Mass Effect Hands-On - PC interface and Improvements

One of last year's most acclaimed role-playing games, Mass Effect, originally made its debut on the Xbox 360 console and is now headed for the PC with new improvements and accoutrements that are intended to make the game a true PC experience rather than a stripped-down port. We recently had a chance to check in with the game to briefly try out the game's enhanced combat options, as well as to see some of the new interface and control scheme in action. For those who haven't yet played Mass Effect, please be advised that this preview may contain minor spoilers.

Mass Effect tells a grand space-opera story that requires your character, an intergalactic military officer named Commander Shephard, to purse an evil villain and effectively save the universe. To do this, you'll go off on adventures on numerous different planets, meet different alien races, recruit new party members to join you on your quest, and drive an armored, all-terrain transport that can get seriously messed up by pesky giant space worms.

Fortunately, the PC version of the game has some new improvements we were able to see in action. For starters, the game will make full use of the PC's mouse-and-keyboard control scheme, especially in combat. You'll be able to use keyboard shortcuts, for instance, to swap weapons and even call up Shephard's superhuman powers by assigning each one to an individual hotkey then tapping it once. You can do this instead of having to pause the game and select which power you want to use, as in the Xbox 360 version.

You'll also be able to give in-depth tactical orders to each member of your party (rather than just giving a blanket order to all of them) using the game's new tactical menu, which replaces the console game's radial menu. The tactical menu lets you press and hold a key at any time to bring up the options of giving specific orders to each of your two comrades (including defensive, offensive, and move-and-cover commands) by using your mouse to select the appropriate icon onscreen. You can also use this menu to queue up your superpowers, as well as quickly change weapons--though you can also swap weapons with individual hotkeys similar to a standard PC first-person shooter. In fact, the game uses the same W, A, S, D plus mouselook controls of a PC shooter, so we were quickly able to adapt to the brief combat sequence we played on the jungle planet of Virmire. Using the tactical menu, we were able to quickly and easily give orders to our teammates to advance through a rock-strewn river, leapfrogging from cover to cover while ducking away from the telltale red beam of sniper rifles wielded by our enemies, a handful of hostile Geth aliens who were holed up in a small military installation.

In addition to including first-person shooterlike controls on the PC, this new version of Mass Effect will tweak the control scheme of the Mako, the armored transport that you'll use to explore planetary surfaces. Unlike the console version of the game, which required you to aim your Mako's cannons and steer in the same direction, you'll be able to use mouselook to freely rotate the camera along with your turrets while you steer with your keyboard. This makes circle-strafing an actual possibility and will help considerably against any terrestrial enemies (like those subterranean space worms).

The PC version of the game will even revamp the Xbox 360 version's inventory system. The original version of the game tossed all items together and sorted them by how recently you picked them up. However, the PC version will actually sort items by overall power rating and let you sort by weapon class (sniper rifle, assault rifle, and so on). It should even feature shorter loading times, assuming you have a decently high-end PC--and if you have a large hard drive, you'll be able to save as many saved games as you like. With a decent video setup, you'll also be able to enjoy a crisper-looking visual presentation than the Xbox 360's already-sharp looks.

Mass Effect for the PC will otherwise have the same content and story as the Xbox 360 game, but as a "thank you" to loyal PC fans, BioWare will release the Xbox 360's first downloadable content update for free on the PC (though future DLC updates for the PC may not be free of charge). In the meantime, BioWare's Mass Effect team is hard at work on more downloadable content, as well as the inevitable sequels--the plan is to create a trilogy, after all. Mass Effect for the PC looks like it'll offer the deep role-playing experience of the console version with some very handy new PC improvements. The game is scheduled to ship for the PC at the end of May in North America and in June in Europe.