Review: Mass Effect - Who would have thought, Conversation > Guns?

Mike Bantick
Friday, 08 February 2008 17:12

Opinion and Analysis

A role playing game should be about characterisation and story, and Mass Effect shines in these areas, providing adult laced insights into morality, religion, tough choices, love and power.  Critics pointing to possible sex scenes and nudity don’t know what they are criticising.  From a literary perspective, Mass Effect is a masterpiece of in depth imagination with thought provoking twists.  The fact that this is a video game where the twists are choices made by the player makes games such as this a whole new art form.

Choosing an in game squad taking two from a squad of seven further highlights how much work BioWare has put into this title, with some cut scene interactions obviously specific chosen to match characters, with the dialogue going unnoticed if that character is not present.  Catering for the many combinations possible in the game must have been a massive undertaking.

The up-side of unseen dialogue and scenes means that Mass Effect is eminently re-playable, but with the previous graphical issues and other minor bugs encroaching on the game-play one could be left with the sense that cramming the game onto a Xbox 360 DVD was a tough technical achievement for the developer.  You have to wonder what could have been, given multiple DVD’s or even better HD DVD or Blu-Ray media.

Mass Effect has its frustrations, but these are outshone by the brilliance of the game experience overall.