Well then my fellow gamers, today was a good day. I woke up around ten, went to work at Wetzel's Pretzels, gave pretzels to reasonably attractive mall-hopping girls while attempting to flirt with an equally attractive coworker, and promptly returned to my dear and lovable computer, Barton. With the recent addition of a 120mm fan, a new 550w power supply, a handy bit of software called ATI-tools, and a mountain of LEDs, Barton warms up like the proverbial nuclear holocaust looming in the distance: sound, light and heat belch forth from all his orifices, not unlike my father.
With Barton ready to go, I sat down to burn a good five hours on Mass Effect, which I picked up Friday, coincidentally the very day it was released, unbeknownst to me. After finishing all the subquests I could stomach, I burned my way through hordes of synthetic robot enemies in need of a good defrag, and found myself on one completed game. As various complaints and praises have been jostling for position in my head since Friday, I felt this was a good time to stop and write this. I plan, but will likely fail to compartmentalize the review for easier viewing. Onward.
First, a brief description for those that don't know about Mass Effect.
Mass Effect is a space-based RPG set in 2183. Humanity discovered ancient alien technology hidden on Mars and reverse-engineered themselves two hundred years ahead in tech. They promptly found “Mass Relays,” giant alien teleporters in space that led to countless other systems in the Milky Way. Humanity quickly encountered other races, and after a brief scuffle, joined the interstellar community of peaceful worlds. And so begins our story.
Your Character
You are _____ Shepard. For dialogue reasons you cannot choose the last name, and the first name you choose will never be mentioned. No real surprise there. You can choose your gender, which is a surprising turn, considering the level of interaction throughout the game, but more on that later. You may also choose your character's background history and psychological profile, and although this has no effect on the happenings of the game, the dialogue throughout will be affected by your choices, creating a world you really can feel a part of. A good touch on that part, and a nice trait of Mass Effect, one of many. You may also choose your class, ranging from full combat to full tech and full psychic, with in between classes at every step. After playing through once as full combat and about 10% as full psychic, I can safely say I'm staying full combat. Your computer allies are much better at using the biotic (psychic) abilities efficiently and the tech advantages can be used no matter which current party member wields them. Besides, it is far more satisfying to shoot stuff. Big boom good.
Other Characters (Party Members)
You get six allies through the game, and you may choose two on missions; one human you start with, another human you get about 2 minutes into the first mission and three aliens on the hub/second mission area about 30 minutes in. The last alien and in my mind lamest of the six you pick up quite a bit later, for me about 5 hours later. Each team member has a unique personality and, if you care to dig, a huge amount of backstory for each. Predictably, each has an important connection to the plot, or is the son/daughter of someone important, but it is still believable. To add to this, the aliens are quite simply cooler than the humans, and I favored them almost exclusively throughout the game. Dialogue is scripted for interaction between your party members based on who you have with you at the time, and exploring the depths of that is one of my goals for the next play through. I will tell you that you should pick a pair and stick with them throughout, as there is an achievement for completing the majority of the game with each member.
Other Characters (Non-Party)
Mass Effect has eight mostly friendly species to interact with, and four exclusively enemy species, with non-sentients galore, although there is debate on a few of them. Each has a uniquely detailed culture and history for you to explore at your leisure, but as there is a goodly amount of experience and an achievement to be had, I suggest getting it all. Most is added to your Codex, your space-encyclopedia, after you hear a story from someone, and the majority of the text is read aloud to you, cutting down on pesky sit-and-read time. I turned on a few over lunch one day. None of the races are one-sided, and enemies and allies come from all the various sentients. At the hub location, various species are scattered around, with some humans here and there. By the time I got done, running into a Krogan merc on the outskirt systems didn't bat an eyelash. Plenty of social commentary throughout, with inter-species prejudices coming from all directions.
