Mass Effect is a great mix of two classic sci-fi series, the action and memorable characters of Star Wars, and Star Trek's political and existential drama of being accountable for your exploring of the galaxy. While very similar to other dialog-heavy games of Bioware, this series started a unique mechanic in the game, injecting your own personality and wishes on the script. Want to be the soldier that everyone looks up to, with a character that is unblemished and honorable? A rakish rogue who toes the edge of the law and acts however they want? Or somewhere in the huge grey area between, there is a lot to how you could play your character, and walk him or her through a myriad of options, some with far-reaching ramifications that carried over several games later.

One of the challenges of setting your piece in space is being imaginative. You must come up with how they travel from planet to planet, and what aliens are also present. Fortunately the game is more than up to the challenge here. Space Travelers use a series of massive teleporters station around the Milky Way to traverse huge distances easily.  While there are many humanoid aliens, some look truly alien, but each with defining features that help them stand out. There are many gems here.The Krogan kind of look like grumpy, hulk-sized space turtles that walk on two legs. The Elcor are almost elephantine, four legged and have a very unique -and humorous speaking pattern.

Not to fool oneself that despite its setting, the roots for Mass Effect 1 is classic 90's rpg, with all its strengths and weaknesses.Combat was clunky, the loot system often had 50 items or more you were carrying around like a hoarder.  But in this game, the tone and story were never stronger. 


Graphics: 7


While the game is old, its graphics still hold up fairly well by todays standards. The scenery is not just space stations, but inside your state of the art space ship, and walking on many alien planets. Faces in this game are a bit static, relying on light and shadow in place of realistic facial detail.  The aliens actually end up evoking quite a bit of emotion from their faces, making subjects like the metallic-bird Turians a surprise example for us to see their empathy.  Being in space, one thing you have to sell is scale. The game does this well, from the MASSIVE Relays (that teleport ships around the galaxy) to the Citadel, a giant star-shaped city in space. I think I spent the first 2 hours of the game just exploring the Citadel's wards and shops. It really does make you feel you are such a small part of a much bigger world!

Models for your crew and ship are impressive. That you can walk from one end of your ship to the other, and converse with the crew along the way, is great. Unfortunately the enemy types are recycled a bit too much, as are they environments. In many side-missions you will feel like its SPACE IKEA, as you land on your 3rd mining colony to find the exact same layout as one 3 galaxies back.  Cookie-cutter interior design is likely a memory issue, but it really detracts from the setting. The fact future settings are often depicted as sterile and stark is also present here, with tiny bits of clutter .. which looks perfect on a military ship, but not so good in a crowded bar (where are all the glasses?).

When you go planet-side, there sadly are few worlds that have much structure and interesting points to them. Many of the places you travel on the odd hunt for crashed satellites or whatnot, are barren and craggy. While interesting, that gets tedious quick with little to see but rocks rocks. There is a few blips, such as landing on a grassy planet and seeing the static animals (one I affectionately call the space monkeys) that look like cardboard cut outs next to your 3-d characters.  

You have several options for fancy graphics in combat and skills, such as the OMNI-TOOL using engineer, who conjures a 3-d keyboard on their arm, using it to construct bots and hack. Or you could play as a Biotic, and feel like Harry Potter as you blast the enemy with your flashy mind-powers (I highly recommend being the Vanguard - who excels at getting in every foe's business personally). Or you can enable a stealth suit, and go optical camouflage, hiding in plain sight. Speaking of combat, I did like that being the future, there are a lot of laser guns that look futuristic, and don't use bullets. That was neat.


Sound: 8

The voice work is fantastic, it really feels like the studio worked to find the perfect voice for all the characters. I do like the game will let you choose to be a male or female, and both voice actors are great there.  But probably my favorite was listening to Urdnot Wrex, the old space turtle warrior.  His powerful, baritone growl almost sounded like it came from deep inside a well. Getting a character like that to laugh through your dialog choices made me see the many faucets to their personality. I can't think of any voice actor that puts in a poor performance. One in particular, the young sister type, Tali, has only her voice to rely on, as she is hidden in a haz-mat type armor for the entire duration of the game. Tali's range to seamlessly go from tech nerd to playful doof is a testament to the writing and her character actor. Joker, your pilot, also lives up to his name with his sarcastic quips. "Hey Commander, next time we touch down let's try not to park the ship in a colony of mutant zombies. Just thinking out loud here."
For Voice I'd give 10 out of 10.

The music often conjures up notes of 80's sci-fi... with synthesizers and reverb being popular with the incidental music. That is a running theme of the music, it feels right for the game, but seldom takes over. its only a few choices that really stand out. The music for reach of the main story-mission planets, the big bad foes Seren and Sovereign's music are very menacing. Out of all the tracks (this game has well over double the music Mass Effect 4 had) Vigil is probably the most iconic, and is kind of considered Mass Effect's theme music. Music I'd give 7 out of 10.

The sound effects were a bit jarring for me. The loud footsteps of your character, Shepard, running around makes your elite soldier sound clumsy. The guns often still sound they are firing bullets, some of these they work (sniper rifles) some they don't (laser gun). I do like the sound effects when you use the giant relays in space to slingshot yourself to a new galaxy. I also like the warning tone when your gun is out of charges, for some reason. I'd give sound effects a 6 out of 10.


Addictiveness : 9

When this game out, a sci-fi space opera that wasn't one of the big two that start with Star... It feels fresh, and what you didn't uncover in dialog or secrets, the in game thesaurus was a wealth of knowledge if you wanted to dive full into this gaming world. Some of it was a bit of a let down, for instance the alien races are mostly typecast as a couple of archetypes(most of the rotund Volus are shifty and trying to weasel into something), but there was so much to visit and see I didn't mind the obvious broad strokes they were painted with, though I would change some of that.  There were standouts, and the humans are a greatly mixed bunch of support, antagonize, and victims.  I spent 2 hours wandering around the Citadel (space station thing) doing side quests. It was fun because it felt like there was so much to see.  The story was what kept me going, and I started to see combat as just a middleman, to quickly handle and get back to the next part of the unraveling plot.

As mentioned in the opening discussion, the idea of playing your character several ways lent to replay, so if you wanted to be a total jerk to everyone in the next game to see what all happened, and the fact your choices would carry over to later games in the series and be permanent, added a lot also. I think everyone I knew when this game was out had several saves, each with a different Shepard, jerky and super nice (or a mix), a different love interest, and complete opposite decisions based on what seemed to be the big choices.  You weren't just given a crew and then headed off, some of them you had to look for, and were optional(but you'd really have to try hard to not eventually find them). This was one game I was happy to play and replay several times.


Story: 10

I liked the story for this game better than any of its sequels, because it doesn't try to overextend. Its precise, a bit short, but its villains are the best realized and most memorable. And while it does rely on some 'space mumbo jumbo' tropes to advance things along, this is something all Mass Effect games would rely on. You play Shepard, a human, and the first SPECTRE, which is sort of like being a 007 for the Space United Nations.  You have authority to do what you must, which lets your character's personality choices really reflect what kind of person you are and your legacy. The fact humans are newcomers to this galactic federation makes your role even more important, as earth doesn't want to look foolish, and the other alien leaders don't think you're ready. When you have to track down a rogue agent working with equally rebellious machines, things get serious fast, involving the safety of the galaxy, and the lives of not just your crew (who can die permanently) but those you meet as well.


Depth: 8

There are a wealth of side-missions to make up for the fact the actual (long) story chapters are sparse, letting you level up and get to the required strength to tackle the next threat when you're ready. You can travel and explore strange worlds, but some of them are quite barren and dull to navigate. You do get a land vehicle to explore worlds in, but theres no fast travel so its a long drive back to ship. 

The fact so much dialog is hidden unless you do multiple playthoughs (or saves) is staggering. The game kind of steers you into being all good or all bad, which is a bit limiting since who is truly like that all the time. But there is no penalty for answering a mix. Some choices you make will come back to bite you, and some you may have to wait until the next game to see if it will affect the game world. Its pretty exciting stuff.


Difficulty: 6

I didn't see this as a difficult game. Some choices you make do affect situations and could make it harder for you, but really fighting the clunky combat controls and camera is probably the hardest part. This is something that would be improved dramatically in the game series. I can think of a couple of tough encounters in ME1 for boss fights and tough missions, but you could always stop and go level up a bit and come back. Some fights in the overworld could be made trivial just by using your land vehicle's gun to blast them to pieces, take THAT, giant space worm.


Conclusion: 8.8

Mass Effect 1 brought a whole new way to talk to people, a wheel of choices. And that some choices were going to be so important later made this easy to replay to see what would happen. The leader enemies here are the best this game series has, and this game gets you in the feels with the lasting consequences to some of your decisions. Don't expect to be amazed by the combat, come for the characters and stay for helping the Alliance. Sure its still rpg heavy, and that can turn off some, but this first outing of Command Shepard was the last 'full' rpg Mass Effect had. As the 3-part series went on, your crew can downright feel like family.

Nice work on another review, man.

It's kind of nice to hear someone's view on this, as I've known for a while that the ME games are pretty popular, but the only person I know that's talked with me about them had nothing good to say about the series. While I don't know which one of you I'd agree with if I were to ever play the game myself, I do know that there has to be some redeeming qualities in it for it to have amassed such a following, and now I feel as though I finally understand what that pull is.

Keep up the good work.

I'm going to cover all of Mass Effect games this month.  

To me the main selling points to the series were 1) there are so few good sci-fi rpgs 2) The fact your choices carry over multiple games on so many aspects is a powerful draw, and you know all these characters as they pop in and out of your life. The cast of ME1 through 3 are strongly written and you begin to latch onto them, because you remember all you've been through together. Its just a fantastic idea for an RPG, if daunting.