I finally started playing Mass Effect. So far the game is great. A few random impressions and thoughts, both good and bad:
- I immediately liked the whole "feel" of the game as soon as I went to the main menu. Cool music and slick presentation. Creating and customizing your character was a lot of fun. I edited my character's background but kept his appearance as default. I am so used to seeing that character model in all the previews that he is Commander Shepard in my eyes.
- I have no idea why you have one button to pull out your weapon (X) and a totally different button to re-holster is (B). Seems like a really weird design choice.
- It takes a while to get used to the combat system. When engaged with an enemy your tendency is to just play the game like a 3rd Person Action game like GRAW, but that will not work for long. You need to remember to bring up the command window (RB) and use your squads special abilities. Took me a while to get used to this. In fact, I'm still working on it.
- The equipment menus are a bit odd. Managing all your items seems tougher than it should be. From what I have noticed a lot of the weapons, armor and items have little "personality". They are not like they were in KotoR where you could find really unique items that granted you special abilities and had a history to them and a unique name. All the items in M.E. are pretty generic and only come from different manufacturers and are separated into grades (I, II, II, IV, etc.) to distinguish the more powerful ones.
- The graphics are overall excellent, although there is a fair amount of stuttering. The framerate can drop when things get rough and the game pauses to load a few times if you are running through an area quickly. The biggest graphical drawback seems to be that the game takes too long to load textures. Upon loading a game up everything is usually a flat-shaded mess and can take a few seconds to fill in. In many conversations every time the camera switches to a new angle there is texture loading going on in the background.
- The music is fantastic. The voice acting is also top notch.
- The galaxy map is super cool.
- Driving the Mako is not as intuitive or fun as I would have hoped. These sections would have been so much better if it handled more like a warthog. The controls are similar, but the execution falls well short. The physics can be iffy, but then again, you are traversing planets with various gravities, so I'll let that go as being intentional. What is not excusable is the terrible camera angles you can get sometimes when driving up or down terrain, where the Mako is completely obstructing your view making combat impossible.
- While I thoroughly enjoyed KotoR, Jade Empire and can already tell I am going to have a great time with Mass Effect, I was hoping Bioware's RPG "formula" would have evolved more. M.E. looks gorgeous, the battles are real-time, but the game still feels very much like Bioware's previous two games. While the new conversation system is very cool and more interesting than their previous games, it basically is just a new way to choose your response, everything else about it practically the same.
- I am getting kinda tired of the way these RPGs are set up. It is cool that there is so much background information created for the game, to the point that you can ask non-essential characters questions about their background and some other pretty odd questions, but in the context of what is going on around you, it is pretty silly for your character to even inquire about half these things. I won't even mention some of the side quests, which would be fine for some out of work humanitarian to take on, but not the first human Specter on a mission to save the galaxy. Granted, all this additional content is "optional" in the sense that they are not essential to complete the game, but if you do not partake in them you miss out on a ton of experience points and your level will be capped off pretty low if you just do the essential tasks. Not to mention you will miss about ½ the game! This is not so much a knock on Mass Effect, but on all RPGs. Take Oblivion for example. Same thing. The main quest in that game lets you know how "urgent" and "pressing" everything is, yet more than 80% of that game is doing side quests that have nothing to do with the main one. At least in Oblivion you can continue playing when you are done with the main quest. I guess I don't like being put in the position where if I want to play the game realistically, as if I was the main character (which is what a ROLE playing game should be), that I would actually miss more than half the game and miss leveling up to the point to see all the abilities, etc.
For the record, I do enjoy doing the side quests, I just hate the fact that they constantly remind that I am playing a game by making me think, "I can't believe I am taking time off from my mission to do this crap!". But I want to experience everything in the game too, so it is a Catch-22.
The bottom line though is that I am having fun with the game and find it very hard to stop playing. I always want to do one more task or just get to the next objective before I stop, then when I get there, I say the same thing. Very addicting.
I am only about 11 hours in. Will write more about it as I advance.
