"Choices are the hinges of destiny."
The game takes off from the first game and was concocted as a trilogy, so the story line is intact and there's none of this God of War bullshit were the story is complete for the first game, then throws us a cliffhanger in the second act <---- this is poop :(
The first game was "not without it's issues" and most of them can be summarized by clicking here and watching Yahtzee tear it apart with his sexy, Australian accent, questionable windows media skills and strange homosexual tendencies.
I actually enjoyed the massive amounts of dialogue of the first game, but I think that's because I'm female and have that strange tendency to communicate my feelings in a form that doesn't involve explosions or punches (though I must admit, I do occasionally enjoy violence as a universal language). There were times where I sadly did succumb to the 'A' button's ability to skip someone's ramblings, but in reality the only time I did was when I didn't like the character who was talking to me - and they were surprisingly few.
I was slightly surprised that Yahtzee found the fighting system so inexplicably inefficient and "cluster fucked" (his opinion of fighting systems if usually right on the ball). I have no problem and thought the system was, while a little momentum-killing at times, quite innovative. You get a choice of four weapons (pistol, rifle, sniper-rifle and shotgun) which operate like a third-person shooter and have different 'timed' (as opposed to turn-based) powers that vary according to your class. Every class is a variation between weapons and main 'personality' which I will list here: There's the Tech personality that lets you take out or hack into enemy mechanical units and boosts your abilities with grenades and such; the Soldier personality that turns you into a hybrid of Starbuck and Duke Hazard and ups your ability to take a proverbial beating; and the Biotic personality allows to you use crazy gravity deifying powers like making a Singularity in the middle of a crowd of enemies that lifts them off their feet and crushes them there and Lifting them off the floor to watch them float to the ceiling like slow-moving water-targets. With both the bullet-cover combat and use of powers combined with the ability to control your teammates exact command, the fighting system worked pretty well and was said to have been improved in the PC version (which I did not play).
Relationships in this game also go the extra mile by going all the way to the bedroom if you want them to. The sexual scene within the first game is not porn, much to the disappointed of nerds everywhere I suppose, but it is particularily interesting when, if you decide to play as a female character, you can choose to have a relationship with a secondary character named Liara T'soni. I think Bioware has claimed the first lesbian sex scene in gaming history with this idea. Though many can claim that the scene isn't 'really' homosexual because Liara is a member of an alien race that is mono-gender (has only one sexe) and reproduces through melding her DNA with a host. Therefore, Liara doesn't have the same restrictions that a human woman has when in a relationship with an other woman - i.e. she can have kids that have the biological material of both parents even if her partner is a "her". However, Liara's appearance is strictly female in the game - boobs and everything - which make it hard to say that it's not a homosexual coupling.
(And really... can YOU resist the sexy picture above?? I didn't think so...)
I, being bisexual, choose Liara as my partner almost every time because I felt very, very little attraction to the other choice named Kaiden Alenko - a male military human with an educated opinion of the galaxy and a very sad story behind him (he gave me an Edward Cullen like feeling which sickened me, so I went for the librarian-like Liara instead).
Non-romantic relationships are well thought out and fun to have in the game as well. There's Garris, an alien ex-cop with authority problems. Wrex, the honorable warrior alien thirsting for blood, but concerned for his species' dying way of life. Tali, an alien on a classic Growing-Up story to bring something of worth back to her people after a pilgrimage. And Ashley, a little bit of a xenophobic Gunnery Chief with the human military with a proud but sad military family history and a strong belief in the Christian faith. Plus, you meet some minor characters, both human and alien, on your travels throughout the galaxy.
These relationships allow for Mass Effect to have a considerable amount of emotional depth. I felt immersed in the story and liked the multiple directions you could take with your character. Like most games these days, Mass Effect has the "Choose your own adventure" type of gameplay where you can choose to shoot at someone for say.... not giving you a discount. However, you can also choose to negotiate a better asking price with bartering. Akin to the Light-side/Dark-side complex of Bioware's previous genius game Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (henceforth KotOR), your choices between "good" actions and "bad" actions are challenged constantly by your teammates and those around you and you can be sure that almost every choice you make will have an effect on the next game. Fortunately, unlike KotOR, the choices are so many that you can balance it out and become a schizophrenic hero/heroine that has both threatened and negotiated his or her way through the shit of the galaxy - very refreshing, though the entire system that restricts how well you can threaten or negotiate is VERY annoying sometimes. I also found it tedious that they put the "renegade" in red lettering in conversations and the "paragon" in blue lettering. I'd like to see a game that doesn't take you by hand in decisions and you actually have to read what you are going to say and judge whether or not that's the "right" or "badass" way to go.
I don't really need to resume the main Story-line because Yahtzee covered it, but I will say that it drives the plot well enough that most of your actions make sense throughout the game and the consequences of your actions will shape the galaxy and set you up for the second act without a hitch.
Yahtzee did hit the nail with the hammer when he started talking about the vehicle section: IT SUCKS. BADLY. Think Halo 3 controls on the Warthog with a slow firing-cannon. Couldn't they have come up with a variety of systems on the damn thing? What about having a REAL boost system, or even a mobile artillery unit? Why can't I use the Normandy flagship to bomb things from orbit? Why doesn't the vehicle being used in the game mimic the stealth-like design of the Normandy and allow me to sneak up and assassinate my target?
In short: the potential was there, but they gave us a Warthog clone instead... grrrrr
As for the game as art: no one can be disappointed. Mass Effect is beautifully designed with perfect lighting and lots of interesting color schemes. The maps can be innovative (the last level has to running up the side of an exploding ship in magnetic boots and heated battle with alien robots, for Pete sake!) and the backgrounds have activity in the distance that makes you feel like the places you visit have no boundaries (though that illusion is crushed most of the time because you can never go anywhere else and there are barren planets that you can visit that sort of ruin the experience).
The character design is brilliant. They used high definition motion capturing to get the expressions correct on characters' faces - I was impressed.
In short: Buy it. Rent it. Have fun with it. Then wait with me for Mass Effect 2! ;P
Bioware's official website for Mass Effect 2 can be found here.
