Review : Mass Effect

The heritage of Mass Effect goes back a long way, as far as the spacefaring adventure days of David Braben's Frontier : Elite II in the early nineties. Since Frontier there's never really been a really great freeform science fiction game ... Bioware aren't new to this genre since they've previously released Knights of the Old Republic, which was really a "scripted freeform" game, allowing a certain degree of freedom while still blatantly leading you down one of several pre-determined paths. Must be those pesky midichlorians guiding your fate again.

Mass Effect is one of those games that since its release has been regularly gifted with the "best game ever" tag by overzealous reviewers, which of course should always result in a healthy dose of skepticism from the general public. It isn't the best game ever. It's just the best game of 2007.

At the start of the game you get to customise your character. I use the word 'customise' rather than 'create' because of the very limited options that the game gives you. Your character has to have the surname 'Shepherd', which is how you will be referred to in the game, but you can change the first name (though there isn't much point really). You also get to choose the history of your character, which basically comes down to nine possible combinations of 'background' and 'psychological profile'. The personal history you select does influence the game in a small way, such as in how certain characters react to you, and generally you'll make choices in the game appropriate to which personality you chose at the start.

You can then customise the appearance of your character. The main limitation is that your character has to be human, and also there aren't a whole bunch of hairstyles to choose from. You do have a nice selection of cool-looking scars, though, so points for that. Once you're done with the customisation process, you're ready to launch your character into the Mass Effect universe.

Knights of the Old Republic 2 was made by a different games company, and was pretty good although it didn't expand greatly on the original. Mass Effect is basically a Bioware sequel to KOTOR, but without the Star Wars license. Instead of jedi knights, you have "Spectres". Instead of the force, you have "Mass Effect". There's also quite a bit of Battlestar Galactica, Babylon 5 and Star Trek thrown in for good measure.

The universe of Mass Effect is very attractive and intricate, and yet it somehow lacks a certain immersive quality that you find in other freeform games, such as the Elder Scrolls series. There certainly isn't a sense of a vast universe for you to explore, since you can only travel to literally a handful of planets on the galaxy map (and there's not much incentive to do so). The "freeform" element basically comes down to the order in which you complete missions on various planets, choices you make in how those missions are completed and how you interact with the other characters. Generally, there's nothing more than a good choice and an evil choice. If you're a follower of the 'grey' side of the force, you'll be disappointed.

There are a bunch of optional side-missions to complete, and optional planets to explore, but make sure you do it before you get too far into the main quest or you won't get a chance. It's not like Oblivion where you can choose to keep playing the game after you complete the main story, since there's still so much to do in that game ... here the focus is very much on the main story, and anything else is really just an afterthought. Personally, I'd rather they'd do away with that and instead dedicate themselves to creating a larger universe with more options for the player; in other worlds, a truly open universe.

As it stands, Mass Effect has very little replayability. If you're a dedicated gamer, you can complete the main quest in a matter of days and then the game is over. Even if you mix it up by also doing the limited side-quests that are available, then it still won't take all that much longer and there's little incentive to play the game again.

You might recall that the main problem with the KOTOR games was that there was way too much dialogue. Here, they've just about cut the dialogue down to a reasonable amount and mixed it up with a decent amount of action. The combat system is generally pretty good, but there's an extremely annoying and completely unecessarily quirk of not being able to save during combat, which means that if you're in a particularly difficult firefight then you have to start again each time you get killed, as well as re-watching any cutscenes that immediately preceded it. That's easily my main nag-point of the gameplay right there.

There's quite a good variety of different settings and different bad guys to destroy for the different missions, so there's no problems there. It's not just a case of running down the same old corridors shooting up the same old enemies, which seems to be the way of things in so many games. Generally you do have some kind of discernable objective that you're trying to accomplish and can do so with the help of your squad, which are two characters chosen from a possible selection of about six NPCs that travel with you (as in the KOTOR games). These NPCs all have distinct personalities and attributes, and tend to offer their own comments and guidance throughout the mission as well, which is nice. How you experience a mission depends on which squadmates you bring with you ... Bioware should expand on that idea in future games.

If, like me, you're a big fan of Open World games, then don't expect too much from Mass Effect. If you've played Knights of the Old Republic then you should more or less know the kind of game this is, since this is basically a next-generation version of that. It could have been oh-so-much-more, but instead we are once again left waiting and hoping for a new Frontier.