Review: Mass Effect
Sep. 29th, 2008 04:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
4thofelevenContinuing my reviews of games that came out ages ago, when I was still using my old computer and couldn’t run them…
I picked this up the other day as a reward for finishing all my essays. It was a good decision to only buy it after I’d submitted my essays, since I ended up playing it nonstop for several days until I finished… and now I kinda want to start a new game.
Game’s a lot more of a shooter than the KotOR games, which kinda threw me for a while – I was expecting a lot more auto-aiming than I actually got. Once I got used to the controls, it’s a pretty good system, but damn, the game needs a better tutorial.
The story sticks fairly religiously to the KotOR system of starting planet -> four planets in any order -> final showdown, but there’s a lot of minor planets with little missions on each of them. On the other hand, the major planets don’t have as many side-quests, so the game’s really not much longer. From a story point of view, it is fun since you feel like you’re really exploring and dealing with minor crises all over the galaxy – on the other hand, you’re never really given any motivation to go out and explore rather than focus exclusively on catching the villains. Would have been nice if you had to stumble across one of the clues you need, so you’d have a reason to survey every uninhabited backwater.
Would also have been nice if the minor worlds have a bit more variety in environments; there’s only about three different kinds of buildings that get repeated on every non-plot critical world. Sure, it kinda makes sense if you think of them as mass-produced temporary structures, but they could at least come in different colours. I actually kind of wish that Spore’s galactic phase was more like this, with the driving a tank around different planets, checking out interesting things and sometimes shooting the natives.
Storyline wise, the game’s fantastic. The Citadel and the council feels a little Babylon 5-esqe – It actually kept throwing me when the human government was referred to as the ‘Human Alliance’ not the ‘Earth Alliance’. It’s a fun setting, with a fair amount of work put into the various species and history. Shame none of the non-humanoid aliens can join your crew…
The dialogue choices give you a fair amount of control, while also giving your character a lot of character of his/her own. By the end of the game, Commander Shepard was as much of a memorable character as the other crew members, which is more than can be said for Revan or the Jedi Exile. I like that Shepard’s got a history before the game – you can pick your background, which comes up in dialogue a few times. Plus, Shepard’s already second-in-command of a prototype warship and a distinguished officer at the start of the game… too many RPGs are convinced you need to start off as a total nobody whom everyone inexplicably defers to anyway…
Handy tip – don’t play a soldier. They’re boring, and don’t get any of the cool powers. Sure, you can use all the weapons at full effectiveness, but can you throw people across the room with your mind? No? I rest my case!
Face generation for your character is fun, though I ended up just using one of the archetypes and just fiddling with skin tone and eye colour. Annoyance – female characters don’t have anywhere near as many cool scar options as males…
I like that the various ‘achievements’ give permanent bonuses – to all future games! For example, if you use one of your powers or weapons enough times, you unlock the ability to pick that power or weapon as one of your skills with future character – regardless of whether that class can normally use it.
Storyline spoilers follow:
The end of the game’s clearly setting up a sequel; I’m looking forward to it. Hopefully we’ll get more background on the Geth and the Quarians; I think there’s clearly more to them than we’ve seen so far. I thought it a shame you never get to talk to a Geth representative… Their grudge against organic life is fairly reasonable given their history – I like that when talking to Tali you get a chance to call her on how crapily they treated the Geth.
Saren’s really a pathetic villain in the end, isn’t he? Pathetic in the sense of ‘inspiring pathos’… Was he ever really a villain? He could have been under Soverign’s influence as far back as his mission with Captain Anderson… He’s clearly already partially cybernetic at the start of the game. Felt really satisfying managing to get him to break Soverign’s control long enough for him to sacrifice himself…
Matriarch Benezia ended up playing less of a role in things than I’d have expected – I’d assumed she’d turn out to be the real power behind Saren’s plot.
Is there somewhere on the ship I can get new grenades, like I can get med-gel in sickbay? I keep running out. Also, I ended up with ludicrous amounts of money with very little worth spending it on...
You don’t get a replacement party member after someone dies on Virmere? Granted, a new character that late in the game would be sort of a waste, but I was hoping one of the Salarian commandoes would end up signing on with you.
No romance option with Garrus? But he’s your bad-ass ex-cop Turian partner who plays by his own rules! He’s objectively infinitely more awesome thanCarth Whats-his-name, the human biotic boring guy. Garrus could have been a male either gender romance option, like Liara, giving a gay male romance option and giving each gender three options… Bah, I’ll never understand Bioware’s decisions when it comes to who gets a romance sub-plot… I still don’t understand why Canderous isn’t romanceable in either KotOR; dammit, Dark Side Female characters need romance too!
The bit with the Protheian ruin giving you the vision of them studying primitive humans was damn cool, especially since it’s not something you need to do, and to get the vision, you need to have already completed an unrelated optional mission – nice little bonus.
The Bring Down the Sky downloadable mission was a fun little side-quest – and ended with a nice little moral dilemma. An *actual* moral dilemma, not the usual “should I be a total asshole or not” type of dilemma… I ended up letting the terrorist go. I figure I’d ruined his plot, killed a bunch of his soldiers, and convinced his lieutenant to abandon him – he’s not going to be a threat again for a while.
I’m a little disappointed you never get to take on Sovereign directly; nice that the Citadel and Human fleets ended up being able to take on the threat themselves, without you needing to personally command the final battle, but I would have liked a mission where you have to board Sovereign to… I don’t know, disable systems or download data.
What are the Reapers after? They don’t like organic life, fine, but then why do they keep leaving the galaxy and going into hibernation after their genocide, instead of sticking around and taking out new races as they emerge? Just more efficient to do it every few thousand years instead of constantly, or are they after something specific outside the galaxy?
I picked this up the other day as a reward for finishing all my essays. It was a good decision to only buy it after I’d submitted my essays, since I ended up playing it nonstop for several days until I finished… and now I kinda want to start a new game.
Game’s a lot more of a shooter than the KotOR games, which kinda threw me for a while – I was expecting a lot more auto-aiming than I actually got. Once I got used to the controls, it’s a pretty good system, but damn, the game needs a better tutorial.
The story sticks fairly religiously to the KotOR system of starting planet -> four planets in any order -> final showdown, but there’s a lot of minor planets with little missions on each of them. On the other hand, the major planets don’t have as many side-quests, so the game’s really not much longer. From a story point of view, it is fun since you feel like you’re really exploring and dealing with minor crises all over the galaxy – on the other hand, you’re never really given any motivation to go out and explore rather than focus exclusively on catching the villains. Would have been nice if you had to stumble across one of the clues you need, so you’d have a reason to survey every uninhabited backwater.
Would also have been nice if the minor worlds have a bit more variety in environments; there’s only about three different kinds of buildings that get repeated on every non-plot critical world. Sure, it kinda makes sense if you think of them as mass-produced temporary structures, but they could at least come in different colours. I actually kind of wish that Spore’s galactic phase was more like this, with the driving a tank around different planets, checking out interesting things and sometimes shooting the natives.
Storyline wise, the game’s fantastic. The Citadel and the council feels a little Babylon 5-esqe – It actually kept throwing me when the human government was referred to as the ‘Human Alliance’ not the ‘Earth Alliance’. It’s a fun setting, with a fair amount of work put into the various species and history. Shame none of the non-humanoid aliens can join your crew…
The dialogue choices give you a fair amount of control, while also giving your character a lot of character of his/her own. By the end of the game, Commander Shepard was as much of a memorable character as the other crew members, which is more than can be said for Revan or the Jedi Exile. I like that Shepard’s got a history before the game – you can pick your background, which comes up in dialogue a few times. Plus, Shepard’s already second-in-command of a prototype warship and a distinguished officer at the start of the game… too many RPGs are convinced you need to start off as a total nobody whom everyone inexplicably defers to anyway…
Handy tip – don’t play a soldier. They’re boring, and don’t get any of the cool powers. Sure, you can use all the weapons at full effectiveness, but can you throw people across the room with your mind? No? I rest my case!
Face generation for your character is fun, though I ended up just using one of the archetypes and just fiddling with skin tone and eye colour. Annoyance – female characters don’t have anywhere near as many cool scar options as males…
I like that the various ‘achievements’ give permanent bonuses – to all future games! For example, if you use one of your powers or weapons enough times, you unlock the ability to pick that power or weapon as one of your skills with future character – regardless of whether that class can normally use it.
Storyline spoilers follow:
The end of the game’s clearly setting up a sequel; I’m looking forward to it. Hopefully we’ll get more background on the Geth and the Quarians; I think there’s clearly more to them than we’ve seen so far. I thought it a shame you never get to talk to a Geth representative… Their grudge against organic life is fairly reasonable given their history – I like that when talking to Tali you get a chance to call her on how crapily they treated the Geth.
Saren’s really a pathetic villain in the end, isn’t he? Pathetic in the sense of ‘inspiring pathos’… Was he ever really a villain? He could have been under Soverign’s influence as far back as his mission with Captain Anderson… He’s clearly already partially cybernetic at the start of the game. Felt really satisfying managing to get him to break Soverign’s control long enough for him to sacrifice himself…
Matriarch Benezia ended up playing less of a role in things than I’d have expected – I’d assumed she’d turn out to be the real power behind Saren’s plot.
Is there somewhere on the ship I can get new grenades, like I can get med-gel in sickbay? I keep running out. Also, I ended up with ludicrous amounts of money with very little worth spending it on...
You don’t get a replacement party member after someone dies on Virmere? Granted, a new character that late in the game would be sort of a waste, but I was hoping one of the Salarian commandoes would end up signing on with you.
No romance option with Garrus? But he’s your bad-ass ex-cop Turian partner who plays by his own rules! He’s objectively infinitely more awesome than
The bit with the Protheian ruin giving you the vision of them studying primitive humans was damn cool, especially since it’s not something you need to do, and to get the vision, you need to have already completed an unrelated optional mission – nice little bonus.
The Bring Down the Sky downloadable mission was a fun little side-quest – and ended with a nice little moral dilemma. An *actual* moral dilemma, not the usual “should I be a total asshole or not” type of dilemma… I ended up letting the terrorist go. I figure I’d ruined his plot, killed a bunch of his soldiers, and convinced his lieutenant to abandon him – he’s not going to be a threat again for a while.
I’m a little disappointed you never get to take on Sovereign directly; nice that the Citadel and Human fleets ended up being able to take on the threat themselves, without you needing to personally command the final battle, but I would have liked a mission where you have to board Sovereign to… I don’t know, disable systems or download data.
What are the Reapers after? They don’t like organic life, fine, but then why do they keep leaving the galaxy and going into hibernation after their genocide, instead of sticking around and taking out new races as they emerge? Just more efficient to do it every few thousand years instead of constantly, or are they after something specific outside the galaxy?