Mass Effect – Xbox 360/PC, 2007/2008, Bioware

Story – 5.5/10.0

Gameplay – 4.5/10.0

Design – 8.0/10.0

Control – 7.0/10.0

Sound – 9.5/10.0

Fun Factor – 3.0/10.0

Overall – 6.0/10.0

Mass Effect, oft-lauded as one of the truly great modern RPGs, with a metascore of 91 for the Xbox 360 version and an 89 for the PC port, is not a very good game. Now, I’ve played Mass Effect from start to finish two times. I’ve done just about all of the side quests and explored every last bit of the of the companion character back stories. If you doubt my reasons for disliking it, read on.

Story – 5.5/10.0

People often read reviews before buying games, since the primary purpose of the medium is to justify a purchase. In that light, I won’t be divulging too much in this section. However, as something of a setup: Humanity has expanded to the distant stars and has come into contact with alien races. Using “mass relays” that use some kind of ancient superscience called the “mass effect,” ships can travel between star systems extremely quickly. Pretty convenient. Anyway, the aliens have a council to decide galactic affairs and humanity wants in because all humans are greedy jerks. The council, as well as a truly massive city, are located on a giant space station called the Citadel. Both the Citadel and the mass relays were left behind by the now-extinct Protheans. I’m not sure how anyone knows that, but they do, so you just have to deal with it.

Oh, and the Citadel is operated by the “Keepers,” these weird green fellows with plenty of limbs that don’t interact with anyone or anything except the Citadel’s control panel things that are scattered everywhere. Now, you may be thinking, “Gee, that sounds really suspicious. Why would several alien races move into and use a space station run by things they can’t understand, instead of just using–oh, I don’t know–a planet?” Well, I wondered that too. But in the game, two scientists are the only ones who care at all. Two. Out of trillions.

As I said, I don’t want to go into great detail, but the grand overarching plot is elementary at best. I’ve had people discuss the plot of this game with me face to face, believeing it to be one of the most visionary things to ever hit the world. My customary response is, “Have you heard of science fiction? It’s a genre, and more than half of everything in the genre cover the same themes as Mass Effect. Not only that, but they cover them better.” The response I get is usually an indignant one.

Honestly, how can anyone not have the entire plot of Mass Effect figured out by two hours in? It’s boring, predictable, and poorly presented. Oh, and judging by how often the Alliance (Human) military contacts me to take care of arbitrary tasks unrelated to my mission that will decide the fate of all life, I began to wonder if there really was an Alliance military, or if it was just some guy with a space radio, making up jobs for me to do and laughing as I actually waste my time doing them.

Every other Bioware game I’ve played has a better storyline than Mass Effect. Most notably, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, (also by Bioware) which many of the characters and situations in Mass Effect have been directly ripped from. That’s just laziness. The Krogan race has a passion for war, led an extremely successful campaign against members of the established order long ago, but have since been nearly destroyed. The ones that are left live out their days as mercenaries, more interested in killing for money than unifying their kind or helping it to survive. Oh, wait, that’s exactly the same story as that of the Mandalorians in Knights of the Old Republic. Even the grand plot of the entire game universe is alarmingly simliar to that of KotOR. Mass Effect‘s story is uninspired at best.

Gameplay – 4.5/10.0

Playing Mass Effect is not an enjoyable experience. There are fun things in the game, yes. There are even good decisions, like implementing a Gears of War-style cover system. It doesn’t work as well as the one in Gears, but it does work, and it’s not terribly problematic. Combat is reasonably enjoyable at first, although it can certainly get boring after a while. Companion characters can be a little dumb at times, doing things like standing, surrounded by cover but ignoring it, and taking fire from six or more enemies. You can pause the game and give specific orders to your squad mates, but having a party AI that works pretty well most of the time but doesn’t at all other times is beyond frustrating.

Opening locked items is absurd. In the PC version, you have a short amount of time to guide an arrow shape through orange unmoving rectangles and red rotating rectangles from the outside of a circle to the inside. If you hit a red rectangle, you get reset at the beginning. It’s kind of like playing Frogger to pick a lock. How this is futuristic or appropriate is completely beyond me. Oh, and if you fail? This brings me to one of the best (worst) parts. Omni-gel.

Omni-gel is…well, it’s something. You get it sometimes. If you have equipment that you want to get rid of, (or need to because of the terrible inventory system) you can break it down into omni-gel. There’s not really any way that even a science fiction game can explain that. All equipment doesn’t break down into the same material, especially not a gel. Anyway, you’re constantly having to free up your inventory due to an arbitrary carrying capacity limit coupled with finding things like assault rifles all over everything, so you always have lots of omni-gel. If you fail a game of space-Frogger and can’t open a box full of more assault rifles that you don’t need, just smear omni-gel all over it. The most basic form of all items is a universal lock pick. You can open any box,  any prison cell, or even hack into any computer console…all with the gel that was a few assault rifles not ten seconds ago. If this doesn’t bother you on a fundamental level, you’re a psychopath. Please, never speak to me.

As I said, omni-gel is was one of the best (worst) parts, but it’s only a small part of the inventory system. You find items all the time. You only very occasionally need any of them. I wish Mass Effect was the kind of game that tracked everything you do, so I could give you the “Assault Rifles Found” number for my current playthrough. I suspect that it is between 800 and 1,200. I have six party members. Do you know how many assault rifles I need? Six. Not twelve hundred. This is to say nothing of the hundreds of shotguns, sniper rifles, pistols, weapon modifications, and ammo types that are constantly funneled into my inventory like I have somewhere to put it. I wouldn’t mind getting so many weapons, really, except that I can only carry 150 items. You’d think that if you can carry 150 assault rifles, a few more wouldn’t be a problem, but that’s just not how Mass Effect works. It could be logically explained by my ship’s cargo hull being full or something like that, but no. I actually don’t think the ship has a cargo hull. I can switch between the different components of my useless assault rifle collection at any point I feel like it, so I’m obviously carrying them with me. I don’t know how many assault rifles you can carry, but I bet it’s not 150. Even if you could support that much weight, after about nine I would think that finding a place to put them would become problematic. Oh, and let’s not forget that items you find from killed enemies are automatically added to your inventory the next time you open your inventory screen. You have 148 items, and you want to equip a new shotgun you just found, so you open your inventory. Since the last time you checked your inventory, you’ve found 20 new assault rifles, three of which you’d really like to keep. You have to break down 18 of those 20 assault rifles, including one of the ones you actually want, into omni-gel. Why you couldn’t convert some of your older, crappier equipment into omni-gel instead of the new stuff is a mystery.

Away from the items, though, navigating the galaxy is easy enough. It’s a little silly that there’s a loading screen between systems within a star cluster, but I can look past that. You can read about all the planets you come across, see the length of their years, stuff like that. Not that you care, but it’s there. I really like extra details like that being available. You can even land on several planets that aren’t critical to any quests, which is really cool. Or, at least, I thought it was cool. Let me warn you: you don’t want to land on any more planets than you have to. Why?

Because of the Mako.

The Mako is your landing craft. Joker, the pilot of your ship, (and major villain in the Batman universe) drops you and whichever two party members you choose to accompany you on the planet in the Mako. At first, I thought, “Cool, I’ve got a little APC with a machine gun and a cannon. Oh wow, it even has thrusters on the bottom so I can kind of ‘hop’ with it! This is really sweet!” Yeah, that sentiment wears off after about ten minutes. Joker is very careful about where he drops you off when you land places. It’s never anywhere near anything. Here’s how planet surfaces work: X terrain with Y frustration level in Z percent of the area. There are a few planets where X is the most boring terrain, Y is the highest frustration level imaginable, and Z is 95%. Frustration level, by the way, basically means how many mountains there are. The Mako can’t drive up mountains that are past a certain steepness, so frustration level is basically the steepness of the mountains. The thrusters on the bottom of the Mako are actually only useful as an “un-stuck” feature while exploring. In combat you can use it to hop over missiles, which is silly to say, let alone do. Everywhere you go is covered in mountains, to make the boring drive across Uninteresting Planet With a Dumb Name #310 take longer so Bioware could advertise Mass Effect as taking lots of hours to complete, as though that somehow translates into quality.

If you don’t do any sidequests, you might not get sick to your core of piloting the Mako. Maybe. If you’re a completionist, get ready to spend half of your time seething with passionate rage as you bounce around unrealistic mountainscapes which are really nothing more than textures that have been pulled skyward. Way to make everything boring. Oh, unless you happen to encounter a big burrowing worm that spits acid, called a Thresher Maw. They just seem to be on certain planets for no reason. I guess they don’t have to eat, since there’s only never more than one on a given planet, and no other forms of life. Or maybe they eat rocks. But of course, things that eat rocks are fiercely territorial. See how none of this makes sense?

This is to say nothing of the “good and evil” system in Mass Effect. Good is called “paragon” and evil is called “renegade”. If you’re a racist, then you get lots of renegade points. If not, you’re good! It’s…pretty dumb.

Mass Effect‘s conversation system works very well. It’s easy to exploit, but it operates smoothly. The game uses Shephard as your last name no matter what you select as a first name, which allows interaction to seem more natural, as NPCs can call you “Shephard”. Very good decision on Bioware’s part. During character creation, you also get to select a personality and a personal history from a small list, and the game does a good job of referencing both of those often. Conversation is a huge part of every Bioware game, and since this system works so well, I’m giving Mass Effect a 4.5/10 in Gameplay despite the enormous problems in practically every other area.

Design – 8.0/10.0

Character design, texture detail, draw distance, and just about everything else is visually pleasing in Mass Effect. It’s a beautiful game. I couldn’t give it a perfect 10, though, because of the boring and repeated textures on the planets not critical to the story, as well quite a few instances of entire installations being copied and pasted onto different planets to provide a new location for a side quest that you’d probably rather not be doing anyway.

On the whole, though, it’s stunning. The design of the planets that are critical to the story are varied and memorable. There aren’t that many of them, sadly, but they are a pleasure to look at. If only this made the game fun, then I could see the excruciatingly high scores given to this game.

Control – 7.0/10.0

Things pretty much work how you want them to, save for the Mako. Three point dock for that atrocity.

Sound – 9.5/10.0

The music for Mass Effect is really enjoyable. The sound effects are appropriate and implemented nicely. I actually just docked this score half a point because I wish there was more music. Voice acting is really top notch, too. No complaints.

Fun Factor – 3.0/10.0

Like I said earlier, Mass Effect isn’t a fun game. I got bored extremely quickly the first time I played it. I’ve actually forced myself through it again just so I could write as accurate a review as possible for you guys, and it was even less enjoyable this time. Making a list of things I hate about it was kind of fun, though. I doubt Bioware planned on people using that as a way to extend their game’s longevity. Borrow Mass Effect from someone if you insist on playing it, and give it back after you leave the Citadel the first time.

Overall – 6.0/10.0

Mass Effect looks nice, sounds good, and the buttons do what they’re supposed to. If I wanted something that met only those criteria, I’d buy a shiny new stereo. There are so many problems with this game, I feel pretty comfortable calling its success the product of good advertising, name brand association, and impressionable gamers who didn’t know science fiction was a whole genre of things. Either that, or maybe people just like it because it reminds them of Knights of the Old Republic, which is actually good.