Reviewing Mass Effect

I’m not a big fan of RPG games, but I love good sci-fi. So it probably doesn’t come as a big surprise that I didn’t really care for Mass Effect.

I played the game for awhile, but didn’t finish it, so it likely that the game got a lot better, but I really didn’t care to find out.

What I disliked most was the gameplay. The combination of squad-based first person shooter and role playing game was unique, I just couldn’t get into it. Each of your characters has different abilities, but to use them you need to stop the gameplay in order to navigation a confusing and hard to navigate menu of options.

Speaking of RPG, you can call me lazy, but it drove me nuts picking what the main guy would say with every character interaction. I really don’t care to have that much control over the cutscenes. I would be far more interested in the story being altered based on my style of gameplay, which path I take, who I shoot, rather than the parts acted out by bad 3D characters (which I believe this game does, I just didn’t care to find out).

And lastly as far as the sci-fi element goes, I found the initial story line to be pretty generic. The introduction to the characters and the world, or “safety” as they call it, seemed reminiscent of other sci-fi shooters, like Halo. I felt that I knew how the game would end within the first few minutes, and given that I should have the ability to control the outcome, that isn’t saying a lot.

I don’t know, the game is getting good reviews, so I figure there must be something here I am missing, but like I said, I just didn’t care to find out.