Mass Effect

Pass Defect.

Mass Effect is yet another game I just had to buy because everyone said it was one of the greatest games of this generation.  I really need to stop listening to people and just rent before I buy.  The second game in the Mass Effect series might be one of the greatest games of this generation, but this one is a big nasty fart.  First of all, Mass Effect is NOT an RPG.  It's a TPS with RPG elements.  If you think it's an RPG, then you either didn't PC game during the glory years of the PC RPGs, or you've only been around for the last two generations.

Since Mass Effect is a TPS, the first thing to complain about is the god-awful combat.  It's very similar to Gears of War, but the shooting mechanics (even if your character is an expert with the gun you're using) are slightly off, and the aiming isn't nearly as tight as in Gears.  The cool thing about the guns is that they don't have to reload and instead need to cool down if fired too much, an interesting change.  But that's the only positive feature about the combat.  Your characters' movements are nearly as loose as the aiming, and the cover system sucks total balls.  Shepard automatically moves behind cover, and when enemies are swarming, you'll get pelted from every which way as you try to maneuver the crap controls for a shot (no blind fire).  Your AI partners are worth shit as well, and typically you'll find yourself telling them to find cover far behind the battle so they don't all get slaughtered instantaneously.  If you don't tell them to hide, they rarely find cover themselves and stand out in the open, soaking everything the enemy throws at them.  Talk about a royal pain in the ass.

Play your cards right, and you might get some alien booty.

Often, whether in the main quest or side quests, you'll find yourself driving the Mako, the most durable ground vehicle ever made.  This thing can take a lot of missiles, and is not affected by gravity whatsoever.  Another fact BioWare never seemed aware of: there's no way a planet many times the size of earth should have the same gravity as the moon.  What the hell were they even thinking?  You'll see the Mako going up mountains at near-90 degree angles or rolling off them to little effect.  The Mako combat is also atrocious; wait until the Thresher Maul gets a hold of you.  It will show exactly how loose and unmanageable the vehicle controls are.  For side quests, the planets you can drive on are sparse with little to do, and finding your objective can be extremely tedious.  There's little variety in the environments outside of sometimes finding a very cold or very hot world.  And the side quests are so mind-numbingly repetitive that you'll probably quit doing them after only a few.

Then there's the actual quests in the main storyline.  There's a lot of exploring and dialogue followed by periods of combat. While some of the exploration is cool and there are some neat environments, the main storyline missions can be awfully drawn-out and boring.  Like the side quests, these can get annoyingly repetitive as well.  As for the dialogue, I can say BioWare at the very least did better here than they did with Dragon Age later on.  You'll probably need to work on paragon, but Shepard sounds like such a pussy that way.  Still far beats out his dialogue as a renegade though.  He doesn't sound like a badass at all, more like an immature dad at a high school soccer game.  I guess guys that work on video games would have no idea what badass is though, so I can give them a pass.

 Shepard.. I.. I am your father.

The story is highly overrated like the rest of the game.  It's similar to the many B-rated sci-fi movies you could see over the years.  Humans are colonizing large portions of the galaxy, there are aliens and politics, and then a huge threat appears that is likely going to destroy everything.  Hopelessly outmanned and outgunned, it's up to a human and his crew to stop the invasion of machines.  Whatever.  The problem is that your choices mean virtually nothing, other than potentially losing some of your crew along the way.  At the end, you can choose to save the Council or not, that's the extent of your choice and consequence.  Oh, and before I forget, this game just looks average, with constant visual glitches (like screen tearing) and slow-downs.  Not impressive considering that this game isn't even that detailed.

6.5/10