Mass Effect
Last week I picked up the game Mass Effect and it’s been an awesome adventure. I’ve been able to complete the main campaign due to not doing all the side quests. The story is engaging and has its cool moments. The NPC companions you get have their own unique personalities and regularly interact with each other and your character. Their abilities are as varied as their personalities and compliment your character well regardless of the class you’ve chosen.
Speaking of classes, the one I’ve chosen to play at first is the Soldier class. While this class doesn’t have access to Tech (affects weapons, shields and mechanical enemies) or Biotic (similar to Star Wars Force powers) abilities, it’s pretty robust and can lay out some nice damage. It’s the only class that can train in all the weapons used. The weird thing is, even if another class can’t train in, say, assault rifles, they are nevertheless equipped with it and can use them. This confused me at first and I had an NPC use a weapon it could never train to use better, and that lead to quite a few needless deaths.
In combat, there is a cover system but it’s more unwieldy than any other cover system I’ve played with. All that’s needed to take cover, is to press up against a hard surface while you have a weapon drawn, you’ll snap your back against the cover and can move to any side to lean out and shoot. If the cover is low enough, you could also stand up and fire. What’s unwieldy about the cover system? It’s easy to get to cover, whether you want to or not. Also, many enemies tend to rush your position just as often as they try to outflank you and it’s a bit sluggish to get out of cover status so it can get a little frustrating to have enemies pound on you while you wait the second or two for your character to leave cover.
Aside from the weird mechanic that every class is equipped with all weapons, even if they can’t train to maximize their use and the slow cover system that’s not all useful, combat in Mass Effect can be pretty fun. While hit and miss rolls are handled in the background, the fighting has a good real time feel and with the ability issue commands (like attack, advance, take cover, etc.), there’s a neat tactical feel.
Combat’s not the only thing going for Mass Effect. The stories within the game are well created. While you’d expect the main story line to be well done, side missions are also well crafted and provide more information than just “go here, kill this, retrieve that” bland stuff. The graphics and sound are also top notch and with all of this packaged together, Mass Effect is well worth the money and wait as it was ported to the computer. It has great replay value as you can explore different classes and can even restart the campaign with a character that’s already completed it, maintaining his/her weapons and equipment and experience. At the moment, I’m starting over with another Soldier, intent on completing at least 90% of the side quests this time around.
