Mass Effect is a sci-fi RPG game produced by BioWare. From the beginning of the Mass Effect campaign you will get a feeling that Mass Effect is a special game. This game mixes cinematic scenes and exciting tactical gameplay to progress through a well thought out story. The setting is years into the future when humans discovered (and befriended) alien life. You get to play as Commander Shepard, a member of the Alliance Army. You will get to customize your character any way you want to, including changing appearance and classes. A unique feature BioWare introduces is the ability to choose your military background while creating your character. You can choose to be a War Hero who single-handedly defended a human colony, a Badass who never cared about how a job gets done as long as it gets done, and a Survivor who was the only soldier left from a brutal attack. This choice impacts how your character is seen throughout the game. For example, if you choose to be a War Hero, people will salute and admire you whenever you engage in dialogue with them.

The gameplay is both satisfying and unique, in its own respect. If you are planning to run and gun throughout the whole game, you will die and never finish the story. To complete the game you will have to take cover behind available objects. Eventually you will have to make use of the circular menu showing your weapons and possible attacks . You will be able to stop and survey the area with this circular menu, and make your decision according to what you see. At first this will be a little annoying and you will get the feeling that the combat is slow and boring. After a few hours of using this scheme, you will be dictating attacks and movement like a general on a battlefield. You will be accompanied by two comrades of your choice (out of six possible characters) with their own specialties, perks, and abilities. The weapons preserve some qualities of First Person Shooter games, while adding a futuristic aspect. You have rechargeable weapons (unlimited ammo), but in no way does this mean you are overpowered. There will be certain sections of the game where you will have to think outside the box to figure out how to win a battle. Mass Effect truly shines when it comes to mixing old FPS weapons and ideology with new and unique RPG systems.

The characters in this story are very realistic, and you can relate to at least one of them while playing the game. The thing that sets this game apart from other role playing games is that you can explore and get to know your companions. Every time you finish a major mission, you get an urge to talk to each character on your ship because they all have something new to talk about, and this helps you explore both the history of this futuristic world, and your Allies' pasts. This is one of the first games which is focused on dialogue as much as gameplay. By no means is that a bad thing, but you might get a little bored with this game if you prefer action over storytelling. Once you are engaged in the dialogue with whoever, you have an option of what you want to say. There usually are three types of things you can say; aggressive, mild, and non-aggressive. Aggressive dialogue is when you say something stereotypical or cruel about the alien species, non-aggressive is when your dialogue favors the alien races over your own, and mild dialogue favors neither. If you choose to say and act aggressively, you will gain renegade points. If you choose to say and act non-aggressively, you will gain paragon points. This points system is a way to measure the moral decisions you make in the game. It does change the way other characters look and react to you, but it is only a side feature which doesn't have real purpose, other than giving gamers a way to pump up their gamerscore.

The story is the jewel in this RPG crown. All of the elements tie in to become one amazing storyline. The gameplay and cinematics which result from the gameplay help tell the story, while the dialogue lets you discover the personalities of your companions... which eventually explains their actions in certain scenarios. At the end you will get a feeling that all of the key elements help build up the story. This feeling is special, because most games include allies and cinematics for pure entertainment, and not for a larger purpose.

Mass Effect has many positives, but it does have a few negatives which ruin the presentation quality of the game. These little technical glitches and rough edges hold the game back from reaching its full potential.

The first notable problem with Mass Effect is the popping visuals and textures. This might not be a problem at first, but once you get to levels with lush and colorful environment, both the textures and the outdated graphics become a problem in the presentation. It seems that BioWare did a great job making the faces and bodies of characters extremely detailed, but forgot about some of the environments. This isn't that big of a problem, but eventually it will seem like BioWare focused too much on the characters, and not enough on the environments they will be in.

The second problem with Mass Effect is the vehicle gameplay. Just like the flat environment (compared to the characters), the vehicle gameplay feels tacked on and useless. This portion of the game had so much potential, but was ruined by terrible controls and difficulty. This is a little sad since all of the missions include gameplay on the Maco. The boss fight between the Maco vehicle and the giant interstellar worm had a lot of potential, but since the controls are so loose you will have a hard time navigating your way through the planet's surface without getting the bull's horn. The good thing about the vehicle gameplay is that it doesn't contribute much to the story, and is used mainly as a way to get from point A to point B in a level. The bad thing is that the vehicle gameplay could have been tied into the plot of Mass Effect if it wasn't a "last minute" feature.

Mass Effect will take between 10-20 hours to finish the first time around, but it has enough features and content to make you come back for more. The first time you played Mass Effect you might have focused on Paragon points, so the second time you can focus on Renegade points. Maybe you want to explore a different paramour relationship. The fact is that there are so many reasons why you will want to replay this game, there is no reason you shouldn't buy it.

Graphics: 8.4
Gameplay: 8.7
Story: 9.7
Sound: 8.3
Creativity: 9.2

Overall: 8.9