Mass Effect Review - Xbox 360

8.5

Gameplay: 8
Graphics: 9
Audio: 9
Innovation: 8

Labeled the “spiritual successor” of the Knights of The Old Republic series on Xbox 1, Mass Effect is finally affecting Xbox 360 owners in a massive way. Come on, that line was begging to be written. Mass Effect is a game of epic proportions, or so it is portrayed that way, being able to explore an entire traverse of galaxies filled with planets, moons and stars. Create an identity or play as John Shephard, Commander of the Normandy Spacecraft, discover the secrets of an ancient race and the citadel council in a role playing game unlike any other.

Gameplay

Starting a new game in Mass Effect, you’re hit with plenty of customisable options. You can play the game tactically and have full control over your special moves, your leveling, and your squad, or you can play solely like a shooter and let the game do all the behind-the-scenes stuff. This means Mass Effect is a game for anyone that likes to kill aliens with guns, and considering the success of franchises like Doom, Halo, Quake, Half-Life, Insert Hero [Here] Insert Weird Bug Creature [There], yada yada yada, one can assume Mass Effect is a very worthy contender for game of the year.

The game starts out very similar to KOTOR. After the prologue which explains a lot of the back story, you begin your main game in the capital city of the free traverse, or so it seems by the way the council members all act. Once you take control of your ship you have full free-roaming capabilities around the entire traverse. With several dozen different galaxies each with 1-4 solar systems within them, and then with each solar system having a handful of planets, you can see just how large the game is. Unfortunately though, most of the roughly 250 planets in the game are unexplorable, although you can harvest resources from some of them. With a name like Mass Effect, we thought there would be lots of planets rich with life to explore, but unfortunately most of the explorable planets are nothing more than a barren wasteland with a couple of places marked on the map to check out. What’s worse is that you can’t explore the entire planet; you’re refined to a small rectangle on the map which doesn’t do the game justice at all. The free roaming in Mass Effect needs a major overhaul for the sequels if they want to compete with other popular open-range RPG’s like the Elder Scrolls series and of course World of Warcraft.

The missions in the main story feel very linear too; they almost feel like levels once you’re put in a situation where you have to fight through a bunch of bad guys until you reach a boss or an objective. That being said, they still provide the ... (continued next page)