A Game with a Story that rivals any movie Amazing Graphics and Fun A must buy for anyone who has a 360 Re
The Story involes Commander Sheppard, it is based more then 100 years in the future, where humans are getting involved with other life forms for the first time. You pick Male/ Female, you pick what is you background like, and your class.. what you are good at. You start the game working in the Normandy, and checking out Eden Prime. From there everything goes downhill. I don't want to give away too much of the story, so lets say that Hard Choises will be mad, Truths will be shown, Race is a big part of the game, and the game always has you asking questions, and that is a very good thing. You get all sorts of turns and spins, and eventually you will take control of Normandy, what kind of Captian will you be? The game also has a great feature where you pick what you want to say. The thing you pick however is not the words you say, but a summory. You will say things "more Human like" then what is printed on the screen. This Game has everything you need a Blockbuster Game, Action, Love, Drama, and Adventure.
Mass Effect has a unique combat system. You have Guns, and different tech powers. You also have a crew. I will talk more about the crew in the nect paragraph. If you expect to go in, and shoot everything around you like a mad man, good luck.. you will last about 5 sec. before being blown up. No in Mass Effect you need to be very stratgic about fighting. You need to duck and cover, and wait for the perfect oppertunity to shoot. If your not careful, you will see the Game Over screen a lot. Depending on what class you pick, will depend what guns, and powers you will use. If you are a Vandiguard (i was) you can use 2 different guns, The shotgun, and the Pistole.. also you have a ton of tech/biotic powers, like lift, barriors, regroup, and others. All are in a screen mode. If you want to change weapons, or use your abilitys you have to press the R/L back buttons.. not the trigger ones, above that.. The game pauses during that time so you are not rushed picking your wepond. This both a good thing and a bad thing. The good is that you are not scrampling trying to pick a gun.. The bad is that you will spend a lot of time there, and breaks up some of the action. There are many difficulties in the game.. so if you play on Easy, the enemy ai will be stupid, the harder it gets, the brains they get.. so it depends what you get. the Ai may just be stupid so you can kill him right there.
The Crew part in the game is also very interesting. The crew is important for battles, they also have classes and such. You have to give them better guns, and armor if you hope to win. The other cool part is that you can totally skip parts of the story if you don't have them on your crew. You can have some aliens on your ship, but if you don't want them, you never have them, and the plot can be very different. Also you can have romances with some of your crew, depending on wether you are a guy or a girl. That also can play a part in the story. You can have a bond with your crew, but i think it could have a little more interaction with them, like you can ask what they think, or where we should go. a little more crew interaction on the battle field would be nice. But overall they do a great job giving everyone personallites. My favorite is Garrus!
The Galaxy is huge, and you can expolore it. There are so many different side missions it is not even funny. You can extend the game greatly if you do sidemissions to other planets. It can take you up to 50 hours to beat! but as low was in the teens, if you choose not to. You can see each planet in your map! every planet is a little bit different. They give you so much info on planets its crazy. They spent a good amount of time, writing about what kind of planet it is, how long a day is, what lives on the planet, and how big it is. Some planets are unexplorable.. so you can scan for objects, or do nothing with it.. Some planets are just place holders. witch make it more believeavble. The main place is called the cidel. It is a large main city where you can buy things, and do missions. There is a lot to explore there as well, you may even get lost in the place! The thing i like is how many cool planets there are, you see other creatures who live on them and all are well artisically designed. All have different characteristics, and none of them are too crazy, and unbelieveable.
One thing you will notice in this game is that there is no Dark and Light path. In real life there is no Dark and light path, they are hidden and not 100 percent either way. And that is what i like about it. You don't become evil, or good, but you become human, and no matter what you do there are always people who don't agree. It really shows what kind of person you are, are you the harden smart guy who wants to win, strict, or are you the loveable guy who gets tough when action comes. it all depends on what you want to do, and many games don't offer that at all.
The Only real problem i have with the game is the Mako. The Mako is the huge tank that you need to use to ride around huge planets. The main problem i have with this is the controls. It is uncorpoative. It does not work.. its hard to control, and the guns are sometimes hard to shoot. There is no option to learn how to use it.. no tutorials or anything! sometimes you feel its better off getting out of you car and taking them out by foot. cause its kinda easy to blow up! and that means Game over.. so you most likely will try to skip by enimies rather then killing them. But sometimes it is fun! with its problems it is still fun to make jumps, and climb mt. with it.
The game also features a great cast. Some inculded are.. Seth Green as Joker the Pilot, Keith David as Commander Anderson, Marina Sirtis as Matriarch Benezia, and Kimberly Brooks as Gunnery Chief Ashley Williams . There are also no reading dialogue in this game. Everything is voice acted in a great way. That is what also makes this game great. Everything seems to be acted out well. Nobody is annoying to hear, and everyone you meet, both major and minor have a different personality. That makes the game even more enjoyable.
There is also a RPG element where you level up your stats, and your crew members. After you kill people you get experiance, or after you complete a majot conversation you get experiance points, even picking up items you get some XP.. You use those points to get better lift, more power to your guns, and different types of powers. You also can have upgrades on your wepons, and armor. You Can put different things on your guns to make then stronger, or less prone to over heat. There are no bullets in mass effect, but you do have to be aware of overheating. Where you have to wait for a cooling down process to use them agian. There are also gernades, but they do very little. you can thorow them at people, and you can detonate them, they are very hard to use. They def. could have improved on that aspect.
The graphics are great, yet it is sometimes harder then the system can handle. You will come across things that at first have no textures.. It takes a few more seconds to get everything the way it should look. But when it does, the game looks beautiful! lots of different textures, and facial expressions are top notch. Sometimes you experiance some frame rate jumps, this may bother people, but for me, its so minor you cna easily overlook any kind of graphical glitch. it does not really make a huge difference in the game, unless you are a freak about that sorts of stuff.
Overall if you are looking for a new type of game, look no further, Mass Effect is a unique game everyone should try out, It has almost everyone thing you want in a single player game. You can play this game over and over to experiance something different each time. There are so many different places to explore, and anything you find wrong with this game, is a little scratch on the universe of a game. You can hardly notice the bad things, cause your surronded by so many good things. Agian a must buy for the 360, and this is only part one... The game leaves you wanting more.. and i am saying that in good way, because that is the point of a trilogy, to want to play the next part.
Breakdown
Gameplay: Great duck and cover system, lots of exploring, Mako needs work in future games..
Graphics: Minor tech. problems don't really take away the beautifuly designed game
Sound: One of the best Original Music in games today, some are very epic, and everything fits nicly
Value: Destorys everything eles as far as value, 60 bucks can give you hours and hours of gameplay, plus you never know what you could get from Xbox Live!
Overall: Top 5 360 games ever, and maybe will go down is one of the top Original Series in Gaming!