by Bradford Yale

Created on: April 10, 2008   Last Updated: October 21, 2010

Massive!

Mass Effect for the Xbox360 was an eagerly-anticipated science-fiction game from Bioware that was presented and promoted as a role-playing game. It was released in November 2007 amid a small amount of controversy, largely due to problems with slips in the release date and copies that made it to the public before that date. Additionally, there was a controversy involving a potential element of the story line that turned out to be marginally true and greatly over-exaggerated.

From the start, the game feels solid; there is an almost-absurd level of character customization, not only gender and first name (you must be human and your family name is "Shepard"), but skin color, complexion, hair color and length, even face shape and feature details. Players can, if they prefer, make a fast selection of a pre-generated Shepard.

The graphics of the game are fantastic without many of the "popping" or "clipping" effects that have appeared in some other titles for the 360, making use of the Unreal engine (according to Wikipedia, the Unreal Engine 3, to be specific.) Mass Effect does make good use of the power of the Xbox360indeed, it seems to be one of the first games for the platform that seems to be worthy of the computing power of the machine. The music and sound of the game are well-done, and enhance the feel and theme of the game. The interface is third-person, and the controls are consistent and responsive.

The gameplay, however, is not perfect. The action does stop at times for dialogue sequences, and different dialogue choices by the player do not always have any apparent effect on the story. Some players have been put-off enough by the pacing of the game and the amount of dialogue that they have put the game down indefinitely. Also, some players have complained about the time in which the action takes place in the land vehicle, which does control differently than the rest of the game and can be frustrating. In approximately a hundred hours of play, I only recall one bug.

As much as the game was marketed (and still referred to) as a role-playing game, Mass Effect is something else an epic, interactive science-fiction experience. The setting the galactic community, its history, politics and mystery are good, though there were elements that felt familiar. The characters were well-developed, with more details and information reveled in the course of the story. The overall story is fantastic, and the very nature of the game allows players to explore it in greater

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