Mass Effect delivers a rich future universe, compelling missions, lost of customization, and leaves you wanting more.
A couple hundred years into the future humankind is part of a galactic civilization spread across several species. Of course, not everything is perfect, and as Commander Shepard you're handed a pretty nice ship and free reign as to where in the galaxy you want to take it.
Mass Effect gets kudos for being able to dramatize every interaction - whether its facial expressions, camera angle, or the thrill of watching your protagonist rough up one of the seedier elements you come across.
This richness to interaction - of which you are able to find in numerous locales, just walking around - ads a depth to your missions from both the mundane to the epic.
Somehow along the course of the way - call it good voice acting, good story, whatever - you start to get a distinct feel for each of your characters in a way other games seldom seem to achieve.
And we haven't even gotten to the shooting yet.
Mass Effect's combat system involves a 4-weapon, multi-talent wheel which you can switch during combat to take control of a variety of skills, from weapons skills to physics-based actions (lift and throw are just COOL) - as well as technical attacks, such as disrupting a machine turret.
It's alot, which is probably why the action wheel freezes combat - a minor detail you learn to overlook. Normally one might use the D-pad for such changes, but that's used to order your squad around.
Did I mention the graphics are fantastic? When you're running around with your 3-person squad you go through tons of well detailed areas, and your relatively smart AI team members typically look pretty cool in their armor and weapons stack on their back.
With your team, your ship, and all the gear you can shake a stick at, you head out on an epic storyline to literally save the galaxy from a madman. Of course, you don't know where he is, so its mission after mission of dealing with the evil sentient robot army - and associated side factions - that just like to get underfoot.
While the main story plot itself has some linearity, you can do things in any order you wish - this makes for some significant dialog and interaction changes.
In addition, this is one of the rare games where following a train of conversation really influences the outcome of things. For example, when faced with a terrorist pointing a gun to the head of a kidnapped politician, do you just order open fire? Or try and talk him out of it with reason or intimidation? These choices all have consequences later on, a fact which really immerses you in the experience.
The game UI is nice although there needs to be a better way to deal with the inventory of 7 team members with a little less list scrolling. Its very well done, but there is just a lot of detail - the place its noticeable is when you are trying to sell off unwanted gear.
There's more to go into about this game but it would take a couple pages to capture it all. As you'll notice just from walking around the levels, interacting with characters and getting into combat with a variety of diversely skilled opponents, there are a few new concepts in this game that really fill it out. Some of these concepts work and some which don't quite work and could use some more flushing out. Hopefully Mass Effect 2 will see those pieces ironed out and take it to the next level.