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Written by Joe Wood
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Saturday, 30 April 2011 10:07 |
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It had Quite an Effect on Me
I'm ordinarily not a big fan of single player RPGs on the PC, so I was very shocked by how much I enjoyed my time in Shepard's galaxy.
I'm ordinarily not a big fan of single player RPGs on the PC, so I was very shocked by how much I enjoyed my time in Shepard's galaxy.
Mass Effect follows the story of Commander Shepard of the Earth Alliance. Humanity is new to the galactic community and eager to prove themselves through Commander Shepard and the crew of the SSV Normandy. Over the course of 20+ hours, you will assemble a rag-tag team of aliens and humans of all stripes, scales, and skin tones to stop a threat to the entire galaxy.
I thoroughly enjoyed this game. The RPG side of things(in the form of levels with skill trees and equipment management) was just enough to get my inner RPG gamer interested while the decent squad-based shooter action satisfied my baser urge to wipe out dozens of people at a time. Squad members responded well to simple commands, but the AI was sufficient that I rarely had to issue orders; I could pretty much do my own thing and rely on my team to not do anything to drastically stupid.
The story in this game was what really caught me off guard. What at first seems like a simple save-the-galaxy-from-the-big-bad scenario turns out to be way more complicated, as all kinds of individuals with various beliefs ranging from bigoted to saintly come between you and your ultimate goal. This all culminates with a last hour or two that literally had me on the edge of my seat with excitement.
There is very little that I can find wrong with this title, but I do have two nits to pick. The first is the inventory management. There doesn't seem to be a very wide range of available items. Each weapon and armor category only has a few items, each with up to seven levels of quality. The end result of this is that, by the end of the game, I wasn't even looking at gear because I knew my party had the best gear.
The very small inventory space was also problematic. I absolutely cannot stand it when my inventory is limited to a very small size, and this game had this issue in spades. By about two thirds of the way through the game I had essentially stopped looting unless I saw that magic number seven next to an items name. The other major issue were the parts of the game where I was forced to drive the Mako, the Normandy's land assault vehicle. These areas of the game constitute some of the worst vehicle scenarios I have ever played. The physics on the Mako are such that it handles like a rubber shopping cart full of super-balls. This really kills the dramatic tension when you're bouncing all over the place.
Overall, however, I think Mass Effect was an absolutely fabulous game. I'd definitely recommend it, even if you're not a big fan of RPGs. The pace is fast enough to grab you tight. I know it did for me.
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System: |
PC
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| Genre: |
Third-Person Action RPG
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| Experience: |
Finished the game
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