An Outstanding game on its own merits. And in the world of console RPG, stand amongst the best.
Upon loading Mass Effect, it's quite clear it's one of the best looking games for the 360. However, this comes a price. Sometimes the frame rate drops, and as a result the high powered graphics are unable to load quickly and instead show up as 'bumpy' images. Although this is annoying, it's only a minor problem, considering everything else the game does right.
For example, straight away, the game introduces you to the world within Mass Effect. The character creation screen is made up as a computer data-base, where the player is required to 'log-in', where, you can choose to re-write over the data and create a new character or play as pre-made Shepard.
The storyline of the game is your average good vs. evil plot, seeing the good guys traveling across the galaxy in search for the big bag. The plot, and structure of the overall narrative is similar to that of KOTOR, which isn't a bad thing, since it worked then, and works now.
In relation to the main narrative, it is possible to do the main quest in under 20 hours, if one is to rush and not stop and absorb the atmosphere Bioware has worked so hard to create within the game.
There are side-mission as well, naturally. These consist of going out into space to find a planet with pirates, or seek out a ship with some rouge scientist etc. There are also uninhabited planets to explore. However, these soon become boring and dull to explore, since each planet is more or less the same, but with different skins (i.e dusty, icy, green and lush etc.)
The gameplay is almost like that of KOTOR, expect everything is in real time. The combat system works very well, but sometimes feels more difficult than it should, perhaps due to the camera sometimes going crazy and all over the place. There is more focus on projectile weapons in Mass Effect, and at first, it does feel like some type of 3rd person shooter. After a while however, you will move away from this generalization, and the game will simply feel like its own.
Sound is brilliant. As always, Bioware has crafted a decent soundtrack that fits in nicely into this Space-Age drama. I personally found nothing wrong wit the soundtrack, but I'm sure some would...
For the Christmas period, this game will suffice nicely. One can spend hours upon hours playing and re-playing this game, which is always nice. It is a beautiful game, one of the best looking on a console right now. The story blows all other games out of the water (including making the Halo 'story' look like child scribble) and the game is worth playing just to go along for the right.
Even though there are slight technical errors and the slight case of repetition, Mass Effect is simply a fantastic game.