Mass Effect

Lol..I completed Mass Effect yesterday on the PC, so I'll write a little review on it. Hmmm, I wished the main storyline was longer but it was fun nonetheless..haha. As usual Warning : Spoilers Ahead.

Mass Effect is another high-quality role playing game developed by the famed BioWare studios, creators of Neverwinter Nights, Jade Empire and Knights of the Old Republic. Bioware is something like the equivalent of Blizzard for Real Time Strategy games and BioWare really produces great storytelling contents in their games. For Mass Effect, it's welcoming to see them producing a game that is very original in its storytelling, especially in the domain of science fiction where they succeeded in not being too closely associated to Star Wars and Star Trek. Mass Effect is a world on its own, and has some novel elements that distinct it from the rest of the science fiction genre. Lol, that's the thing about creating your own science fiction universe where it's difficult sometimes not to end up being associated with Star Wars or Star Trek.

Mass Effect's background setting is placed in 22nd century when probes on Mars discover an ancient seafaring alien technology that allows vessels to travel in the speed of light to other parts of the galaxies. Of course, there's close encounters of the third kind with aliens and it's interesting to see the producers coming up with their own original design line of aliens with their own special unique way of communications in some of them. Humanity is considered to be the junior race to the rest of the aliens as it is alleged that they are the latest to embark on the deep space exploration. The protagonist, or rather the person you're gonna control is Commander Shepard who could either be male of female depending on your choice at the starting menu.

Basically, the main plot is that a rogue Spectre (something like a commando) has gone haywire wrecking havoc using his army of synthetic lifeforms. At first, it looked as if he's the antagonist but it turned out that he was merely a pawn of a more sinister plan of some powerful bunch of fellas who saw it as their task to continue the cycle of creation and apocalypse (like the constant rise and fall of Empires). Lol, for the ending, I actually manipulated the situation to let the Council (the ruling exco) die and installed humanity as the prime rulers instead. Btw, the final boss in Mass Effect (reborn undead Saren) is not too challenging to defeat actually and its level of difficulty is less than Darth Malak or Darth Traya (Kreia). Lol, I didn't break a sweat trying to whack it and half the time, it's trying to avoid the massive firepower provided by my team. Most of the time, I didn't bother to shooting him with my weapons but kept spamming my electronics ability..hahaha. =p Oh yea, another interesting thing is check out the fictional galactical map of the Milky Way which places the real Solar System as opposed to the rest of the fictional systems.

Mass Effect's gameplay is a fusion of RPG and First Person Shooter. It's more FPS if you take the class of Infiltrator or Soldier and more of the RPG if you take the ranks of biotic classes like the Adept. Mass Effect have some "magic power" elements in it, something like Force Push, known as biotics, where you can do stuff like creating warp fields and flinging your enemies about by lifting them up. So, biotics are Mass Effect's science-fiction equivalent to wizards. If you're playing Mass Effect on computer with a great graphics card, the sight of biotic powers is very eye-catching indeed. Speaking of graphics, Mass Effect contain nice touches and options to enhance its graphical outlook. There's an option for film grain and blur motion to make the gameplay and characters look realistically good! My lappy graphics card could handle the high texture detail but it lags a little during gameplay. So, during sequences which required timers, I switched off all the goodie enhancements and reduced high textures to low to ensure the completion of that sequence. Voice acting is superb and great job by the voice actors in bringing out the liveliness and characteristics of the main characters in the game. Unlike Knights of the Old Republic, the protagonist does have a voice based on the conversations that the players have chosen. Of course, that meant that the game comes in a lot more massive at 8-10 GB. Hmmm..if there's one annoying aspect about Mass Effect is that the Mako vehicle can controls can be oversensitive and it's extremely irritating to use it to navigate some of the planet surfaces. Mhmmm..the side assignments locations can be rather repetitive as most of them are mere reskins to prevent the size of the game from overspiralling. But these are just small minor side issues in a great game..haha..

As with the distinct features of all Bioware games, Mass Effect also has a morality measurement level in the form of Renegade and Paragon points. If you are a badass commander who goes round killing unnecessarily, you'll get renegade points while goodie commanders get paragon points. These points are also given through the type of interaction given by Shepard with the rest of the other characters. Renegade points helps to provide intimidation, which could prove to be useful in some situations while paragon points are more for charming conversations. Anyways, if you play under the Renegade banner, you get some pretty hilarious outcomes..haha. In the game, there will come to a point where you have to make a choice to sacrifice one of your team members. Not only that, the interesting is that you'll also have to decide at one point whether to kill another of your team members. Unlike Knights of the Old Republic, gaining light side points will not reduce the dark side points and vice versa, which means that both meters can be filled up together.

Of course, one of the controversial aspects of Mass Effect when it comes out is on the apparent "lesbian" alien scene or the excessive showing of booties in a copulation scene. Ok, some may argue that the asaris, despite being voiced by a female, is actually a mono-gender species...hahahaha. Even for the heterosexual run of events, the digitally imaged side view booty of the female soldier, Ashley Williams, is deemed to be too exposed! Seriously, I think it's only a minor matter that got blown up into big proportions. It was a case of over sensualization by a bunch of people who have not played through the game. James Bond movies show more skin that the game seriously. And most of the time, the characters in the game are covered from head to toe with body armour. It certainly created of hu-hahs in the media but that controversial scene is only like a mere one minute or so only in the whole game. And it must be noted that it was done artistically instead of the "in your face" kind of material. It was meant to be some sort of culmination for the romantic subplot nearing the end of the gameplay. Of course, it got slapped with the M18 rating which means that the game is only suitable for 18 years above. Actually, the general style of conversations in the game does feel adult-ish where it's not the typical taglines or conversation you find in a typical video game. To some extent, there's dark humour in some of the character lines too..haha.

To sum it all, Mass Effect is a RPG game which offers a fantastic experience. Running through the cinematics and plot storyline coupled with the orchestra+electronica accompanying music does make it feel like the players themselves are watching a blockbuster movie, with the exception that this ""movie" allows the players to be interactive and determine its course of events. The final cutscene was awesome, just like the final battle with Darth Malak. Hmm..I would say, Mass Effect does fascinates me with some of the concepts that are brought up in the game, kinda like it makes me think a little rather than buzzing past the game for the sake of it. I would love to play a second round of the story again but there's law thesis papers and quite a number of other new upcoming games for me to complete up..haha. The good thing bout Mass Effect is that it has replaybility value where you can use an existing completed character to replay the storyline again. Not only that, the latest 1.01 patch also contains a whole new level of exploration and combat. It would be nice to see Bioware coming up with another new title, particularly Knights of the Old Republic 3 but it seems that they are not producing KotOR 3, but a new MMORPG based on that. Woahhh...that would be interesting to see how it develops in the future. Hopefully it has the same business model of Guild Wars rather than the profit maximising payment mode of Blizzard's WoW..hahaha..