Review: Mass Effect
Christmas was fun, looking forward to new years. Today I have decided to do a little mini review of Mass Effect for the Xbox-360.
Initial score I give it a 9/10, now to prove to you that I am not just a raving fan boy.
The graphics are good, the optional film grain effect is so-so. It certainly gives it a more epic feel, but sometimes it just seems too artificial. It does however cover some anti-aliasing issues. These issues mainly centered on the major graphical downfall of the game. In what seems to be an effort to reduce load times, the game appears to load 3 sets of textures on top of themselves. When you enter a room sometimes you will see a very smooth texture over most objects, especially your armors. This will quickly be replaced by progressively better textures ala Halo 2 and Gears of War. All in all not devastating, but it certainly detracts from the realism.
The driving segments can be troublesome at first, but you quickly get used to the controls, and soon it’s no problem. I even spent an hour trying to flip the Mako over, unsuccessfully followed quickly by me accidentally flipping it during a fight.
The action itself is very good, and each character plays extremely different. It can be annoying to not be able to zoom in unless you have training with that particular gun, and in the sniper rifle’s case it becomes useless because your character doesn’t know what that little tube with an cross hair in it is for. A nice feature is that you have all 4 firearms, assault rifle, pistol, shotgun. and sniper rifle, equipped at all times, allowing you to quickly change your gun as the situation needs.
The plot is well done, and the side quests are entertaining, however sometimes you will feel restless because the citadel sequences have almost no action in them aside from the storyline, and it can easily feel like a lot of talk before you get to shooty shooty. However it is an rpg, and as such you should play it for the story.
Three major downfalls to Mass Effect are the lack of an item count, so you never now how close you are to that 250 item limit, forcing you to transform more than a fair share of your nice new loot into omni gel because you forgot to sell at the last station. The second downfall are the elevtors. At first it seems that the elevator is slow to help with the loading of new areas… then a loading symbol pops up and everything freezes for a second
then the elevator keeps going for a minute or two only to release you into half rendered environment. The third downfall is the lack of the lesbian scene. Such a pity.
Tags: MassEffect, Games, Game Review, Reviews, Xbox 360, Role Playing Game
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