I love Bioware. Love love love love. Their emphasis on story has always excited me and the promise of the epic storytelling in Mass Effect just made me absolutely ecstatic. I was afraid that the game was trying to do too much or that it might just be Knights of the Old Republic without the Star Wars license, but I still eagerly awaited this game for months and months.

How can you not be excited for a game that revolutionizes storytelling by making it that much more cinematic? How can you not love the tried and true method of the Knights of the Old Republic gameplay with next gen additions? How can you not love the masterful storytelling of Bioware? Oh yes Mass Effect, you have the potential of being one of the greatest games ever or one of the biggest disappointments of our time.

Presentation - 6.5

Since you just saw the score I'll just get this over with now-- I was disgusted with Mass Effects presentation. This game really wasn't made for the 360. Saying that, this game may have not been made for the PS3 either so don't go saying that I said this game should have been on the PS3. This game really just tried to do too much and it just failed miserably on the presentation side because of the technical limitations.

The most noticeable and the most distracting thing was the frame rate. Luckily the game was never actually unplayable but it doesn't change the fact that it constantly had bad frame rate throughout the entire game. I can handle a few frame rate hiccups without a problem, but this game had terrible frame rate everywhere, even in small enclosed areas. I love Bioware but any developer should know how far they can push a console and should strive to just hit that point. Bioware took that point and decided to go about twenty steps over it and the game suffered for it. I wanted to enjoy the beautiful varied worlds but I was just too distracted from the frame rate constantly slowing.

The next horribly distracting thing about Mass Effect was that the LOD models were constantly behind. There's really not much I can say other than it's so distracting seeing a wonderfully crafted dialog and then be disturbed by seeing textures everywhere popping in. Like the frame rate thing, if this was an occasional hiccup I could ignore it, but this happens constantly throughout the entire game. This even happens in the game menus and it just looks horrible.

These two problems alone are enough to make most people cringe but sadly that isn't all of them. There were also multiple camera problems, characters randomly getting stuck, enemies not getting activated, encounters easily broken, and just a whole long laundry list of problems that show this game wasn't polished. It could have been because Bioware was just lazy or be because they were pushed to get this game released on time, but in either case it's just sloppy and makes the game bad.

There were many encounters where enemies would knock me down against an object, the object would collide with the camera, and then send the camera above me completely disorienting me. While I was trying to get the camera back into a playable position the enemies close in on me and I'm generally dead because you're generally screwed any time an enemy gets in melee range since melee is worthless. This problem is one that happens often, makes a hard encounter even harder, and completely destroys the fun in an encounter.

There were also times that while running against walls I would just randomly get stuck. I would have to spend anywhere from fifteen seconds to several minutes getting myself unstuck. I know in a game as large as Mass Effect it's hard to test everything, but, well, that's what comes with making a game as large as Mass Effect.

At one point in the game (Feros I believe) I found an enemy that I guess just never got activated. I came into the area and my radar got jammed so I instinctively look for the enemy that I know is there somewhere. I eventually find the enemy sitting in a corner playing an idle animation. I thought he just hadn't seen me yet so I proceed to open fire. Nothing happens. I continue to fire and even bother wasting a grenade (waste being a relative term since grenades are pretty worthless) and nothing happens. The enemy was just happily sitting there jamming my radar and I couldn't do anything about it. I know this was only one occasion, but I'm sure there are other points. It also would have been nice of them to let me kill enemies that haven't been enabled yet but then I guess that would destroy their precious sleeping Creeper encounters (people who have played the game know what I mean).

All in all, this game just wasn't polished and has two major problems that just completely distract from what could be an excellent game. It's really a shame because this game had so much potential but all these glaring problems just destroy the experience that this game was going for.

Sound - 10

I know I said above that the reason for the poor presentation was because of either lazy developers or pressure to release by a certain date, but I suppose there could have been a third option: they were too busy making the music and dialog awesome.

In Knights of the Old Republic Bioware made an excellent system where most of the dialog sequences were spoken. In Mass Effect, they made leaps and bounds and made everything spoken. Your character has many spoken lines and many different choices that make a large amount of dialog. Each of these lines are delivered perfectly and to top it all off, there are even two sets of dialog for if you choose to play male or female. It's also wonderful how each NPC that you have conversations with have their sets of dialog.

The amount of work in put into the dialog is seriously impressive and the great effort truly shows. For every bad thing the game has in its presentation, it more than makes up for it in the wonderful dialog.

The other glorious aspect of the Mass Effect audio was the music. The game doesn't always have music playing but when it does it is awesome. The music always kicks in at exactly the right time and it makes me feel like I'm playing an 80's sci-fi movie. I got goose bumps the first time this music popped up and I continued to get that wonderful feeling each time the music popped up.

Gameplay - 8.2

Bioware decided to take the tried and true method of gameplay made in Knights of the Old Republic and tried to improve upon it in Mass Effect. For the most part, they did a fairly good job of this but there were still a few control issues and design flaws that stuck out.

First off, the combat in this game is actually a lot of fun. Bioware decided to move the camera slightly to keep it mainly over the shoulder. I was a little worried about this and the emphasis on shooting at first, but I very quickly warmed up to this. Shooting in Mass Effect is really a lot of fun. It helps you aim (which can be turned off) so it does a good job at making you feel awesome and it just controls very well. When you want to take aim, you just pull the left trigger and the camera moves to the perfect spot and it's just really nice.

The game also has a cover mechanic that takes a while to get use to, but all in all it's fun. Sometimes it can be a little difficult to get yourself in just the right position and sometimes it can be a little annoying moving away from cover.

The combat system does have its problems though, the grenades are horrible and hard to use and the Biotec mechanic just isn't fun. First off, the grenades. Early in the game small tutorials tell the player how to use various controls. At one point a small message pops up and tells the player to press the back button to throw grenades. I thought that was a little odd and decided that they must have meant the B button. That didn't work. Hmm, so if it isn't the B button, perhaps they meant just press backwards. That still didn't work. I thought that was a little odd too and just went on with the level. Later in the game I found out the 360 actually had a button called the Back button (commonly referred to as the Select button on every other controller) and I only found this button on accident. I really don't like it when games use odd buttons like that because most people don't know these buttons exist and they just generally aren't fun to use. I know must of you people reading this know about the Back button, but a large amount of people don't know about it, Left Stick, and the Right Stick buttons.

Once you figure out how grenades work, you'll find that they just don't work that well. They take forever to explode (never actually timed one) and they just are difficult to aim correctly. There were many times that I threw my grenade, waited, waited, and waited some more and when it finally exploded I had already killed all the enemies or the enemy had already moved by the time I threw the grenade. There's no excuse for how long it takes grenades to explode. As for aiming the grenades good luck. You're either going to throw it slightly off so it doesn't hit everyone you want it to or you'll just miss completely and throw it off a platform. Because of the way the grenades bounce and slide and the fact there aren't always solid walls behind the enemy, grenades often just whiz by. Just do yourself a favor and forget grenades exist unless you absolutely have to use them.

For biotecs, the games "force" powers, you will get some interesting ones. You can create fields that draw in and damage enemies, you can throw enemies and crates, you can lift enemies and crates, and much more. The powers in this game are just a lot of fun and I wish there were more of them to play with. What isn't fun is using them. To use a power you have to hold down the right button which pauses the action (bad). You then while holding down the right button have to use the left analog stick to move the power radial to the power you wish to use. This was just never really comfortable to me because there were so many buttons on this wheel. Small stick movements would generally move you several powers over and it takes a lot of getting use to be accurate on this thing. I actually still often miss the power I'm looking for. After you've selected the power you want, you then use the right analog stick to move the reticle to where you want to cast this power. This works fairly well but it takes time. This time it takes to do this whole process completely takes you out of the action and just isn't fun. It's sad because you get some really neat powers but you're just too far removed from combat to make it actually fun.

While I'm on the topic of controls here I'll just get this out-- I do not like the galaxy map controls. The
galaxy map is an incredibly large thing that lets the player fly all over the milky way, land on different planets, scan unknown asteroids, and survey planets to find lost relics and minerals. The scope of the galaxy is truly a marvelous thing. What isn't so marvelous is how you get around this huge map. You use the X button to zoom out from planets, systems, and galaxies, A is used to zoom in, travel, survey, and land, and B is used to just exit the galaxy map completely. Throughout the entire game I constantly found myself hitting B to zoom out from a planet and would get kicked out of the screen entirely and have to sit there and wait for it to load again. It really just sucked and was frustrating.

Another frustrating thing about the galaxy maps was that you get unexpected calls always before you actually enter the map. This was cool in that you feel connected while off in space but at the same time it also sucked because by the time you're done with the call you've forgotten where you need to go. You then have to wait for the galaxy map to load, exit the map, wait for the ship to load, enter the menu, read back through your journal, and then go back into the galaxy map, wait for it to load, and then finally try to get to where you're going. This probably takes about as long as it takes to read this paragraph so it isn't a horribly long time, but it's still long enough to frustrate you.

One nice thing that this games does do is allow you to skip through dialog sequences. This game is difficult and you will die. Sometimes you die right after dialog sequences or you may even forget to save. In these cases it's very handy that they let you just skip dialog so you can speed through the sequence. While this is nice, it's also a little disappointing in that if you skip through fast enough, you're going to really mess things up. If it's a scene with enough camera movements and character movements, you will have characters moving through each other, cameras in the completely wrong spot, and it's just bad looking. This isn't a huge gripe and I think the benefit far outweighs the negative here, but it is something that should be noted. It's also unfortunate that the skip dialog button is the same button as select a dialog option so it's very easy to accidentally select the wrong dialog option while skipping through the dialog.

One thing you can't skip though are cut scenes. There will also be points where you die immediately after a cut scene and you will really just want to skip it. What's worse is that these cut scenes are generally worthless and it just makes it that much more frustrating that you cannot skip it. I really don't care that a stalker that appeared out of no where (because heaven forbid you kill it before the cut scene) suddenly came to life, jumped on a wall, and then two enemies shot down from space. It's little cut scenes like these that just really made me angry because they are right before a hard fight, they don't really do anything, and you can't skip them.

For the difficulty of Mass Effect, this is really just a hard game and not always in a good way. There are some games like Resident Evil 4 or Super Mario Galaxy where I can die multiple times because an encounter is just really hard or a particular set of jumps is difficult but these games don't frustrate you. In Mass Effect you will come across several battles that you will die many times on and they will frustrate you. Enemies that you can't see will be shooting you, if an enemy ever gets close to you there will be nothing you can do, sometimes your AI buddies just die, and there will often be hoards of enemies from every direction with little to no cover that there isn't a lot you can do but die. In the battles where the above things aren't the case you will have a lot of fun, but there are a lot of battles where all of these things happen and it's very frustrating.

These types of battles might not be so frustrating if the areas weren't so poorly designed or populated. Most battles inside of buildings come in two fashions: you're in a large room filled with crates or you have two to three pieces of cover and a path left and right that are both full of enemies. The crate battles just get boring since you can only make a room full of crates so interesting but at least these battles aren't frustrating. The two path battles are usually just hard and not fun. You have enemies running at you from both sides and usually have poor cover. Sometimes they make a variation on the two path method by making it two doorways but those are just as not fun. Those turn into a waiting game and it's just bad.

Now I've spent a lot of time voicing my negatives about Mass Effect but it is actually a good game. For instance, the driving part of the game is actually fun and outside combat is usually pretty well done. Most games that focus on one thing such as shooting and maybe 10% or less driving usually fail at the driving pieces. Mass Effect actually made the driving levels fun and a joy to play. Every now and then it's a little difficult to aim or driving can be a little hairy, but all in all the driving sections are fun.

Also, when you're doing ground combat outside it's generally fun too. The levels are slightly more varied and the cover is better. In these situations, combat is an absolute blast. It's sad that so much of this game is spent inside in tight quarters that feel just like every other one.

I also greatly enjoyed how the weapons, armor, and ammo were done. It's a little intimidating how big the selection is at first but as you get more experience and money it gets easier. You have a large selection of weapons and then an even larger selection of weapon and ammo upgrades. These allow for some great customization and each weapon can be suited to your particular play style. If you like to shoot a lot, give yourself an upgrade that reduces weapon overheating. If you think you're going to be going against synthetic creatures, give yourself an ammo upgrade with a damage bonus to synthetics. I very rarely say that upgrading weapons and ammo is fun but this game did a really good job at it.

Mass Effect is a good game with a lot of problems. For most people these problems won't be enough to stop them from finishing or enjoying the game, but just be warned that these problems do exist and it does get frustrating.

Graphics - 8.8

When sitting still Mass Effect is a beautiful game. The environments look amazing, the character models, even the minor ones, are wonderfully detailed, the alien worlds really feel like alien worlds, and the various effects just make everything look even more brilliant. Unfortunately you rarely sit still in a game. Sadly, each of these amazing things brings with it two huge flaws: the frame rate and the LOD models and textures constantly being shifted in too late.

It's a shame that such a beautiful games has these major flaws but Bioware simply should have known their limits and should not have pushed them so hard. The result was a good looking game that is constantly interrupted by bad frame rate and lo-res textures being shifted out for the hi-res ones. That is just inexcusable.

The other minor problem I had with the games graphics are the humans eyes. The eye lashes look funny more often than not and it usually looks like people have a lazy eye. I'm really not sure why this is but it just comes off as odd. This isn't a huge deal and definitely isn't as huge as the above issues.

Lasting Appeal - 9.1

Mass Effect is a game about traveling the galaxy unraveling a mystery as big and old as the galaxy itself and Bioware did an incredible job at making this game as big as they boasted. I suppose it is possible to whiz by this game and do the bare minimum work but this game can easily take most people close to 20 hours because there's just so much to do. This game also encourages multiple playthroughs by just giving you so many options and play your character so differently.

First off, lets look at the sheer size of this game. Each world is huge and has lots of quests to do. Each world has its own history, its own problems, and its own people. Some worlds are of course smaller than others but most of them are very large with multiple areas for you to explore and interact with the people. The size of most worlds is big enough to contain most small games.

Now lets zoom out a little. You're now looking at the solar system map. Each system has a collection of planets each with their own history and data. While you can't go on each of these planets, you can survey most of them and get history, relics, and minerals from them. There are also "unknown" areas for you to scan and find more information.

Now that we've looked at the system we zoom out again and we're now looking at the star cluster. Each of these clusters has several system to explore and many quests will send you to clusters but won't always tell you what system to go to so you have to travel through these clusters to find the right place.

If we zoom out yet again we finally come to the final area of the galaxy map: the milky way. Here you see all 10-15 clusters you can visit (I forget the number and my receiver isn't liking my Xbox at the moment). You will have to decide how you want to path through these clusters to figure out just where you want to go. This game is truly massive and much kudos to Bioware for pulling that off.

Sadly, as massive as this game is most people aren't likely to play through it more than once. The game is fun but it isn't that fun. Many quests are repetitive and knowing how things end will destroy most of the mystery in the quests. Sure, you can play the complete opposite alignment that you played the first time, but it really isn't going to change much. You're going to spend most of your time on your first run through and completing everything you can on that run through rather than a new game. There are different endings but most people won't go through the effort to get all those different endings.


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All in all, as I've said, Mass Effect is a good game but it has its fair share of problems. This game really wasn't meant for the 360 and possibly not even the PS3, it's a game that would shine above all others a few years from now or on the PC. Sadly, this game was made for the 360 and that's just how the cookie crumbles. We have a brilliant game just riddled with problems-- some due to the game being rushed, and some due to Bioware just trying to make things too big. If you can get past the poor design in the inside areas, frame rate problems, and graphical problems then you're going to enjoy Mass Effect.

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Presentation - 6.5
Sound - 10
Gameplay - 8.2
Graphics - 8.8
Lasting Appeal - 9.1

Total - 8.3
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Not sure what it was meant for whatever system has to do with anything but for the most part I disagree with many of your points. I rather play this wonderful game now then wait until 2008-9 to get the things "you" want to be addressed. I am sorry but my friends and I truly enjoyed this game and is too bad it didn't seem to hit the spot for you and others since I seen similar reviews. I am with the 95%+ croud and if I had to give a review as I beat the game but missed out on a ton of things on purpose as I was playing a different role then when I am playing right now it would be

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Presentation - 9.5
Sound - 10
Gameplay - 9
Graphics - 10
Lasting Appeal - 10

Total - 9.75
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Since that review is a little longer than my others, here's a quick summary:

Presentation - The game is filled with bad frame rate, LOD models constantly being shifted out too late, and small bugs which is absolutely unacceptable.

Sound - Absolutely amazing. The massive amount of voice work is incredible and the music couldn't be more fitting.

Gameplay - All in all it's fun but the game has control problems, frustrating battles, and poorly designed repetitive areas. Still, the combat itself is fun, the dialog wheel works great, and I love how they did the weapons.

Graphics - When sitting still they are wonderful, when you start moving it starts to suck.

Lasting Appeal - There's an insane amount of things to do in the game but because of the above problems you probably aren't likely to play it more than once. Still though, if you can look past the problems the game is without a doubt worth a play and will take a good 15-20 hours of your time.

dude, not a good review, you went over the top.
Mass effect is arguably the best game on 360

yeah the frame rate is pretty bad

Thanks for the review. Sounds like all the "the 360 can barely handle it" stuff rings true.

Twesterm, how DARE you criticize this game? It's the best thing EVAH!

...

Actually, that's a pretty fair review. Overall, the game is very good to great but it suffers through technical problems at points.

I suppose I should remind people of my review scores (I could break it down further but I don't feel like typing that much more at the moment):

Chadius said: Thanks for the review. Sounds like all the "the 360 can barely handle it" stuff rings true.

Yeah, it's sad but it's true. This really isn't a knock on the 360, just that it was too much game for the 360.

Though I've heard from other people that all UE3 games have the LOD problem. I know a saw a little bit of it in Gears and Bioshock but both of those were barel noticable and nowhere near as bad as Mass Effect.

You're suppose to press the back buttom again to make it explode..