Best. Story. Ever. Gameplay could have been better.
First off, you should know that I wanted a 360 for two games initially. Halo 3 and Mass Effect. The fact that Bioware's name is attached to this game in ANY capacity shot it right to the top of my list. Bioware, if you don't know, is responsible for many of the greatest western RPG's ever made. KOTOR, Neverwinter Nights, Baldur's Gate II. For as long as I have been a fan I have always felt like they are tops when it comes to story telling, and kinda mediocre when it comes to gameplay and technical prowess. This tradition carries on in Mass Effect, faults included.
Let me start by throwing out a comfortable mix of bashing and praising for Mass Effect. The one aspect most deserving of this treatment would be the gameplay.
There are 4 main aspects to the entirety of Mass Effect's gameplay. Combat, character management, character interactions, and Exploration.
Bioware really branched out here and made the combat play out like a 3rd person shooter. Thankfully they mixed it up quite a bit by keeping the "pause anytime" ability that was great in KOTOR. You can stop the action at any time and do a handful of actions including changing weapons, giving squad orders and using abilities as well as looking around. This makes the clunky-to-aim controls a lot more forgivable because you can just pause and aim whenever you want. At first that sounds like cheating when you consider it in the context of a typical shooter, but here it works just fine as does not make the game dramatically easier. It simply compensates for a fault.
The character management is about what you would expect for an RPG. The menu system could have used a little bit more tuning, but overall it is really intuitive and provides enough information to make easy decisions about how to specialize your characters and what items to pick over what you already have equipped. Sorting items alphabetically and "stacking" them would have been helpful. Instead the game sorts by item "rank" ( rank II, rank IV, etc.) and if you have 4 pieces of the same armor you have to scroll past all four instead of seeing a listing that says x4 or something. Nit-picky I know, but considering how much time most players spend in these menus it becomes obvious there would have been some benefit to include these changes.
The exploration segments are Mass Effects major weakness. The bulk of exploration outside of the main story arc consists of a mix of space flight and driving. The space flight is basically just clicking on a map that starts at a Galaxy wide view and branches all the way down to a solar system view where you can read about individual planets and explore many of them. This menu driven aspect is pretty well done, but I was kind of hoping for some kind of space combat aspect. My only complaint here is not about what the game is, but what the game isn't.
The driving exploration/combat segments are the single worst aspect about Mass Effect. The 6 wheeled truck/tank/thing controls absolutely horribly. It is extremely rubbery and jerky. Once you get used to it things get better, but throughout the entire game you will dread these portions. The gun turret can also not point below the vehicles ground plain. Meaning if you are on a ridge and pointing the aiming reticle down, when you fire your shot goes straight ahead in parallel to where the cannon is pointing. Since the cannon doesn't point any farther down then parallel with the ground, this becomes a major pain later on. You spend a lot of time trying to find a good place to put your vehicle instead of trying to line up shots. It also seems a bit odd that a 6 wheeled tank can drive straight up a 70 degree ramp (almost vertical). At least the Jumpjets on this thing are fun.
To make things worse the environments that you explore for side quests are extremely repetitive and bland. They all look 99% the same, with the only differences being color and maybe some weather changes. It seems that Bioware should have scrapped this entire aspect of the game and replaced it with on-foot exploration segments.
The driving aspects really seem like amateur hour compared to the character interaction this game does into. The conversations between NPC's and your character are the single most immersive I have ever seen in a game. The "response select wheel" is extremely intuitive and works very well. You are given responses that can be considered "good" or "bad" with regards to your characters attitude. If you want to tell someone off, you can, or you can be sympathetic. The level of animation detail in character's faces and movements goes along perfectly with how each conversation plays out. The entire game could have been 90% character interactions and I would have still loved it.
The graphics in Mass Effect are really good, if you ignore the side mission planets. The animation is really well done, with a few shortcomings, and the look and feel for the game are really immersive. You really feel like you are on a huge space station when you are walking around on one. The weapons could have used a bit more variety with how they look, but since you don't really see them all that much this isn't a huge deal. Character models and designs are top notch. There are several different species of aliens in the game and each type really feels unique and memorable. Once you see one you remember exactly what they are. The graphics really shine during cut scenes. The cinematic direction is on par with many big budget movies, even if the graphics fall short of CGI.
The sound is also really well done. The voice acting is some of the best ever for a game. The characters sound upset when they are yelling at someone, and they sound sympathetic when they are trying to comfort someone. Sarcasm, humor, anger and sadness are all really well done with the voice acting. Bioware even got a little playful with the voice acting for one of the species that ends up being quite funny.
The music goes a long way to setup the atmosphere and carry the game along. Every single time I opened up the space map I got excited to hear the music. It's just cool and very fitting.
The single best aspect of this game is easily the story and atmosphere. I rarely have emotional reactions in games, but this game had a handful of them. Even early on in the game there are moments where I was feeling very patriotic and motivated to get the bad guys.
I read the Mass Effect book a few months back and was really intrigued with the universe that was setup. The game does a good job of mentioning a lof of what is explained in the book, but doesn't spell it out quite as well. I felt like reading the book provided me with a bit of benefit for understanding some side aspects of the story.
The story wastes no time getting interesting. From early on in the game you are sent off on your quest and events will unfold in a very interesting way. The story is clearly presented and easy to understand, if you pay attention, yet is quite involved and original. Plot twists are plentiful in this one. I can't say enough of this aspect without ruining the story itself because all of the greatness about it is because of what actually happens in the story. I would be spoiling quite a lot if I went into anymore detail. I'll just have to leave it alone after pointing out that this is easily one of the most memorable stories I have ever experienced in a video game.
Overall I thoroughly enjoyed Mass Effect. After completing it by playing the "good" guy once through I started a second game with the intent to be "Evil". I have too many other games right now to actually dedicate myself to another play through, but it's easy to say that many people will want to play it several times through just to see it all again. It's very rare these days that I ever find myself giving a game a second lap.
And for the record, the much discussed lesbian scene wasn't that big of a deal. I made a female character and let my fiance know that I intended to pursue getting to this scene. She was nice about rooting me on every time I had conversation segments with the intended target of my toon's affections. We did a lot of "whooping" when the scene finally happened, even though the onscreen action was pretty PG-13, just because of the novelty involved.
Mass Effect is an easy recommendation. If you want to experience the closest thing to an epic movie while playing a game, this is a great place to look.