With an amazing story, fast-paced action, and addicting RPG elements, Mass Effect seats itself among Bioware's best.
The Good: Immersive story that comes to life before your eyes; stirring soundtrack; lightning fast combat; plenty of solid RPG elements that vastly increase replayability; upgrading your character's skills, weapons, and armor is truly enjoyable; your choices really do affect the outcome of the world around you; interactive dialogue system paired with great voice acting
The Bad: Frequent stuttering, tacked-on squad member controls, some might find that the weapons/biotics wheels disrupt the flow of combat
The Ugly: Horrendous texture pop-in; clunky inventory system and item menus
The graphics in Mass Effect push the limit of the Xbox 360's power. The character models are amazingly detailed. The environments are rich, full, and varied. The camera system during dialogue and movie scenes add tremendously to the thrill of watching the story unfold before you. And when you put all these together, you have to remind yourself over and over again that you are in fact not watching a Star Wars spin off on TV. However, there is a downside to the awesome graphics; as I said, this game pushes the Xbox 360 to its technical limit. It actually pushes it so far that the Xbox 360 often cannot keep up with it. There are frequent stutters throughout your exploration and even during movie scenes, and you cannot go five minutes without seeing noticeable texture pop-in. I really wish they would've spent more time fixing this to mimic the PC version, because the graphical hitches are almost entirely absent on the computer. But if you can stand low-res textures (at least until the high-res ones appear) and slight freezing around every corner, you will be awe struck by all of the other qualities of Mass Effect.
And there are many. You can still feel the KOTOR in Mass Effect, such as in the slightly altered pause screen before each encounter, or in some smaller details, such as building up your Decryption and Electronics skills so that you can unlock higher quality crates. However, the game is certainly different enough that most won't be bothered by it. Mass Effect follows the typical RPG rules by the book: you gain experience after battle, and once you level up you can increase your skills with weapons, biotic powers, or techs. You can also choose your gender (not species, though; you must be human), look, and class of expertise. And throughout the course of the game, you will find many, many items, some of which will be useful to you, and some of which will be useful to your teammates, whom you can also upgrade and equip. You will find upgrades which you can attach to your weapons and armor; these add a good bit of depth and strategy to your choices. If you're in an area where you are fighting a good many robots (synthetics), then you can equip your weapon to do extra damage to synthetics, and likewise with organics. The whole system of finding new weapons, armor, and upgrades adds huge depth to the game, and it's genuinely exciting to power yourself up as you discover ever-increasingly powerful equipment.
And then there's the combat. Action in Mass Effect feels almost spot on. When you're not making decisions that affect the course of the game's storyline, you're making your way throw waves of enemies trying to unlock the next portion of the story. You generally won't ever feel over- or under-powered; you are never too out-matched that you can't complete the mission, and you never feel that you're simply squashing bugs until you really deserve to feel that way. On the game screen, along with your and your teammates' health, you have a radar which clearly alerts you to the enemies in the general area. Most of the time the order of the enemies is linear: there is a straight path to your destination, and although sometimes the level layout changes it up and gives you a few different paths, you never feel that you're missing out on any action. And there is plenty of action, too. There is generally one large "dungeon" per planet, and you are required to traverse its ins and outs to complete the given mission. Enemies you encounter will put up a brief but hard-fought attack: the battle is generally decided in the first couple of minutes, as health depletes fairly rapidly. All of the Rambo's out there can pass this game over right now, because Bioware is not going to let you simply waltz out into the open, get pounded on all sides, and live to tell about it. You are required to take cover if you wish to live to see the next plot twist. This cover system is mediocre, especially compared to other games that have mastered the trade, such as Gears of War. Most enemies go down fairly quickly, but so do you and your teammates, so it's best to play defensively. You can often take advantage of the environment by shooting nearby tanks filled with explosive material that can turn the tide in your favor. You can also (and it is highly recommended) pause the action whenever needed to use biotic powers, the Star Wars equivalent of force powers, to aid your team in battle. These powers can honestly be quite humorous in addition to being extremely helpful; you can use powers such as Throw to send your enemies flying off nearby ledges or use Lift to render them helplessly floating through the air while you shoot their limp bodies. You can also use tech powers such as Sabotage to overheat their weapons or Overload to disable their shields. And of course you can always resort to simply shooting them. The guns themselves work exceptionally well; when you shoot a shotgun, you feel the kick. The more you shoot, the worse your accuracy becomes and the closer your weapon is to overheating, so lay off the trigger frequently to let your gun cool down and your accuracy return.
The combat fits well with the story, as you never feel like you're just listening to conversations or like you're never getting a break from the action. The game follows a steady pattern of getting briefed for a mission or furthering the storyline in a city, and then going out to a location and blowing the crap out of everything there. The action and the story sort of alternate, although they aren't by any means separated. You'll get transmissions during the course of your fighting, and there'll be plenty of fights in locations you wouldn't expect. The story itself takes about 15 hours to beat if you're sticking solely to the main plot. However, completing all the side objectives could take up to 40 hours. And don't worry, this one is among Bioware's best storylines. The universe comes to life before your very eyes. There are almost ten completely original sentient species, each with their background, motives, and interweavings with other species. And some of those species will even join you in your journey. Of course, all your party members have backgrounds and motives themselves, and each one is thick with emotion and depth to convince even the most skeptical gamer. And don't think your character is off the hook, either. You'll be forced to make truly difficult decisions multiple times throughout the game, many of which drastically affect the lives of those around you. What's so superb about Mass Effect is that these choices aren't meaningless; they really do have a huge impact on the game. In general, though, you will end up with pretty much the same ending. Yes, you do have to fight the bad guy, and no, you can't kill anyone you want to on demand.
I haven't found a game yet that has been really revolutionary that hasn't had at least an acceptable soundtrack. And Mass Effect's is one to be reckoned with. Powerful during appropriate moments, hurried during combat, and ambient during downtime, this musical score really hits the nail on the head. I really appreciate what video game developers and publishers are doing now to bring their products up to par with other media, such as movies. The music is topnotch in quality, and its volume and power always add to if not characterize the mood of the current scene. Similarly, the sound effects are great, from the volumes of the different types of weapons to the explosions of grenades, from the death cries of defeating aliens to the shouting of commands among squad members during combat. Overall, Mass Effect is very pleasing to the ears.
The presentation of the game could really be the crowning aspect of Mass Effect. Dialogue scenes are spoken in a very cinematic fashion, much like the movies, only this time you choose what you want to say. And one of the most innovative achievements of this game is the way they integrate this choice system smoothly into the conversations. When a character is close to finishing what he was saying, you are given a dialogue wheel with around three options to choose from for your response to the speaking character. If you choose decisively enough, the conversation will flow seamlessly, and the result makes the game feel less like a "What would you do if..." test and more like you're watching a blockbuster movie. And as I mentioned earlier, the camera angles also add to the whole movie feel. The game is "filmed" just like an action movie: the camera wobbles during action, and it showcases the facial models with closeups during conversation. In addition, the superbly convincing voice acting is matched spot on with excellent lip-syncing. I've said it before, but oftentimes these features added together makes this game feel very similar to some kind of interactive action movie.
Graphics: 8.5/10
Gameplay: 9/10
Sound: 9/10
Story: 9.5/10
Presentation: 9.5/10
Value: 9/10
So, if you want a game that will wow you graphically, blow your mind with intense combat and a great musical score, or if you're looking for the next great role-playing game with a fun character progression system and a vastly immersive storyline to get sucked into, or if you've always wanted to act out a movie from the comfort of your own home, then Bioware's Mass Effect is the game for you.