by the same people!) except ...

On the plus side, it looks a lot better than KOTOR and the fact that your character actually speaks his/her replies to the NPCs makes a huge difference.

On the minus side, there's far too much emphasis on information-gathering conversations and very little game-play in between. A couple of short gun-fights. No real puzzles. It's a bit like an interactive radio play. (Okay, it has pictures but - given the time you spend in conversation - they're all pretty static).

Right ... off to a new star system now. Maybe there'll be more happening there!

I'm enjoying it for what it's worth.

I'd like a sci-fi game that throws something new at me instead of overused cliches. (We're heading to a peaceful planet. No crime, no pollution. Oh shit-surprise...it's being attacked. ATTACKED by BORG....er....GETH!)

And this is the second Microsoft published title i'm aware of where you've got gross-humanoid possessed things controlled by a giant plant thing.

On a positive note, i'm a fan of the unnecessary information that's tucked away in the codex...and if nothing else, a lot of the design work in the alien races (Asari, aside) is pretty neat.

I'll beat it, despite it's shortcomings. It's been awhile since i've had a decent Console RPG that i've wanted to play.