Mass Effect (Xbox 360)
Good cop, bad copBut enough about combat. It might not be perfect, but that is only because it plays second violin to the RPG parts. And this is where Mass Effect really shines. Sure, if you break it down to its individual components the system is still the same as it was a few years back with Knights of the Old Republic. But last I checked, we don’t play the individual parts of a game, but the game as a whole, and like it or not, Mass Effect is by far the most polished RPG with every bit and piece doing its work to ensure the game as a whole works as indented.
Let’s take a look at the statistics and leveling up for example. The system gives you free reign over how you specialize your character. Depending on your initial class choice you’ll have several skills available to upgrade. They range from how adept you are with a certain kind of weapon (pistols, rifles, shotguns and sniper rifles) and which bionic powers you can use (and how powerful they are) all the way to more pacifistic stuff, like how charismatic or intimidating you are. You can leave it up to the game to level you up, but any true RPG fan will not only do it manually, but fine tune all of his companions as well. Combat isn’t as greatly affected by these stats, simply because all of the foes you take on level up dynamically based on how strong your character is. You still get new abilities as you progress, but the game provides a constant challenge all the way through. Oblivion has shown us that people tend not to like this, but it actually help make Mass Effect truly non-linear. Now that we’ve dealt with the more boring aspect of the RPG heritage, let’s discuss the fun part – playing the role of Commander Shephard. With previous games Bioware have shown us that they can present a good story in a fairly non-linear casing, but despite all the choices that were put before us we always felt kind of shackled. Each conversation put a few choices between us, and while they usually varied greatly between one another, we were still forced to select one. Mass Effect doesn’t do away with that, but it makes conversations a lot more dynamic. Instead of presenting you with a list of available answers, you instead select the general tone and attitude of your reply. So, when confronted with a heated situation you will be able to select “Calm down” as you reply, and Shephard will try and avoid confrontation. Likewise you can select “Bring it on” and Shephard will try and provoke whoever he is talking to. The great thing about this system that you never really have to read lines and lines of text to decide on how to reply – instead you just skim over the selection, push the analog stick in the direction of what is closest to how you want to react and see Shephard do the rest of the work. This way the conversations are a lot more fluent, since you can usually select a reply even before the other person stops talking. It might seem like a minor detail, but going back to Knights of the Old Republic made me cringe at how stiff the conversations were before Mass Effect.
And it is precisely because of these conversations that you will want to play Mass Effect. Completing optional quests was never as fun or rewarding as following the main story line, but here the voices and digital acting of the characters will literally make you do them. It is easy saying no to a bunch of code, but when the person/alien who is asking you has so much vibrancy in its look, its movement you can’t ignore it. Yes, Bioware finally did away with the stiff looking conversations from their past games. The digital actors will now frown, lean towards you, pull out weapons when needed and do all kinds of other stuff during conversations. The same goes for Shephard, who is completely voiced over in this game. This is a noticeable change from before and it makes the main character a lot more lovable/hate-able (depending on how you play). Obviously the amount of depth each character has is directly proportional to how important his role is to the game. As such, all of your companions have very well written background stories, making them seem like persons made out of flesh and bone. Some of these stories develop out into full fledged side quests, while others are there simply for the experience. What they showcase is however that Mass Effect strays away from the typical good/evil alignment previous Bioware games touted. Since you end up playing the savior of the galaxy it wouldn’t do you being evil to the core. Instead, your choices are more along the lines of being a good or a bad cop. As an example, you can try to convince a retired general to stop harassing a girl he is in love with (failing miserably with his wooing), or you can simply slam him against a wall and make him stop. You obviously did a good thing in either case, but your approach in the second example wasn’t nearly as kind of diplomatic as in the first one.  So, once one of the NPCs breaks your heart with its plight for help, what will you end up doing? You can break down the possible outcomes to two simple kinds of quests. The first kind will have you talk to people, trying to either convince somebody to do something or something along those lines. The other kind is the exploration/combat kind, where you travel to distant planets/moons/space stations and do your bit for humanity and the Citadel races. The second kind unfortunately ends up being a bit repetitive – the galaxy of Mass Effect is huge, but most of the planets are nothing more than charts of data you can read, and even the few exportable planets are nothing else than barren ranges of hills and valleys covered in different textures, sprinkled sparsely with bases, ruins and anomalies. Exploring them is still fun, as you often end up entering bunkers and bases where all hell breaks loose. Like it or not however, only the main quest-line has unique planets, bases that aren’t just mirror copies of one another and really in depth conversations. I am being a bit hard on Mass Effect here, because even these seemingly low-profile quests are still a lot better than what other games offer in terms of side quests. It is just that with the bulk of the game so well done, one expects the same amount of effort put into everything else as well.
Related Stuff Games: Jade Empire: Special Edition
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