A grand galactic adventure that provides action, intrigue and a superbly immersive storyline that is yours to shape.
The story goes that the year is 2183 and thanks to a discovery on Mars, the human race has mastered interstellar travel and now has a huge space fleet known as the Alliance navy. Contact has also been made with alien races and Earth is part of a network of races centred on the huge space station, The Citadel. The Citadel Council reside on it and are responsible for all of citadel space. You take the role of Commander Shepard, an Alliance veteran who is set to become the first ever human to be granted the status of a Spectre. Spectre's are the galaxies elite agents tasked with doing whatever necessary to defend the galaxy. However a Turian (an alien species) agent called Saren has gone rogue and attacked the human colony of Eden Prime. It is up to you to discover Saren's plan and put a stop to it. The fate of the galaxy depends on it as over the course of the game it becomes apparent that there is a much bigger threat than Saren looming. The overall narrative of the game follows a set path but the exact details of it and the specifics of how the game ends are influenced by your actions. For example who dies, or what missions are completed and much more are down to your choices. These choices then have a knock on effect in the sequels too. This player influence is achieved through interactive conversations that give you branching dialogue options in order to influence the direction of discussions, cutscenes and the game as a whole. It is a superbly implemented system that works very well. You can choose to be good, evil or somewhere in between. You will genuinely feel that you are in control of Shepard's actions and your play through can be completely different to someone else's.
On top of the immersion created by the dialogue choice, Bioware have crafted a fully realised galaxy packed with aliens, planets and history. Conversations with characters reveal a game universe much deeper than the scope of the story of Mass Effect itself and a lot of effort has been put in to background information and fleshing out the planets, species and almost everything else. Accessing the in game codex provides all this information in an easily digestible form. Also important is that Bioware have made memorable characters that you will love or hate and ensured that the alien species are not generic and have a character all of their own. The Mass Effect universe is ripe for plenty more exploration in the way of books, games and who knows what else.
Everything discussed so far would matter little if the game didn't play well but crucially it does. Put simply the game is an action RPG in which you play as Commander Shepard from a third person perspective, supported by two squad mates chosen from the characters available. The action works well with solid shooting mechanics and a good selection of weapons. The AI of your squad is good too and they prove very useful in difficult fire fights. Mass Effect does suffer from a lack of identity however. It is unsure whether it is a shooter or an RPG and unfortunately neither element is as good as it could be as result. The role playing elements include levelling up your characters and assigning points to attributes, choosing weapons and armour and searching crates for useful items. These feel quite light though and the gamer would have benefited from a greater focus on the action elements which while good are also quite basic. By trying to balance both the shooting and role playing aspects both come across a little half baked. Nevertheless it is very fun to play and this is criticism that can be levelled at many western RPG's. Mass Effect does a better job than most in this regard. The game has series of story missions set across different planets which offer plenty of variety within themselves and it also has a large amount of optional side missions. These are all fun and add extra depth to the story. Missions involve a mix of foot and vehicle based sections. The vehicle sections are easily the weak point of the game as the MAKO vehicle that you use suffers from terrible controls and can get infuriating at times. These are few in number though and the on foot sections do not suffer from similar problems.
Graphically, Mass Effect is a good effort. It primarily uses darker shades but injections of colour are used when appropriate. By today's standards the graphics hold up well but do suffer from muddy textures. What has not diminished is the attention to detail on the ships and characters though. These little touches help to bring the game life. Bioware have made good use of music too with a mix of grand, tense and light themes. The voice cast is also superb with real emotion injected into proceedings. If anything it is Shepard's voice work that is that weakest but even his holds up well compared to similar games. Overall the graphics and sound are the icing on the cake for the package as a whole though and add an extra layer of quality to the game.
Mass Effect provides a grand, interstellar adventure with engaging characters and real player choice that genuinely influences the progression of the story. It suffers a little from the compromise between action and role playing but still stands above most of its peers even in this regard. It is a top drawer package that fans of role playing games, shooters and great stories in general owe it to themselves to play.