Mass Effect Review

Spinx’s Sanitarium brings us a scathing review of BioWare’s Mass Effect, which is presumably based on the recently released PC version.

Mass Effect though does not even come close to the awesome that was KoTOR. At first I thought I was not enjoying Mass Effect because it did not have lightsabers like KoTOR but then so many things started annoying me that I realized my lack of interest in the game was not from the lack of being able to use force powers and lightsabers, but because some of the gameplay features were actually a step backwards from KoTOR.

First off, the inventory system is total trash. I believe Yahtzee — name drop — would call it rubbish or shit in that friendly British way but I will just say it is trash. You can not remove gear from your teammates easily to ensure you current party has the best stuff, all of the items when you go to buy and sell are just a jumbled mess with little rhyme or reason, and when you go to buy new items from your armor master you can not look at what your squad members have and compare. You can do that on a shop at one of the space stations but otherwise it is impossible.

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Speaking of people, the squad management system, you know one of those core pieces for a game like this, does not allow you to switch characters after you land. You could do this with KoTOR so why not now? If you get the wrong person then you have to go back to the ship, swap out the people and the start over again. I fail to see the reason why. Even worse is that you cannot switch between your party members during a fight. So, say you are on a mission but your main character goes down. Now instead of being able to flip over to another member and keep fighting (or revive them) you are stuck with having to reload the game. Sure I could be more careful but trusting your NPCs in any game simply leads to the inevitable situation of everyone dying repeatedly and often.

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In regards to other failures the entire vehicle system is a complete and utter waste of your time. Bioware should have dropped this idea entirely and stuck with what worked in KoTOR: six or seven big planets that are huge and contribute to the story. These wild goose chase side missions all over the galaxy just became annoying. Yes there were annoying side missions in KoTOR (hey go under water and get stuff) but at least your travel was kept to one planet and not across entire star systems. But, the real downer of that is if you don’t do those missions then you probably cannot afford the best gear that you will need for the final battles. What you are looking at is probably about half your game time doing forced grind missions.

A little over the top, maybe, but I actually agree with most of what’s said in this review.

Thanks, Blue’s News.