Mass Effect
A Spectacular New Vision of the Future
The galaxy is trapped in an endless cycle of extinction. Every 50,000 years, an ancient machine race invades the galaxy. With ruthless efficiency, the machines wipe out all advanced organic civilization. They leave behind only the scattered ruins of technology, destroying all evidence of their own existence.
Few believe this ancient legend. You, however, know it to be true. The fight to stop this extinction event has become the most important mission in the galaxy.
“You must act without remorse, without hesitation, and outside the limits of the law.”
It is your mission. As Commander Shepard of the SS Normandy, you will take your elite recon squad across a galaxy in turmoil, in a desperate race to stop the return of an enemy without mercy. To stop this enemy, you must act without remorse, without hesitation, and outside the limits of the law. Your only imperative is to preserve the safety of civilized life in the galaxy - at any cost. You must become the tip of the spear of humanity, for you alone know the full extent of what is at stake if you should fail.
Science-fiction Role-playing: Perfected
Mass Effect allows you to create your own customizable version of Commander Shepard (or jump in and use the pre-created character) and plunge yourself into the center of an epic science-fiction story. Choose your squad-mates, your weapons, skills and abilities, and customize your vehicles, armor and appearance - you are in complete control over your experience.
In the course of your mission to stop the machine invasion, you may choose to follow the path of the soldier, the tech-specialist, or the biotics-specialist…each of which brings an arsenal of unique yet equally powerful abilities to use against the enemy. Wield a multitude of weapon types with precision accuracy…utilize your technical skill to turn enemy war machines against their creators…or unleash the full power of Dark Energy against your foe with devastating effects.
As you progress throughout the game you will improve your character’s skills, abilities, and equipment (including weapons, armor, biotic implants and more) to ensure that you have the means to face the growing threat before you.
The role you choose to play in Mass Effect will have tremendous consequences on the galaxy around you. You will face moral dilemmas in which the decision you ultimately make will significantly alter the fate of civilized life in the galaxy.
The Vastness of Space Beckons
Your mission will take you into the deepest reaches of known space - and beyond. Aboard your ship, the Normandy, you will choose which planets to investigate, and where to take your team. In addition to the major worlds of the main story arc, you will have the freedom to visit a wide array of uncharted planets and other locations such as asteroids and abandoned space freighters adrift in space. On many worlds, take your team planet side in the MAKO in order to explore and find alien life, ancient artifacts and ruins, rogue trader colonies and a host of other amazing discoveries.
Lose Yourself in a Living Galaxy
Mass Effect combines astonishing photo-realistic graphics with innovative new dialog systems to create a cast of living characters to interact with. Engage these characters in real-time conversations that allow you to immerse yourself in dramatically charged situations.
Characters communicate with full voice-acting and amazing animation that displays their emotions right down to subtle nuances in their facial expressions. Every wrinkled brow and slight twist of the mouth is captured to infuse every interaction with a feeling of realism. Lead Your Squad in Intense, Real-Time Combat
Lead Your Squad in Intense, Real-Time Combat
The struggle to stop the return of the machines will ultimately be a violent one. You will assume responsibility for the lives of your squad as you lead them into often uncharted, hostile alien environments. Each decision you make could mean the difference between victory and disaster. Although combat will take place in real-time, you will have the ability to pause combat and issue commands to your squad which they will then execute with the precision of a highly trained elite force. Upgrading certain skills and abilities as you level up your character will also allow you to increase your ballistic skill - this can ultimately lead to easier aiming, more damaging use of weapons, and biotic effects with the power to turn the tide of battle in your favor.
User Ratings and Reviews
5 Stars I HAVN”T RECIEVED IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
i haven’t received this game yet!!!!!
i don’t want to get ripped! i would like my game please!!!
3 Stars overrated
I completed this game in 10 hours. The game is just too linear and short. There are sidequests, but I did not enjoy doing them at all.
This game is more of a “choose your own adventure” than anything else. I certainly would not put this game in the top 10 for 360.
4 Stars One of the Greatest Action RPGs
This is one of the greatest games that have come out this generation. A great mix of RPG and Action/Shooter elements, if you enjoy RPGs you wont be dissapointed at all. It does have a few technical problems, like loading times and slow framerate but the story, gameplay, graphics, design, make up for it. I think the story is one of the most involving sci-fi stories seen in a game lately. And it’s getting a sequel which will for sure be much superior to something already great. So if you want to experience Mass Effect 2 to the fullest please play this one first. You wont regret it.
4 Stars Great Game but too Short
Since I got my Xbox a few months ago, I got spoiled. My 1st game was Oblivion. The game is literally hundreds of hours long if you want to explore everthing.
Next up was Fable the Lost Chapters. It was amazing for how old it was. Then I got a bunch of Japanime losers and would have rated ANY 2nd rate Western RPG an 11!
Til I played Fable 2 and every gaming site save GameSpot’s GoY; Fallout 3. I was spoiled all over again.
Fallout goes on FOREVER and has so much depth. Even FPS fans love it and don’t realize it’s an RPG. It’s THAT good.
F/O 3 goes on FOREVER, Mass Effect, not so much. Fallout is in my soul, Mass Effect, not so much. Xbox Live and PC Downloadable Content, Fallout 3 FTW. Music: FO FTW. Story: F/O 3 FTW… pretty much everything Fallout 3 FTW.
EXCEPT - Glitches, bugs and crashes: Mass Effect FTW!
Mass Effect had a decent storyline, decent graphics, a very novel concept for an RPG, but limited character generation. Fable 2 OWNS for character lgeneration and in-game development.
Devs - please buy yourself a clue. Grrl-gamers are out there. We’re playing hard-core but we MUST have the ability to have LOTs of long hair styles that FLOW (see GWs), tons of facial body and make-up styles! And give us a CAT as choice for a pet!
But I digress, Mass Effect has better than average voice-acting and dialogue. It has a large world to explore but much of it is repetitive. It has very difficult non-turn based combat. To me, on normal it was harder than F/O3 on hard, which adds to the challenge.
It also has a very good cohesive story, but it doesn’t steal your soul like F/O3.
Overall, I thought it was a very good game and far better than uber-linear, inflexible, Japanime bores, but not nearly as good as anything Bethesda or Fable 2. Maybe the equal of Fable 1 or Morrowind.
5 Stars A great story that spans across the universe
After taking on the “Star Wars” universe with the Xbox game “Knights of the Old Republic”, seems developer Bioware wanted to get in on the space-faring, race-conversing, quest-taking type with their own universe and they went all out as their next big project, “Mass Effect” has a long-reaching mythos and detail that is quite impressive. Bioware has always been known for being excellent storytellers and this game is one of the top stories on the next-gen consoles not because it’s rather simplistic but because it’s so compellingly written that it does have a “wonder what’ll happen next?” feeling about it. The gameplay on the other hand works but then it could’ve needed refinement and is one of those games that works despite the flaws it has.
Story: In the year 2183, Mankind has been able to get further into space exploration thanks to a cache of technology discovered on Mars. Now able to land on other planets and encounter other races, they mainly work out of the massive space station known as the Citadel which houses the Council, the main governing force of known citadel space and Spectres, elite agents who can get through government red tape and rules to get the job done. But when Saren, one of the top Spectres, goes rogue and allies himself with the malevolent synthetic race known as the geth, it’s up to Commander Shepard to travel all over the galaxy to bring him to justice and stop what he’s planning.
Graphics: Here’s where it gets dodgy since graphics can be divided into 2 categories: the look, or aesthetic, and the performance which is framerate, slowdown, screen tearing and such. On the looks side, Mass Effect is incredibly detailed, great cinematics and photorealistic characters. But then again the framerate gets very chuggy when more than several enemies and powers are on-screen, areas load in the middle of play and textures will arrive seemingly one at a time but then again the Unreal Engine usually has this problem. From a looks standpoint, this game is very impressive but there are quite a few performance details that knock it down.
Sound/Music: The soundtrack to Mass Effect largely consists of space-y synth music, akin to what you’d hear in 80’s sci-fi movie soundtracks. It’s not that the music is bad mind you it’s just that it’s somewhat forgettable, working fine in-game but disappearing from your head in the next area. However the voice acting is top-notch with actors such as Family Guy’s Seth Green, Star Trek TNG’s Marina Sirtis, Lance Henrikson and the Arbiter himself, Keith David. The male and female Shepard’s also do a good job with their roles and it does avoid the Bethesda problem of having soundalikes for NPC’s.
Gameplay: The bulk of Mass Effect is conversations where you’ll talk to almost everybody. Responses can range from helpful and appreciative to downright beligerant and nasty. This can affect parts of the game as diffusing a situation can add some paragon, or good, points whereas being confrontational but actually lead to a full blown fight. Though they are times where the good side has a strange end to the conversation and you’re like “this is supposed to be a good thing?” Some of the sidequests also follow this such as one you’ll run into where you have to save a crazy woman from killing herself. To be helpful, you have to gain her trust, step closer to her and give her a sedative so she can use it on herself. However if you want to get rough, you can just force it on her or if you’re particularly brutal, just ask a sniper to shoot her. It helps to have the choice too unlike say Fallout 3 where it was really “be the softiest saint in the wasteland or the most evil son of a ***** ever”, you can be nice to one person and tell somebody else to shut their mouth. Got to love a system that does that.
For the actual gameplay aspect of the game, it’s a 3rd-person shooter RPG where you and 2 others run through different terrains and buildings and fight enemy soldiers. The d-pad gives you the option to tell your teammates to take cover, regroup, advance to a specific location or concentrate fire on a target you select. Sometimes I’ll press regroup repeatedly and they’re nowhere to be seen but generally they’re quite helpful. Guns in the game work differently in that you don’t have ammo but rather the gun overheats, requiring a few seconds to cool down. Keep firing and it’s no good but it’s good we don’t have to search everywhere just to find that one clip of ammo for that one gun we need to use. It’s decent shooting and slightly fun though continuously pausing the game to press LB (weapon changes for the team) or RB (biotics…magic, if you will) kind of breaks the game’s flow.
One other part that is unfortunately my least favorite is when you pilot a vehicle called a Mako and travel a planet’s surface to get somewhere, find things to salvage or shoot either small geth soldiers and turrets or massive worms. These sidequests are frequently short, repetitive and the Mako drives incredibly poorly but to fully explore the Mass Effect universe you have to drive these things so it’s one of those “if I have to” type of deals. That being said there’s quite a few planets, some good incentives to look all over the galaxy and they’re quite brief so they’re not that bad.
Mass Effect’s achievements encourage multiple playthroughs which is a good thing because this is a fun game to go through more than once. If you can get past the nagging graphical issues, you’ll see Mass Effect is one of the best games you can own for the 360.
