So, here I sit. It's damn near midnight where I live and I just finished Mass Effect. I will admit right now that I came into this game extremely biased. I bought the book that came out months before the game came out and read it in 2 days. This is a good 4 months before I had even put out my pre-order for the game. So yeah, you can say that I am biased towards liking this game.

I'm glad to say that I was not disappointed with this game at all. Sure, it has its quirks that many people have already pointed out. These have been beat to death, so they merit no discussion within this blog. There was only one section near the end of the game that I had problems with. Beyond that, I LOVED this entire game.

From the moment I opened the cellophane and took that new plastic / new manual smell I was under this game's spell. I popped it into the Xbox 360 and proceeded to play until almost 4AM. This was all after I got off work and mind you I had to work the next day, so I think that addicted is the most appropriate word.

I've been hammering at it for a little over a week and a half which is longer than most games last in my 360's collection. Upon finishing it tonight, I started a new game using the same character. It's been years since I've done that with any game. It wasn't even a quick little new game I played, I sat there for an hour until I finished the Eden Prime section (about an hour).



Ok, on to what I enjoyed. The story of this game has great ideas and intriguing characters (Saren being my favorite, read the novel); Drew Karpyshyn should be praised as a great science fiction writer for his work on this game as it's lead writer. The fact that we have a new IP from BioWare is great, with the staff no longer being tied down with all of the Star Wars canon, the writers were finally freed to make this epic space opera.

The dialogue system is nothing groundbreaking, but it does make the game a hell of a lot of fun to play. The idea of having your character rated as a "renegade" or a "paragon" is a system we're used to seeing in the KOTOR games.

There are many people who say that this is technically KOTOR 3 with improved graphics. But I've never quite understood why people are always so quick to judge a game against its predecessors from the same company. Of course many of the ideas that were so praised in BioWare's previous games would make it into their new IPs.

The battle system is much more fun to me than many of the other RPGish games. While I'm glad for the real time shooting element, there is only one thing that I think they should have put into the game, an auto-equip button. Beyond all of the micromanaging you have to do with your ally's equipment, there isn't much I would have changed.



The best part of this game for me is that I was essentially Captain James T. Kirk of the Federation starship Enterprise. Look at the similarities, you go where you want, kill sentient species with no regrets, and make it with members of your own crew or the hot alien babe. Any game that gives me the freedom to do pretty much what I want and still manage to herd me to a final destination always gets a few extra points.

My verdict: If you enjoy good sci-fi, being the saviour of the galaxy, and being given the chance to either be a good-guy or bad-guy this is the game for you.



Oh, almost forgot, tonight's review comes with a beer. Its a nice dark colored porter that is locally brewed here in Utah called "Polygamy Porter". You gotta love a state that can poke fun at itself. The label is below.