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Random Acts of Fandom: Mass Effect
Sep. 8th, 2008 12:59 pmSo, I've been a bit hooked on Mass Effect lately.
It's easily the best game I've played in a while, and I heartily recommend it to the RPG players on my flist. I finished one play-through and then immediately started a second one; that's how good this is.
It helps that there are approximately six billion different choices you can make during the course of the game, with various entertaining effects. And by 'various entertaining effects' I mean things like 'talk your way through an entire sidequest and resolve it without anyone firing a shot,' 'punch out a reporter in the middle of a recorded interview,' and 'sexually harrass your subordinate.' Among many others. Every time you turn around.
(I find that last one in particular hilarious for reasons I can't entirely explain. It totally is sexual harrassment, too. "I don't believe I've had the pleasure of you serving under me yet, Lieutenant." Bwah.)
I haven't had the heart yet to more than dabble with the Renegade options, but even playing as a Paragon, Shepard is pretty damn badass. Jennifer Hale's voice acting has a lot to do with that, probably - it pleases me to be able to play her as a woman, especially since doing so means that the party has more women in it than men. Although all the characters are mostly pretty cool. I am much more of a characterization / storyline gamer than I am a gameplay gamer, so it's really the characters and the epic space opera storyline and the depth of the setting that make the game for me... especially since Shepard's characterization is tweakable and the storyline is coherent - even cinematic - but not 100% linear.
With regards to the gameplay, however, I don't have any complaints about it. It's basically a third-person shooter, which I was not expecting and which took some getting used to, but I haven't had a lot of patience for the bog-standard RPG whoosh-to-combat-mode everyone-glued-into-formation turn-based stuff ever since games like Kingdom Hearts and Final Fantasy XII proved it wasn't necessary. I am always in favor of more seamless gameplay/storyline integration.
So, yeah. Mass Effect = good stuff, and people should play it. I'm very much looking forward to the sequel, which promises to draw information from your old saves. But in the meantime, there's a lot of replay value left.
It's easily the best game I've played in a while, and I heartily recommend it to the RPG players on my flist. I finished one play-through and then immediately started a second one; that's how good this is.
It helps that there are approximately six billion different choices you can make during the course of the game, with various entertaining effects. And by 'various entertaining effects' I mean things like 'talk your way through an entire sidequest and resolve it without anyone firing a shot,' 'punch out a reporter in the middle of a recorded interview,' and 'sexually harrass your subordinate.' Among many others. Every time you turn around.
(I find that last one in particular hilarious for reasons I can't entirely explain. It totally is sexual harrassment, too. "I don't believe I've had the pleasure of you serving under me yet, Lieutenant." Bwah.)
I haven't had the heart yet to more than dabble with the Renegade options, but even playing as a Paragon, Shepard is pretty damn badass. Jennifer Hale's voice acting has a lot to do with that, probably - it pleases me to be able to play her as a woman, especially since doing so means that the party has more women in it than men. Although all the characters are mostly pretty cool. I am much more of a characterization / storyline gamer than I am a gameplay gamer, so it's really the characters and the epic space opera storyline and the depth of the setting that make the game for me... especially since Shepard's characterization is tweakable and the storyline is coherent - even cinematic - but not 100% linear.
With regards to the gameplay, however, I don't have any complaints about it. It's basically a third-person shooter, which I was not expecting and which took some getting used to, but I haven't had a lot of patience for the bog-standard RPG whoosh-to-combat-mode everyone-glued-into-formation turn-based stuff ever since games like Kingdom Hearts and Final Fantasy XII proved it wasn't necessary. I am always in favor of more seamless gameplay/storyline integration.
So, yeah. Mass Effect = good stuff, and people should play it. I'm very much looking forward to the sequel, which promises to draw information from your old saves. But in the meantime, there's a lot of replay value left.
