Mass Effect: 10 Hours Later (almost)

by E-G November 25, 2007

So I’ve put in approx. 10 hours and wanted to chime back in as to my experience thus far. As you may know, life’s a little rough these days so I’m consuming video games and movies like a fiend to numb the brain. During my great games odyssey, I’ve played a lot of drivel: Assassin’s Creed (huge disappointment for me), Heavenly Sword (boring), Lair (horrible controls), and seen a lot of crap: The Mist (uninspired), Evan Almighty (unfunny), but thankfully I have two big guns to keep me happy. One is Call of Duty 4, an amazing multiplayer game with a great experience system (blows Halo 3 outta the water), but the real delight is Mass Effect.

Thus far, I’ve embarked on the main story arc, investigated an alien super-station, committed genocide and explored an uncharted world after discovering a derelict spacecraft in a nearby galaxy. It’s frickin’ awesome and I love this game, but it’s not without its faults, and here they are. Please pardon my shitty phone pics but wanted to share them too.

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1. Combat. It kinda stinks. It’s “action”-based, but not really a shooter. The AI is pretty bad, and if you hide behind a crate healing, they’ll let you do so. Your AI squad is pretty bad too, so there are some frustrating firefights.

2. Vehicles. When you leave bases or explore worlds, you drive around in an armored assault vehicle called the Mako. The handling of it is rough (why can’t people just adopt the Halo control scheme?!) and the weapon systems are a little shaky. Like combat, you roughly aim where you want to shoot, and maybe you’ll hit it.

3. Equipment. This is minor to me, but the UI for figuring out your weapons is a little clunky. I’m sitting on dozens of different types of pistols and shotguns (yes, I can sell them), but it’s hard identifying exactly what the differences are… unless it’s as simple as which does more damage (which I think it might be). So that’s a little bit of a bummer, but there’s some cool equipment upgrades you can use, so it’s a wash.

4. Dialog. I love it, don’t get me wrong, but sometimes the statement I select is not really the dialog I want to say. I pick a choice that says, “Go screw yourself” and my hero says, “I think you have to deal with this problem” and that’s disappointing!

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Still, I am loving it. This go I’m playing a total prick, pushing on the Intimidation track, killing and insulting people (usually in that order), and acting like a speciest (only humans get to be part of my active squad). I’ve made some mistakes, and ranked up the wrong skills, but such is life.

I play for a few hours at a time, and I feel like I’ve played longer than 10 hours, but that’s what the clock says! For those on the fence, get it.