Enemy

The Good: Good start - Terrific voice acting - Great story that draws you in - Plenty of different and unique planets to visit - Many fun and unique powers.

The Bad: Terrible vehicle navigation - Some annoying glitches/issues.

Mass Effect, you take on the role of Commander Shepard, an Alliance Military soldier. His mission, save the entire galaxy from ultimate destruction. People save the world all of the time, but an entire galaxy, that's a step further, and some. Throughout Shepard's Epic adventure, he will encounter many difficult tasks, whether it being to let an entire species die, find himself on the everlasting Prothean Artifact hunt, or even something such as saving a planet. On your first play through you could expect Mass Effect to take around 15 to 30 hours, and that just being the "main" quest. Add up all of the other goodies, and you could see the game take around 40 to 100 hours, possibly even more.

Mass Effect begins with the customization of your character, and let's just say there are a lot of options to say the least. (Some of the options for customizing your character will effect side-quests.) The most important probably being your gender, you have the option to choose an already created Commander Shepard, or customize a male or female of your liking. Other options are your background (how you grew up, or even how you joined the military), in the background options you will come across your combat style. It has your basic soldier, but that's not all it offers, the others are engineer, and adept. (The other three are infiltrator, vanguard, and sentinel. All of these are just a combination of the first three.) Adepts, vanguards, and sentinels all have biotic powers. Biotics are arguably the best and most fun to use. With the push of a button, you can lift an enemy several feet high, attack it while it's in the air, and then watch it fall to the ground. What's better, the more powerful your character is, the higher you can lift the enemy. You can use the power as many times as you want (not just that power but all of them), it just needs a short recharge time after you use it. Now after you complete all of that, you will actually begin the appearance part of the customization. It has a variety of options to choose from, such as scars, hairstyle, and even eye shadow for women. When you complete the whole process, your journey will begin.

Mass Effect has a great story that sucks you in. The quests, the species, the combat, it all just works. The quests, whether it be the main quest or the side quests, you can't but help to want to play it all. There is just so much to do and at times you may feel as if it's never going to end. The species, let's just make it short, there are a lot of them. So I will just list a few that are in your squad. You have your Turian, Quarian, Asari, and the biggest badass of them all, a Krogan named Urdnot Wrex. Wrex is probably (once again arguably) the best member on your squad. He's a Vanguard, which is a mixture of a soldier, and an adept, which uses biotics. So he's got the up close and personal feel of a soldier, but also has the ability to stop people in their tracks (literally) with Stasis. Many people think Stasis isn't all that great of a power, but if you are playing the game on Hard, or Insane, Stasis comes in handy, especially when fighting Saren.

There are other species that you may never see if you decide not to do any side quests. For instance, on one of the uncharted worlds, you will come across a deer-like creature that apparently speaks. (I personally never figured out how to make it talk, but it gives you the option to speak to it.) Now there are some bad parts about being on uncharted worlds, and it's Mako's vehicle navigation. Mako is the vehicle that you drive while on many planets. You do not have to use Mako most of the time, but it's much quicker if you do. The good things about Mako, it can drive up pretty much anything, it can hover, but only for a short time, and it also shoots rockets. The bad, it's great that you can shoot enemies while in Mako, but unless you are level with an enemy, chances are you will miss them. Another, I would not necessarily say this is bad, but when you are killing enemies in Mako you do not get the same amount of experience points as you would on foot, in Mako you get less. The last thing about it is the driving, it's not as easy as it should be. In time you will get used to all of it, and it will become easier.

As already mentioned, the combat is great, and biotics are really fun to use. The enemies do not hold anything back, especially on the harder difficulties. But as great as the combat is, it's not perfect. While in combat the game may be come laggy, it's not that big of a deal, but sometimes it gets a little annoying. Another good, and bad feature in combat is the cover system. It's great that this game has a cover system, but sometimes it may become more trouble than it's worth. For instance, you will try to get on cover, and you will, but you will end up on the same side as the enemies, chances are they will kill you. Now it really is not that big of a deal, I have played and beaten Mass Effect over 60 times, I never had a big problem with the cover system.

So in combat you need weapons, and you will get them. Mass Effect offers the basic assault rifle, sniper rifle, shotgun, pistol, and grenades. However that's it, no rocket or grenade launcher here. Though there are not any rocket or grenade launchers the game makes up for it. On the five basic weapons you will be granted the ability to upgrade them. As you become better and your level goes higher you will be able to add more upgrades to the weapons. The max being three for the firearms, and the max being one for the grenades. Now with all of this you will be in the weapon inventory a lot, which causes a problem. The weapon inventory can become annoying to use at times, but just like Mako, you will get used to it. There is one more down side to all of the weapons, and it's the limited amount that you can carry.

Replay value, Mass Effect has plenty of it. Whether you want to play as a different gender, see a different ending, or even for achievements. Playing as a different gender will change up the romance quite a bit, and by romance I mean the relationship of your squad members. Mass Effect offers three endings, and all three are worth seeing. As for achievements, a lot of them require you to play Mass Effect at least twice, some of them even three times, such as beating the game on Insane. Still, those are not all the replay value offers. If you were renegade your first play through, why not try out paragon on your second. Maybe you want to see different side quests. Whatever it may be, there is plenty of replay value.

Graphically, Mass Effect is beautiful. It has a lot of unique planets and locations to visit. There is something unique about each planet. For instance, on one of the planets, in the sky you could see asteroids falling into the planets atmosphere, and it is really cool to watch. The character models look outstanding, each and every species look great. Just like humans, each and every single person in a species look different. Though the game is great looking, the time frame rate is a problem. You will be able to overlook it, but it's the small things that add up.

Sound, I do not think there is one bad thing to say about the sounds of Mass Effect. To start, the game has a great soundtrack to go with everything, whether you are in combat, or just walking around on the Normandy. The sound effects are really good too, whether it's the firing of your weapon, the sound of wind and snow in the middle of a blizzard, or even the sound of Mako landing on a planet. But what stands out the most is the voice acting, which is by far the best I have ever seen in my entire life. The characters lips, mouths, and facial expression all match everything they say. This is definitely something you can call phenomenal.

Although Mass Effect has a few technical issues, it is still an amazing game that you will come to love. It has that great Sci-Fi experience that everybody is looking for. It was definitely worth the wait, and a great start for this series. If you are a fan of BioWare, Sci-Fi,or RPG games Mass Effect is a must have. Also, if you have the money you should consider buying the DLC on the Xbox Live Marketplace. It's a great addition to the game.