Mass Effect (Xbox 360, 2007)

Mass Effect for Xbox 360 impresses on every level and stands out as one of 2007's best games – if not THE best. This deep and emotional role-playing game plunges you into a universe wrought with turmoil and forces you to make decisions that'll shape numerous lives. What you choose, and your resulting actions, will either save mankind, or annihilate it.

The main protagonist is Commander Shepard, a human soldier who has seen his fair share of action. He receives admiration for his actions over several military operations, even by alien races that normally look down on humanity. As a result, he's at the forefront of an investigation involving a treacherous alien figure who's out to resurrect a dangerous enemy force that, at one point in time, wiped out the entire galactic population. At the very beginning of the game, you're able to either use the default Shepard figure that Bioware has on hand or put your own cosmetic touches on him. If you want to change his eye shape to make him appear more intimidating or touch him up with some lipstick, the option's yours.

Throughout the game, you'll find that Shepard has hard decisions to make. Missions and side quests pop up frequently, with side characters approaching you with dilemmas while the main galaxy-saving mission stays in sight. It's up to you which path you take, but somewhere down the line you'll find that your decisions aren't always for the better. If you help one colony, for example, another may get wiped out.

The combat is enjoyable, nothing outstanding by any means but still solid and well balanced between gunplay and applying biotics (shielding, energy revival) to your advantage. You can level up and use new armor and weapon types as well, keeping this battle system reasonably fresh.

Balancing your party involves some thought. You'll find several characters to select from throughout the game, including the gritty intergalactic bounty hunter Wrex, one of the coolest side characters ever; the tough but caring soldier Ashley, who can easily blossom into a potential love interest for Shepard; and many others. They have their own dilemmas as well, some of which can clash with yours if you're not careful. Again, it comes down to some hard decisions. The scope of these choices really shapes the game into magnificence.

How you react makes all the difference to enemies and fellow characters. You can either treat people like a pompous, overconfident ass or let your heart do the talking, showing enemies just how easy it is to break you.

Best of all, this does wonders for the replay value. A quest can take several hours to finish, depending on what order you complete each mission and the side quests. At the end of it all, you're able to simply jump back in and do it all over again. Even the smallest of changes, like the decision to leave a party member behind or the way you react to questioning, shifts the tempo of the game almost in an entirely different direction. Your end goal is the same, but new missions arise that weren't on the galaxy map before and people you thought you knew look at you in a different (but not altogether better) light.

Visually, Mass Effect comes through in spades.

Gameplay: 10/10
Sound: 10/10
Graphics: 9.5/10

Mass Effect comes from BioWare. The creators of Knights of the Old Republic. Because of that, it goes without saying that Mass Effect feels very similar in its RPG like approach. This is no clone of Knights of the Old Republic, though. Mass Effect is its own game and it's a very fantastic game at that. This review is pretty long. If need be, you can look to the bottom for a list of pros and cons.

You're John Shepard. The game takes place in the year 2183, and humanity has come to explore the Galaxy like never before. You'll discover a series of races throughout the galaxy and there's a sense of injustice afoot. Tensions between races are also high. You'll come across people who hardly trust a certain character because of their race. Just the same, a Turian (one of the many races in the game) named Saran has betrayed the Galactic council and its up to you to stop him and bring justice to the Galaxy. Mass Effect has a pretty intriguing storyline that grips you from the moment you begin. It's also well written with some fairly interesting characters.

The storyline is told through fantastic cut scenes and some fantastic voice acting. The quality of these scenes is movie like in its execution. The game also looks fantastic. Some of the character models look almost lifelike. In terms of eye candy, Mass Effect is sure to delight. It also sounds really good. There's a lot of great music here. Again, it sounds movie like. Hardly any game sounds better. The music always manages to fit the mood and situation at hand.

You begin by making a character. Much like Knights of the Old Republic, you're allowed to customize what he looks like and here you're also able to give your character a back story. As the game goes on, you'll participate in several conversations. These conversations have a direct impact on the storyline as well as shaping your character. Most times they'll also have an effect on the outcome of certain situations. Not always, but often they do. There's also a light and dark attribute going on much like Knights of the Old Republic.

In terms of Gameplay, Mass Effect is a pretty complex game. It plays a lot like a third person Shooter, but at its core it is definitely an RPG. As you traverse the field you'll have a squad at your command. You control Shepard and can give orders to your troops. Either you can send them ahead to attack, rally them or tell them to keep their distance. You can give these kinds of commands any time you want. Just because it plays like a third person shooter, though doesn't mean you treat the game as such. Mass Effect is not a very easy game. It is important to add strategy to a situation rather than go in with guns blazing. Your enemies have some attacks that can take off a lot of health at any given time. The AI of your characters is sometimes questionable, though. For the most part, they help in battle, but sometimes you'll feel like a one man army.

Throughout the adventure you'll also gather Medi-gels and Omni-gels. Medi-gels heal you while Omni-gels are for using decryption or electronics on devices like locked doors or containers. Speaking of locked doors, you'll come across some of those too. As well as locked containers and other things you'll need to override. You'll do it by entering a series of button presses. This is actually a pretty annoying mini-game. Screw up even once and you lose your chance to override and you'll have to result to using Omni-gels.

There is also a lot of customization to

What can I say about this game that hasn't been mentioned already? I could not fathom such a beautiful, entrenching piece of entertainment that expands beyond what one could do with videogames. This is the RPG of the Year and the Game of the Year, in everyone's eyes. You all are in for a treat if you haven't picked up this baby!

Story - 10/10

Take Star Wars, Star Trek, Stargate Atlantis, Bioshock, Halo and Battlestar Galactica... combine all these and add a new, unique storyline with unique characters and you get Mass Effect and then some. The choices you make affect the story and the way you play. The decisions you take leads to breathtakingly exhilarating moments that will make you want more and to come back for more. Never since KOTOR did anyone top Oblivion and Final Fantasy...until now. You have to play, see and hear it to believe it. I won't say more. The ending...oh boy. It's that good and I've only seen one of them so far!

Graphics - 10/10

If you think the videos were good, you haven't seen nothing yet. They don't give this game justice; you have to see it yourself to be awe-inspired. I played with film grain turned on and no motion blur for the first play through, giving me a cinema-like experience. The grain does affect the entire game except for the menus and character screens. I don't know if it actually slows the game down a bit or not, but so far it doesn't seem to make a difference. It usually runs between 30 to 60 fps, but when you think about KOTOR, this is way beyond that game as far as polish goes. The fact is, the details are simply amazing. The character's faces, every single one of them to include NPCs, have super sharp resolution and texturing. The game boasts colorful arrays on each and every planet you land on. Even the structures and mountainous terrain are all differently constructed and textured. The sight of any planet's sun(s) are absolutely incredibly bright like the real thing. I love the way all the lights in the game glow in fact, with a streak of horizontal light swiped across, as if it is your eyelashes bending the light, not a camera lens like in other games. The fires could have used a motion blur effect but other than that they look realistically done and are very bright. The animation is top-notch, everything appears motion-captured. As well, with enemies and the like, you'll notice that they all have ragdoll physics! This is especially obvious when you use the throw or lift biotic against them when it turns into slow motion. The scenery is simply astonishing, makes you believe you really are there.

Replayability - 9/10

This game has high replay value due to all the tough decisions you must make each play through! What you do and say are integral to the core game's plot and twists, as well as how each character reacts towards you. It's not as deeply intertwined per se as in KOTOR but that's only because with that game you can become completely evil whereas in Mass Effect you are a Marine for the Alliance, so you're not evil, but you can be a jerk if you want and you can make decisions that ends up killing someone. The first time through I played as a male Vanguard getting the best of both soldier and sentinel in one. I made my character look like John Sheppard of Stargate: Atlantis fame, since his default name in the game is John Shephard (spelled differently but that's okay).

Mass effect is an epic sci-fi game that combines rpg elements with a 3rd person over the shoulder shooter gaemplay. I'll break it down into its two aspects and how they work.

The rpg elements are unbelievable. Every decision, you make effects the outcome of your game, especially your paragon/renegade meter, and what happens in mass effect 2. The paragon/renegade gauges what decisions you have made and pretty much makes your character a moralizing idealist or a ruthless vigilante. Btw, it is based off the meter from Biowares older game, Knights of the old Republic, but the difference is that you can gain points in both sides of the meter without losing in points in either side as opposed to KotOR. Another fun element taken from KotOR is weapon augmentations, which can be a little fun since you can strategically design your team's weapons. Finally, besides the major story line planets, you can explore the great galaxy that makes up Mass effect, checking out other random planets (for loot through surveys) or even landing on some of these planets to do sidequests (the visuals on the skies of some of these planets can be breathtaking). A lot of people hated this aspect of the game and found it tedious because most of it consists of rolling around barren environments in a tank called a mako. I found it a little fun, and i did ike the visuals, but it did definitely become tedious.

Whle the rpg elements are great, the 3rd person shooter aspects are pretty mediocre. The game employs the take-cover mechanics popularized by gears of wars but they can tend not to work sometimes and the battles aren't exactly set up so that you even really need to cover that much (just stand behind the wall as opposed to hug up against it). The boss fights are more strategic and a definitely more fun. There are quite a lot of guns and armor (divided into light, medium, and heavy), so your team can be varied in their weapons specializations.

There are six classes that are pretty much combinations or pure classes of a 1.shooter 2.biotic (magic) 3.tech user (hacking) While I only played as the adept, i cant talk about the otehr classes but the using biotics was a lot of fun. The fighting style consisted of quick game pauses where id choose spells from a display-face in the shape of a wheel. The only thing was that my gun usage was limited to pistols. If you want to go balls out in the shooter direction, go for the soldier. The soldier has abilities too (as do the 4 other classes) but your abilites will deal with guns like a concussive shot with a sniper.

I did have a few problems with the game. In the beginning of the storyline, I would repeatedly come across game freezes, forcing me to restart the game. Also, the equipment interface takes too long to scroll through, so when you want to unload obselete gear, it will take a while. My last complaint is that in some battles, the framerates slows down and entering some areas it will even stop for a few seconds, displaying a loading graphic.

The gameplay is fun for the most part, the decision making is highly personal, the visuals are majestic, and even the music is good to boot and can be especially hypnotic at times. Mass effect 2 just came out too so if you beat mass effect many of your decisions, big and small, will show their results in ME2. Pretty much what I'm trying to say is, get this game!

Story:
Mass Effect (ME) is a role playing game like any other to date and its universe is considerably more complicated. The cosmos at large feels positively alive with political conflict and thinly-veiled hostility. Of course, where there's bureaucracy, there's corruption, and rooting it out isn't difficult solely because the perpetrators are hard to detect, but also because the long-term consequences of your own actions are so difficult to predict.
As complex as the big picture is, your personal journey is almost as complicated. All good things, that engross you into the story and create a new, fresh experience in gaming. Before you move a muscle, you are responsible for the very creation of your character, Shepard. You can run with the stock character, John Shepard, soldier, but you can roll your own through a cleverly designed character creation process. The process of creating your character alone can take you 30 minutes if you want to play with every feature of creating the character.

'The beauty of this system is that Mass Effect embeds whatever details you choose for your character's past inside the larger story that follows. Even if all roads lead more or less to the same place, the attitudes you encounter and project along the way are drastically different based on your background and actions. In a game with so many thousands of lines of dialogue, and branching choices for how you present yourself in every single conversation, the sense that your character is a living and breathing individual in an unpredictable world is utterly convincing, whether you choose to be a paragon of virtue with an honorable past or a renegade scumbag who rose up from the societal muck.'
The dialogue is compelling and the conversation can continue seamlessly if you choose your dialogue quickly, it is like a movie. The facial expressions are amazing and the most realistic to date.

Game-Play:
The game takes you through space, and you are given the options to choose what planets you explore. The game is considered an RPG, but it is not like Final Fantasy. Yes, you create and equip your character with weapons, armor, and biotechnology-can be used like 'magic', but the battle gameplay is very different. You control the movement of your character and take cover like gears of war. The game starts on Normal difficulty, but can be overwhelming at first battle. You can lower the difficulty during the gameplay, and once you are used to the battles, raise the difficulty. You may die frequently in the beginning if you don't. :)

Graphics: 4.8 out of 5 = Graphics are gorgeous, facial features superb. Some of the environments do get bland creating a less than perfect score from me

Controls: 4.5 out of 5 = The back button for grenades=lame. Controls otherwise are very good and responsive.

Sound: 4.5 out of 5= Great sound- Not much environment sound however, you can overhear people's conversations which is a great addition.
Fun Factor: 4.5 out of 5: Very fun and enthralling gameplay; however due to length and some side missions are a bore, it can get somewhat repetitive at times.

Replayability: Moderate High (You are encouraged to replay the game, especially if you want achievements. Some achievements are only given after you play through the game a few times!)