Better late than never -- yeah, Mass Effect's been out for a couple of weeks, but you wouldn't dare pass up a chance to hear what we (reasonably honest) folks at Destructoid would say about BioWare's latest epic action-RPG, would you?
Equal parts Firefly, Star Trek, and Star Wars, BioWare's most recent effort seeks to be the be-all and end-all (or, considering it's the first in a planned trilogy, the be-all start-all) of story-driven, sci-fi action videogames. Generally, reviews have been pretty damned positive, but it still seems difficult to hear Mass Effect brought up in friendly conversation without also throwing around words like "disappointing," "flawed," and "what the hell were they thinking when they designed the Mako controls?"
Is Mass Effect a flawed masterpiece, then? No masterpiece at all? Crap? Genius? A mixture of the two?
Hit the jump to see our/my thoughts.
Mass Effect (Xbox 360)
Developed by BioWare
Published by Microsoft
Released on November 20, 2007
Here is the secret to enjoying Mass Effect: lower your expectations.
Mass Effect is not a revolutionary RPG -- hell, it's not even particularly innovative. It isn't a sprawling 40-hour epic, it doesn't include particularly great action, and it won't change the way we handle dialogue trees in role-playing games. Given how revolutionary Mass Effect seemed during its initial announcement, these realities may be hard to face -- but, like all crushing truths, you'll have to come to terms with them eventually. Once you do, of course, you'll be much more likely to have fun with this flawed, but enjoyable action-RPG.
The story follows ____ Shepard (you supply the first name, gender, skills, and personality) as s/he gallivants around the Milky Way galaxy attempting to find and stop a rogue Spectre -- imagine a Jedi, but without a lightsaber or force powers or forced morality -- named Saren from destroying the galaxy.
How do you stop Saren, one might ask? By shooting stuff, primarily. Hell, almost only by shooting stuff. Unlike KotOR or Neverwinter Nights, Mass Effect's quests seem to focus solely around the realtime combat system. A few sidequests and conversations can be solved with Charm or Intimidation techniques, but this game is most definitely an action-RPG -- BioWare fans, be ready for that.
Also be ready to spend the first three to four hours of the game cursing the developers for implementing such an oddly paced, seemingly-complex fighting system with almost no tutorial. Mass Effect tries to split the difference between slow, deliberate tactical 3rd-person-shooter gaming and fast-paced shoot'emup action; the player's aim and shooting speeds are very slow, but the enemies can be very quick. It's a weird decision, to be sure, and it definitely doesn't work as well as it should. The cover system is totally automatic (a la Kane and Lynch, where it didn't work either), the button mapping makes no sense, and, though you can issue specific attack commands to your teammates while paused, the game doesn't even tell you this is possible, much less how to do it.
In fact, nearly everything, from the menu system to the combat to the godawful Mako driving levels, are thrown at the player without any explanation or help. BioWare just presents a bunch of ideas to the player and then walks away, leaving you to flounder around for an hour or so until you get your bearings.
Graphically, the game is gorgeous -- once you get past the numerous visual bugs, that is. I'm not the sort of guy who notices texture pops too frequently (I didn't even know what they were until Mass Effect), but Mass Effect's texture pops are so frequent and noticeable that you'd think you were playing a beta rather than a finished product. The dialogue scenes are one of the best parts of the game, but it can be difficult to emotionally connect yourself to a character when they seem to be, you know, missing half their face for the first few seconds of your conversation. Generally, though, Mass Effect subscribes to the "in the future, everything will be shiny" school of science fiction and when it works, it works; the pristine, almost sterile human environments go a long way in setting a fantastic, larger-than-life tone for the whole package.
But speaking of the conversation system, it's worth pointing out that BioWare was flat-out lying about some of its aspects. While the analog stick-controlled response system is certainly a much more intuitive and cinematic method of handling dialogue trees -- the conversations have a great flow and rhythm -- interrupting people or choosing dickish responses almost never results in different outcomes. You can interrupt someone every single time they open their mouths, and the conversation won't play any differently than if you'd patiently waited for them to finish every statement before jumping in with your own questions. On one hand, this isn't such a bad thing (I don't know if I'd want to be forced to listen to every single line of dialogue in its entirety), but BioWare still failed to deliver on their promise for an innovative, interactive new approach to NPC conversation.
It may sound like I'm being overly negative, but these are just the flaws which will jump out at the overtly hopeful gamer within a few hours of play. However myriad or obvious these flaws may be, I don't mean to suggest that the game doesn't have some truly enjoyable aspects -- it does. They just don't really make themselves apparent until four or five hours into the game.
The story, for example, might initially seem like your typical "kill this guy and save the galaxy" videogame nonsense, but it's made much more interesting and involving due to how well the characters are developed. Ashley, for example, at first seems like your typical badass videogame heroine; depending on how you progress through the game, however, Ashley will soon seem less like a badass chick with a heart of gold and more like a brutal racist who takes just a bit too much enjoyment out of exterminating bad guys. Similarly, Wrex the krogan, Liara the asari, and Kaiden the human all initially seem to fall into established videogame cliches, but they evolve and develop in unexpected and utterly satisfying ways.
Thanks to the modest dialogue, well-paced conversations, and fantastic facial animations which manage to stay juuuust outside of the uncanny valley, the characters add a lot more legitimacy to the plot than it really deserves. Hell, when you enter an elevator you'll hear your two allies get into conversations about themselves; the conversations never repeat, and they'll always be different depending on which two NPC's you've chosen to accompany you. I've rarely seen a videogame give such attention to character before, and I'd sure as hell like to see more games follow suit. And when you care about the characters, the plot feels much more meaningful and epic: what begins as a boring exercise in galaxy-saving quickly turns into a character driven space opera with some political commentary and one or two tough moral choices (which are so interesting that there should have been way more of them a la The Witcher; still, I'll take what I can get).
With the characters, story, and atmosphere being so strong, it becomes somewhat easy to overlook the game's myriad faults. Don't get me wrong: I find it absolutely unacceptable that I even be required to overlook such obvious faults as the inventory system or the Mako driving levels, but -- whether I wanted to or not -- I found myself getting used to the oddly paced combat, to the point where I was actually enjoying it by the game's end. Once you find a strike team you're really happy with and a weaponry setup which corresponds to your style of play, you'll be happily watching as Liana throws a Geth trooper into the air with her biotic abilities, only so you can shoot the damned thing in the chest with a shotgun blast. The friendly AI is surprisingly good, and I found myself pleasantly relying on Wrex and Liana more and more as I progressed through the game; the combat is still horrendously flawed, don't get me wrong, but it's very easy to enjoy yourself once you finally ease into it.
Oh, one final note: Mass Effect is hilariously short, for an RPG. I completed about 75% of the sidequests in the game, and I still finished the main storyline in less than 16 hours. The game's brevity alone is enough to make this a rental rather than a purchase, unless you're the type who loves to replay RPGs over and over so you can see the consequences of choices you didn't make the first time around. Still, while 16 hours is a pretty short amount of time for a galaxy-spanning epic RPG, by the time I'd reached the end I felt utterly satisfied with the story turns* and sufficiently pleased by the difficulty of the (admittedly stereotypical) final boss.
All in all, Mass Effect is a good game which will disappoint nearly everyone who plays it. Immensely flawed in its design choices, but absolutely fantastic in its attention to character and atmosphere, Mass Effect is enjoyable, but not a masterpiece; entertaining, but not revolutionary; epic and emotionally involving, but disappointing. It is not a great game -- but it is, generally, a good one.
Score: 7.0
*In this context, "story turn" means "cut scene where my virtual avatar had sex with a blue-skinned alien"
Contest:
10:50 AM on 12.01.2007
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Also, you're fired. :)
Other then that, I rather liked the combat system. The voice work is phenomenal. The exploration aspect is what really had me excited for this game, it's too bad the planets all ended up being more, or less, the same, just skinned differently, but the game was brimming with depth and story quality.
Good review destructoid, alot better than the inflated 10's I see around. The game is certainly, a flawed gem, I hope to see a game with so much potential and attention to detail to be expanded on and refined in a sequel.
Solid review. Definitely makes one aware of the flaws in the game before purchasing it (I actually like the combat system but yes, it took me forever to realize what works and what doesn't).
Since Rev Anthony's reviews always reflect 0.5 of how much I enjoy the games, this game was a 14/10 for me ;)
It's much closer to a 9 than a 7. What kills me is watching the 6 hour Modern Warfart and Sony's 5 hour Tomb Raider ripoff getting praised by the mouth breathers.
Hahahaha.
One thing I disagree with is, is the length of the game. It's a matter of pacing I think, since I've played for 26 hours on my 1st playthrough and didn't get the Completionist (beat 75% of the game) achievement.
It could be longer if want to make it longer, but other than that, great review.
One reason I really enjoyed the game I think is because I didn't really listen to all the hype, and just expected a good game from BioWare without buying all the way into the hype.
And its worth a buy! How can you say only rent it? Didn't you just review Naruto with a buy it? hmmmmmmmmmmm...something fucked up.
assassins creed, kane&lynch and now this
overhyped games PWNED by the rev
but it''s nice that this year was filled with many good (not great) games.
I knew I wasn't missing this but how can you spend 90 hours on this game when one person took 16 hours to get almost everything? Fourth time through?
Every review I've read in the past few years, literally without exception, has fallen into one of two categories:
1. Reviews that give too much praise because hype has created unreasonable expectations.
2. Reviews that gleefully eviscerate okay-to-decent games for no reason other than to give the impression of being "above the hype."
We live in a culture where hating stuff makes you cool. And the more people there are who like that thing you hate, the cooler you are for hating it. So it creates an ideological problem for me, because even if I agree with a game's numerical score, to see that score presented with a self-congratulatory sneer makes me feel dirty.
I mean, I really enjoyed Assassin's Creed when I first played it. I got a huge kick out of the scale of the world and the convincing animation; it's tremendously difficult to give polygonal characters a sense of physical presence, and I was very impressed by that achievement. But after the reviews rolled in, I'm too embarrassed to even play the damn game because the rest of the world decided without me that it's a piece of garbage. And not only that, but they were smug as hell about it.
If the flaws of Assassin's Creed were enough to keep me from enjoying it, I'd probably still play for a bit just to see what it got right, then say "meh, it's okay" and move on to something else. I would never dream of putting its head on a pike and parading it around my front page to impress readers with my journalistic integrity.
That's probably an extreme example, and I'm not trying to single anybody out, but I feel the same way about this review. Sure, I think 7/10 is about right for Mass Effect, but you make it sound like BioWare just broke down your door like a normal-mapped Kool-Aid Man, filled your head with promises of kittens and unicorns, and then while you sat there eagerly anticipating video game nirvana, took a shit on your couch.
I agree with every word of your final paragraph, Rev. But to me, starting a review with the words "lower your expectations" sounds like you've got BioWare staffers burning in effigy on your front lawn.
Side Note: Mako driving FTL.
16 hours??? 16 hours??!! i'm logging 25+ as we speak!! and i'm not fucking done!! jesus christ... maybe i'm just being manipulated by the geth, but i'm loving this game. like, so fucking much. and i had high fucking expectations about it. going from assassins creed to this might have something to do with it.
also, mako driving ftw
I've been meaning to blog about this stuff, but I will later. For now, let's just say that a review like this shows why review scores are antiquated and unnecessary for games. Can you really say that a game that does something...ANYTHING exceptionally well but is mired by a few technical flaws or lack of a good tutorial should get an equal score to a game that does NOTHING exceptionally well but is technically sound, with a minimum of pop-ins, loading times, etc.? All that technical crap should take a back seat, and we're talking waaaaaaay in the back, to whether the game is actually fun and whether it does what it's meant to do. Anyone who actually enjoyed Assassin's Creed LESS because they saw a guy stuck in a wall or enjoyed Mass Effect LESS because the textures didn't load for a few seconds is someone I just can't understand.
To all the people who referenced hype: Talk of the hype has no place in a review, or in a review discussion. You guys complain that the game was overhyped and overrated, while you do just the opposite and shit on the game because you resent the hype. Let's get a grip, people. A game is an inanimate object. There's really no reason to let what other people think of a game affect your perception of it. Hating on a game simply because it's overhyped or because you think you can be super cool by going against the grain is just as ignorant as saying a game is ten times better than it is because you fell for the hype. One way or another, the hype has affected your perception of the game, even if it's in a negative way.
Also, everything LordRegulus said.
now... whats that... like... what?
In all though I wouldn't be able to give it anything higher than an 8.0, despite the fact that I love the game so much. Regardless though, everyone should check this out and see if it's their cup of tea. Just be prepared to not have your hand held.
Outside of that, the game was stellar, incredible story, great combat system(flawed my ass) and I loved surveying and exploring tons of uncharted planets.
Rent it, hahahahahaha, nice joke there rev, this is a must buy for Bioware and RPG fans alike, even if you're a shooter fan I recommend it, the fighting system lends itself to that, its gonna be hard to go back to traditional RPG's after ME.
ME is one of the more anticipated games of this year and it delivered quite well, I have to wonder if D-Toid gives games like this to Rev because they know his review will piss off a lot of people.
you have to take it for what it is. and play it the way its meant to be played. that sounds weird, and just like an excuse for all the flaws, but its true for every game ever made. the combat is absolutely unbelievable when you pause the game, assign everything you want to do, including what your squad is going to do, then unpause everything and just watch how it all plays out. sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't and you die. ok, back to the drawing board. thats how i believe mass effect is meant to be played.
if i were to be pissed about not being able to jump, or not being able to slap everyone in the face, or not being able to blow planets up just because i want to i would be stuck in my fucked up notion of what i think this game is about. its like being "let-down" by mario for not being able to plump just because he's a plumber and thats what i expect him to do.
take it for what is. thats all. like or not. but don't come down on something just because you had your preconceptions blown to pieces by wrex's shotgun.
I'm sorry, I just paid 60 dollars for a game that runs so laggy I can't even aim when there are more than my 3 characters on screen, must be nitpicking. It could have been so much better than it actually is. I think the only reason it's getting this fanboy reaction is because people can see what it could have been, which is pretty lame, because the actual product is a lot less satisfying.
The Rev is right about the games shortcomings, but it's definitely something to build on for the second part of the trilogy.
To me though, Mass Effect isn't a Rent, it's Game of the Fucking year. It's not the second coming, it's definitely flawed, but I enjoyed it so much more than any other game this year.
One thing though, you must have breezed through the game to complete the game with 75% of the side quests in 16 hours. I completed them all and it took me just under 40 hours. Maybe I was just taking my time or something.
"All in all, Mass Effect is a good game which will disappoint nearly everyone who plays it."
"It may sound like I'm being overly negative"
:(.
It most certainly is a 40 hour epic game. When I finished it, I had 39+ hours recorded on my saved game and still hadn't finished all of the side missions (I think I was about 10 "assignments" short.)
Im into the first few hours of the game so far, and I'm enjoying it. Its not The Witcher by any means (which may be close to the best PC RPG Ive played since fallout) but I am enjoying it. So far, an 8-8.5 if we are going to quantify my experience in a number.
I am compelled to ask why we feel that an RPG needs to span the time of two work weeks to be worthwile. If 15 hours is long enough to tell the story, I'm just fine with that. Its is better than putting in some timesinks just to pad out the playable hours.
the framerate is absolutely inexcusable. at times its horrible. and i agree, it actually makes the, otherwise fantastic, combat unplayable. so you're definitely not nit-picking the technical flaws, because they are inexcusable. its just a matter of how much you let the game immerse you, and if you like the whole premise of it.
Heres a hint dtoid. Start using group reviews so that we can get different opinions. Don't turn into Joystiq please.