Combat

The combat is not a turn-based, but full live action. Well, you still can pause anytime during the game (including combat) by holding your SPACE BAR and make a few clicks. You can also assign your skills to quick shortcuts (slot 1, 2, 3 etc).

During the combat, you can hide behind an object (I guess this has become the standard on any first person/third person shooter games), duck, and shoot. Your squad mates will do the same on their own (although sometimes they do it poorly).

Just point, and shoot

Speaking of squad mates, you can only bring 2 other buddies with you during your travel. You can change your team member only before a mission, or when you are leaving your ship, the Normandy. You’ll get them quick early in the game and you can guess how many of them will be joining your adventure because the squad selection screen has already spoiled them for you :(  But I guess, since you’ll be getting them early in the game, then this is okay. Else, I’d prefer to be kept a secret and get an excitement when someone else joins my crew.

Thanks for spoiling my “future” teammates

Inventory System

Standard RPG style, although Mass Effect only relies heavily on weapons, armors and their modifications. So you won’t be seeing your backpacks with flowers, stones, chickens or potions. These equipment modifications can be “embedded” on your piece of equipment for extra bonuses (+90 shields, Armor Piercing Rounds, etc). These can also be attached and detached anytime you want.

Plenty of upgrades for you

If you get a newer piece of equipment and try to equip it, the system will ask whether you want to transfer the modifications on the old equipment to the new one, smart!

You’ll also need to upgrade your teammates’ equipment if you want them to survive longer in the battle. Note that your teammates may or may not be humans, so you’ll have to buy the right piece of armor, depending on his/her race. You wouldn’t want to dress up a Hobbit with an Orc’s chain mail, won’t you? (If you haven’t watched Lord of The Rings, then please ignore this joke :))

It’s too bad that you can’t see how a new armor in shop will look on you unless if you buy it first. You can get around this problem by quick saving and quick loading the game, though.

Leveling

Leveling is pretty much straight forward in Mass Effect. Gain experiences for killing enemies and completing quests. There are side quests in this game too, and it’s up to you whether you want to try to complete it or not.

Side quests reward you with credits, experience, paragon/renegade points, and sometimes you’ll hear the outcome of your actions on the audible news radio report when you are in a lift.

Side quests usually have different outcomes, depending on your choice of actions. Some confrontations can be ended in a peaceful way if you have a high charm/intimidate points. Of course, if you have the “Kill All” style of gameplay, then you’ll know which dialogue tree to choose.

Conclusion

This review has been long, but I haven’t told all about Mass Effect. It’s just too vast to tell. I haven’t told about MediGel, Omni Tools, the Frogger-style mini game during a decryption, getting extra credits from finding mines on planets, travelling through the universe on your ship, riding your “Mako” which is the vehicle that you’ll use to travel on planets (Hint: Press “Q” if you want to get out of your Mako vehicle in Mass Effect. It’s not listed on the Controller settings in game, but it’s on the manual, lol), etc.

Playing Mass Effect is like watching a science fiction movie, but only if you take your time playing the game, listening to every dialogue and trying to understand the universe/history. If you only want actions, then you may get a bit disappointed. As other Bioware games, dialogues and storyline plays a bigger role than the actions. However, there will be enough actions in Mass Effect.

I’m not sure about the minimum specification, but I’m playing Mass Effect on my GeForce 8800GT and all quality is maxed on 1680×1050 resolutions.

Mass Effect is Mass-ive. Some people have problems with the SecuRom protections but I’m sure they are working on a patch to fix it up. I haven’t found bugs yet in the game, except from a minor graphical glitch here:

A two-headed monster as a team mate? Woohoo

When was the last time you play a good RPG in PC? The Witcher? Mass Effect should satisfy your thirst and will keep you occupied for a long time. There’s also a replayability value by using a different character (I’ll probably create a tough-looking-bad-attitude dude next time), a different class, and different dialogue selections just for the fun of it.

I usually like to play the good guy on my first try of the game and then replay it with being the bad guy, for a more fun experience

So, prepare for some sleepless nights with Mass Effect!

And prepare for some *ahem* relaxing moments with Mass Effect

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