Mass Effect (2007) (VG)

Director:

Casey Hudson

Writers:

Drew Karpyshyn (writer)
Lukas Kristjanson (writer)

Release Date:

20 November 2007 (USA)

Genre:

Sci-Fi

Plot:

In a future time, you play an emotionally scarred soldier who must stop a plot to exterminate humanity throughout the galaxy.

Plot Keywords:

Violence | Blood | Future | Space | Commando

Awards:

2 nominations

Cast

Steven Barr	...	Urdnott Wrex / Additional Roles (voice)
Kimberly Brooks	...	Ashley Williams (voice)
Keith David	...	Captain David Anderson (voice)
Seth Green	...	Jeff 'Joker' Moreau (voice)
Jennifer Hale	...	Commander Shepard - Female / Additional Roles (voice)
Lance Henriksen	...	Admiral Steven Hackett (voice)
Ali Hillis	...	Liara T'Soni (voice)
Brandon Keener	...	Garrus Vakarian (voice)
Mark Meer	...	Commander Shepard - Male / Additional Roles (voice)
Marina Sirtis	...	Matriarch Benezia (voice)
Liz Sroka	...	Tali'Zorah nar Rayya / Additional Roles (voice)
Raphael Sbarge	...	Kaidan Alenko (voice)
Fred Tatasciore	...	Saren Arterius (voice)
Leigh Allyn Baker	...	Additional Roles (voice)
April Banigan	...	Additional Roles (voice)

Country:

USA | Canada

Language:

English

Color:

Color (HD) | Color

Certification:

UK:12 | Australia:MA (2007) | Singapore:M18 | USA:M

Company:

Bioware

Trivia:

When the player destroys the final component of the rogue VI (Virtual Intelligence) on Luna, there is a block of binary displayed as the last gasp of the dying VI. The binary displayed is 01001000 01000101 01001100 01010000 which when translated to ASCI reads "help".

Quotes:

Conrad Verner: What if you signed me on as another Spectre?
Commander Shepard: Conrad, I haven't been shot in the head nearly enough times to make that sound like a good idea.

Brilliant

I say this after finishing the Mass Effect on my computer about a minute ago. I was cynical about the game at first, I'm not a fan of RPG games and I'm a devout follower of a certain game critic, one Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw who seemed to give the game a resounding "meh". Mass Effect can hardly be summarised in such a way.

It's hard to know where to begin so I'll start on a broad scale. The Mass Effect universe is a masterpiece. The political structure, the interaction between different aliens, the aliens themselves and other details all worked together to create a universe more deep and compelling than Star Wars has ever offered. The story itself was delivered incredibly well, the player is gradually given pieces of a considerably complex story in such a way as to ensure no-one gets lost or feels that they're in over their head.

The characters themselves all have their part, they are all deep and although their back stories, (which the player has the option of exploring through conversation with the main characters,) are incredibly detailed and long they are interesting enough to refrain from skipping through and all add to the overall depth of Mass Effect. The voice acting is good, particularly in my opinion the character Garrus Vakarian who was soft-spoken but had a certain quality to his voice that made you slightly wary of him - he became one of my favourite characters for that very reason.

Of course there are faults. There are some remnant bugs that send an engrossed player back to reality, something most dedicated gamers already associate with EA. At times the game caused my graphics card to stop responding requiring a forced restart and generally the loss of a great deal of progress. I'm prepared to blame my aging hardware but it seemed to strike with incredible dramatic timing, destroying some of the more epic moments in the game and forcing me to replay a lot of what had already been done. In a similar line of thought the auto saves simply were not frequent enough - nothing is more irritating than having to play over a large portion of the game; when one expects a quick save to occur, for example after an important cut scene or loading screen, in Mass Effect it simply doesn't.

Another criticism regards the dialogue which was on the whole brilliant; however through the unfortunate restarts and replaying I went through I discovered that although one is generally given three dialogue options, Commander Shepherd at times says the same thing no matter what option you pick. Not a big deal but it is incredibly irritating to have the option to verbally rip into someone but have your character act in the same way if you had picked a more polite option - it seems as though the developers cut corners which just doesn't seem right.

My last criticism relates to side quests rather than the main story. The interplanetary side quests were almost identical: you're dropped off on a barren planet with a few points of interest; you go to a main base, kill a few enemies and you're away again. The planets all looked the same and there were only about three different types of building which were all set out in the same way. There was simply too little in the way of variety, hence the side quests seemed unnecessary – it seemed like too many corners were cut and Mass Effect is simply too good to let that happen. Still on the subject of side quests, as dedicated as I was to explore as much of the game as possible it seemed as though the game was getting frustrated with my dilly-dallying. When part of the story was completed a certain urgency was always implied; "hurry, we don't have much time," "this is our top priority," and so on - it seemed that side questing was frowned upon and you felt like a bit of an idiot when you went to help some scientists or find a rogue group or rescue a hostage while the main antagonist had to be getting an incredible head start.

Oh, and one thing the aforementioned critic did say which was right on the money, the vehicle handles like a fat man on a unicycle.

I feel like I'm nitpicking and in a way I am; Mass Effect is brilliant so the few small faults do stand out. This gives the sequels a few things to work on which is not a bad thing. The most important aspects of the game, being the universe, the characters and the story are perfect and the first instalment of the Mass Effect series gives a base to a saga that has the potential to be extremely exciting.

Mass Effect hasn't converted me to role playing games by any means, as a rule I still find them irritating and confusing. Mass Effect is the exception to this rule though, it's a masterpiece of gaming and storytelling and I simply cannot wait to discover where the series goes from here.