Well, Mass Effect was released last week, although I was away, so I didn’t get a chance to play it until I got back on Sunday night.
The setup for the universe is pretty interesting. All races in the galaxy owe their technology to the remains of a previous civilisation, The Protheans. There’s a council of the various alien races who govern galactic affairs and humanity is somewhat frowned upon as the newcomers, who the other races dislike.
When a new Prothean artifact is uncovered, your ship is sent on a covert mission to retrieve it, as its impact on galactic affairs could be incalculable. Needless to say, things don’t go so well, and a threat is revealed.
I’m a huge fan of RPGs and Bioware in general. In many ways Bioware were synonymous with quality PC RPGs, thanks to the Baldur’s Gate series. A success they continued with Neverwinter Nights. Sadly these days, their focus has moved more to the console market (which is understandable given how that market has grown). They released Knights of the Old Republic and Jade Empire on the X-Box which eventually got PC conversions (although in Jade Empire’s case, it was some time later).
I’m undecided what I think of Mass Effect however. To me it seems to continue the trend of showing preference to console gaming over developing a good RPG. Jade Empire was great, but the combat system seemed to point to bringing in beat-em-up aspects to the genre, which meant if you weren’t quick-fingered, you could be in trouble. Mass Effect continues this, by relying heavily on FPS gameplay. Once in a firefight, survival depends on your ability to quickly target enemies and shoot at them FPS style, and duck behind cover.
My big problem is that a lot of the time it feels more like I’m playing Halo, rather than a Bioware RPG. No I like FPS games, but that’s not what I paid my money for in this case. The scenes in the Mako landing craft are basically driving around in a Warthog. I played through the introductory missions, with the stuff on the Citadel Station being the only bit that actually felt like I was playing a proper RPG again.
I then got to the section where you have to fly around to different planets, KotOR-style. Sadly, there’s not much direction here, and I was having to land on various planets and explore them to see if they were the right ones. Cue more FPS action as I stumble onto mercenary camps.
I’ve now restarted the game, dropped the combat difficulty to Easy to try and stop it annoying me, and re-rolled my class to try and affect the gameplay. I’m hoping that it improves matters, as the story is interesting and I want to like this game. But so far I’m finding it a dissappointment, and a pale reflection of Knights of the Old Republic.
