Mass Effect is a brilliant epic science fiction game, and in many ways the spiritual successor to Knights of The Old Republic. Only this time BioWare are weaving their own stories in their own universe. And it's only the beginning as two more installments in this saga are planned, and the table is open for more. This is a story and dialog heavy game and will take you 30-40 hours to play. And this is my review of Mass Effect PC version.
The Review:
Since this is my first game review on my own site and using a scoring system I will quickly explain how it works! I cover the game in 4 areas; Story, Sound, Graphics and Design, give those a score from 0.0 to 10.0 (just a geeky way of saying 0 to 100% really, but using floating point, *laughs*) and sum those to for the total score. My reviews are biased, subjective, and totally unprofessional. I other words this may be the most honest Mass Effect review available. (I truly hope that statement is false, but these days, who really knows huh?) I will break this into 6 parts, a small introduction (plus some ranting on forums, DRM, cheating etc.), then cover the 4 score parts and then a afterword.
The Mass Effect Saga:
Mass Effect is one of the most epic games available. (yeah I'm ignoring a certain famous Japanese franchise) It is difficult to review Mass Effect without spoiling the great story, and it's not easy to know where to start. If possible I'd suggest that you get the first novel as it is a sort of prequel, read it then play the game, the second novel will fill in the space between the first game and the second game.
Forum whining and DRM wars:
Now, reading the BioWare support forums for Mass Effect may seem like a horror story, DRM issues, tech issues, activation headaches and much more. I read all those posts, expected the worst. And...no issues at all. Go figure. Maybe I just know how to take care of my PC, get rid of junk, I do not overclock my PC's components. My CPU is below the minimum for the game but my GPU (graphics) is slightly above minimum. I did not have a single crash or game stopping bug, no DRM issue or activations issues, is the world still spinning? Note! Since I live in Norway and got a European edition, which was released a bit later than the US one, and there are some minor changes in the installation it is possible that the European version had some install and activation issues fixed in time for release, unlike the US version. I'm just guessing though.
Don't get me wrong, I hate DRM myself. And the initial draconian variant of Mass Effect PC DRM was as bad or worse than BioShock's, 2K Games have now removed the DRM fully on BioShock. Not that any of these two games DRM helped any. Both games was "cracked" just a week or so after release anyway, so why it was not simply "turned off" a week or month later I got no idea. Let's hope BioWare turn the DRM off very soon though. BioWare and EA did ease back on the restrictiveness on the DRM though, now it only need to authenticate at install, when patching or getting downloadable content, and after install there is no need for the DVD which is cool. But the limited number of activations at once and some confusion/limitations related to uninstalling and "freeing up" a activation slot is something I hope they improve soon, other than that this DRM ain't that bad. *knock on wood* Let's hope SecuRom don't leave any crap behind on my system though.
Preparations for the Dirty'ol cheater:
The odd thing though, is that since I knew this game was damn good I took a lot of time to read the forums posts, note down ini/config file tweaks and much more. So upon getting the Mass Effect PC box in my mail I did the following: Plop the DVD in, install, approve install (installed under Vista standard user account, what no UAC install/play issues? wow), wait, wait, wait. (why is installing/copying files to the hard drive always so slow?) Then I got all my stuff handy, a guide website ready in the browser, my notepad with console commands/dev cheats. (long story short, I hate dying, my focus is on the story exploration and atmosphere of a game, I still get a rush in action scenes, I do not need death as a incentive at all to "duck".) Now, that is just how I play however. So maybe just ignore all that cheat stuff, it seems other people get upset when you cheat in single player games, I got no clue why however.
Sound: 9.8
The audio in Mass Effect PC is pretty darn good, the only thing pulling this score down is the why-can't-they-manage-to-get-this-working-right issue of audio orientation, if a character is talking and you look at them then turn around 180 degrees with your back to them and they are suddenly much louder, or other times character dialog was a tad low or music too loud. Luckily those incidents was far and few between, but still annoying when they happen, and it really makes you wonder how this can happen in this modern age.
I'm sure the sound engineer/designer at BioWare is crying right now (sorry, I didn't mean to be evil), considering my own work with sound as both voice actor, musician and engineer I feel their pain. We strive for perfection. Which brings me back to the sound guy at BioWare crying. It's because at least in my case the first issue could have been some coding/audio driver issue or quirk, but this next one defy logic. If you run and then come to a full stop...your feet can be heard running for another second or two, we're not talking echo here, but ghost shuffling feet coming to halt. It's like there's too much feet going on.
Ironically these two issues where the only ones, which is why they pull the score down this much as when they happen, you really noticed them. Everything else was perfect. Lip syncing was good, voice acting was at the same level as Knights of The Old Republic, The Longest Journey/Dreamfall and so on, in other words some of the best voice acting in the biz. Sound effects, great. Music to die for.
If there is anything that could be improved for Mass Effect 2 besides those two issues I had with runaway feet and directional/occlusion audio in relation to character voices (edit the thing as if it was a movie, ok? *laughs*), would be to maybe adjust the background atmospheric sound, as the people in the back sounds did not always match the actual amount of people you saw in the immediate area. More character dialog incidental comments while in the field would be nice too. And maybe make sure that the installed/native OpenAL is used instead of the OpenAL files in the game folder, I still have no clue if I actually managed to enable hardware sound or just wrapper emulation.
But to round off the sound part. If only all games was as "bad" as this, because reality is that almost every game out there is horrible in comparison. I'm amazed BioWare didn't make more mistakes when you consider all the sound and dialog and music that had to be shuffled around in this thing. Impressive, most impressive BioWare. And here's hoping all voice actors return for at least the next two Mass Effect games.
Graphics: 9.0
Oh my, I'm a bit disappointed here. Ok, some of these issues was most likely design decisions rather than production mistakes. But... Why no 16x Anisotropic filtering option? I had to dive into the config file by hand. 4x AF is hardly anything and the extra load due to 16x is minimal at worst. And why no anti-aliasing option?, people playing at 2600xSomething resolutions may not miss it that much, but those that play at lower say 1024x768 truly need Anti-aliasing. And with DX10.1 making 4x AA (I think) mandatory I'm really surprised Mass Effect was not optimized for AA, not that Mass Effect use DX10 or anything, but hey, even DX9 has anti-aliasing *laughs*.
I'm glad you can turn off the motion blur and film grain effect. I just wish I did not have to. Ok turning them off may have helped my framerate but...In real life people do not get "that" much blur when moving their heads around, for ME2 tune that effect down, make it more subtle. Besides, humans don't have motion blur, movies does but this is a interactive game. Maybe try to emulate the blur by simply applying temporary focal adjustment instead of the motion blur, as I understand it ME actually has focal adjustment effects and use it, why not use that in place of the motion blur, it should provide a much nicer "motion blur" effect without making people sick. *laughs*
Then there is the film grain effect. Not sure what to make of this one, it felt like it just added grain to everything, so if the goal was to make textures look more "dirty" aka "real" then I think it failed. Why not apply the dirt using shaders to the actual object/textures instead? I've never seen a "dirty" sky before, that was odd, but dirty rocks or ground make sense etc. So to round the graphics part off I gotta say that otherwise the graphics was amazing, character details, textures, models, effects. Damn fine work there. And best of all, it looked good even on a weak PC. But it could have been a bit better as pointed out above. And the most amazing thing, I normally hate Bink video cutscene as they always run buggy on all games I try for some reason, and I prefer fully game engine cutscenes. But in this case BioWare manage to make it run flawless, not a single Bink stutter or audio/video sync issue. You guys really need to make a small How-To guide for some of the other game devs out there on how you pulled that one off.
Story: 9.7
Oh wow. I'll start with the bad stuff first as usual. I really wish that character development did not mainly take place on the ship. I remember in KoTOR the character parts unfolded a lot "in the field" as well. But in ME not so. Yes there is the elevator the odd Mako vehicle rides, but not being able to initiate dialog when walking around felt odd in a way. I understand that chatting during a mission would be out of place. But walking around the Citadel the 2nd main location besides your ship and not being able to converse with your fellow travelers just seemed odd and stuck out for me. And it really dragged the score down due to this.
But holy mass what an effect the story had on me. A strange mystery, ancient species, genocides. Heck, I'd dare say that BioWare's Mass Effect Universe easily rivals that of Star Wars, with the potential for so much more even. And the fact that BioWare has stated that the choices you make, not just at the end but other points in the game as well will affect how your savegame affects your play of Mass Effect 2. Without spoiling too much I hope I can say that I'm pretty damn sure that my Shepard character is the only still living being in the universe able to understand the Prothean language as I killed all the other ones that also understood, (BioWare you are taking notes for ME2 I hope? *laughs*) and I'm curious if my savegame will affect my Mass Effect 2 experience in any way, like it being an advantage or not. (My roleplay excuse was that Shepard thought it was too dangerous for others to understand the Prothean language fully yet) And obviously I got a lovely blue relationship going on that I hope will continue. Not to mention the fact I'm a Adept Nemesis and am curious at how much more powerful I could potentially become.
So to round off the story part, Mass Effect will hopefully not just win Game Of the Year but Science Fiction story of the year as well. My helmet is off to BioWare and the writers and actors and all involved. Now fix those issues mentioned above and ME2 will most likely get a perfect ten on story.
Design: 9.5
As this part is also partly covered by those above I will focus on the larger picture here. anything from the DVD box to savefile location to the placement of a tree in the game. No those where just examples and partly a joke. The DVD box is "meh" it does what it's supposed to do and that's fine. Money saved if you ask me. What's on the DVD itself is much more important, in other words the game.
ME could have gotten a perfect ten here if not for a few things. The ship was great, but there was not that much interaction with the "other" crew, those nameless ones that just "stare" at you on the ship. Just some stock "Hi commander" would have been enough plus a entry in the codex (in-game journal/guide to the universe for those curious and it's brilliant) just a paragraph each on those people would be nice.
Another issue was the Citadel, for such a important place with supposedly millions of inhabitants it did seem rather spartan. KoTOR seems to be so much more full of life, NPC's walking around. I can hardly recall many NPC's walking around in ME, most just stood around. (for days? um...) And it hurt the realism a bit.
Another issue, and this is odd as it was mentioned in the first novel even, was the living areas in the Wards on the Citadel, I do not expect to be able to walk into all those thousands homes. but a few habitat corridors with a bunch of locked doors wouldn't hurt would it? Maybe one could have a nameplate with Anderson on it.
The Wards was supposed to be a bit more lawless area, but nothing seemed to happen. It would be cool to witness a bunch of Turian guards subdue a drunk Krogan for example.
Hopefully now that BioWare has finished Mass Effect for the Xbox 360 and the PC, meaning they got a good engine, they are now experienced on it, they got a ton of assets that can be reused. They hopefully have more time to flesh out this world like pointed out above. And if they address those issues above I'm sure ME2 will get a full ten on design once I get my hands on it that is. I'm hoping for next spring, but we'll see. Let's hope BioWare don't run into time issues like Valve did. A 1 year cycle between games should be doable for the next two games using pretty much the same game engine with improvements.
Total Score: 9.5
This is rare for me, if I was to clarify to you if this is a good or bad score. Let me just say that I suspect if I where to review Knights of The Old Republic, I would probably only give that a 9.0 which pains my heart as I'ma oldschool Star Wars fan. But that ain't bad either, heck I'd prolly give Half-Life 2 a 8.0 or something. So in my book a 9.5 is pretty damn good, if not one of the best games I've played...but?
But, there is still room for improvement. I pointed out a few issues or annoyances, hopefully BioWare will address most or luckily all of those. And I just maybe, may have to give Mass Effect 2 a perfect ten total. I truly hope so, because a perfect 10 game in my book, means a game where I can find no flaws with at all. And seeing what I've seen and experienced in this first installment, BioWare may just pull that magic trick off in my lifetime with the next installment, now thats a mass effect in and of itself right there.
Roger "Rescator" Hågensen, EmSai.net