1 of 4

Write now Article Tools

Mass Effect is the next generation role playing game from BioWare, the studio that brought you some of the best role playing games of the past generation, Knights Of The Old Republic, and Jade Empire.

At the start of the game you can customize your character however you'd like, you can completely change the look with a robust character creator. You can also choose what class of character you would like to be, you can pick from a soldier who specializes in guns to a tech specialist who can hack and so on. If you want to play with the default guy you see on the box you can just pick him and jump straight into the game.

The story of the game is pretty good, you start off during a routine mission just investigating a planet where something appears to have gone wrong. One of your Allies is betrayed by an agent called Saren who is in league with a giant Reaper and so you must find him and bring to justice. You soon discover an ancient relic that shows you more of the ancient mechanical race, the Reapers, you discover are intent on destroying the organic population, can you stop Saren and the Reapers? The fate of the galaxy is in your hands!

The gameplay is excellent for a role playing game, it has more in common with Gears Of War than the more traditional games of the past. It is a third person shooter, but you can take cover against objects and lean around them to fire on enemies. Depending on your character class you will also be able to use special skills, which can do fun things like throw your enemies, lift them up, disable their weapons and so on.

When you are not in combat you will be interacting with the games many characters, Mass Effect has an all-new dialogue engine. Instead of just seeing your characters line and selecting the one you want, you see a wheel which you can rotate to choose the direction you want the conversation to head in. This pops up before characters have finished speaking so the flow of conversation is much more natural, you can even interrupt characters mid sentence if you don't like the direction of the conversation!

Like previous games you can choose to be either a good guy or an evil guy. You pick these options in dialogue with good choices showing up in blue and bad in red so it is obvious what path you're going down. This gives the game added replay value as it changes quite a bit from good to evil.

The graphics are for the most part stunning, characters look great especially the exotic alien creatures you come across. The environments do suffer from some textures that pop in suddenly but you can overlook that quite easily. The sound is also good featuring a good soundtrack and excellent voice work.

The only downside to the game is that it can be completed very quickly for a role playing game, if you just cover the main story mode it will be over in around 12 hours, if you do the optional side quests you can get that up to around 20. Thankfully the game is rather replayable as there are many different classes to choose and with each play through you find new things to do.

If you are in need of a good role playing experience Mass Effect will give you just that, I recommend this one highly.

Learn more about this author, HB.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.

Add your voice

Know something about Video game reviews: Mass Effect (Xbox 360)?
We want to hear your view. Write now!