This post is going to sound incredibly geeky, however… it’s true. Last Thursday I purchased Mass Effect for the Xbox 360, and ever since picking it up, I’ve played it pretty much non-stop until Monday morning - when I finally beat it with 20 hours played.
What is so amazing about this game is the emotional impact it had. Most games you play just for entertainment or to see some cool graphics, but this one really did feel like a 20 hour Sci-Fi movie, and quite possibly the best Sci-Fi movie ever, at that.
Since the story is much longer than the average movie, it really gets a chance to see the characters’ personalities, and then just when you feel you know the characters, it suddenly presents you with a moral dilemma - and the developers really stick it to you by making these moral dilemmas focus around the characters you interact with the most, or who have the most speaking roles.
A great example of this is when you’re forced to choose who to send on a possible suicide mission, and both your character’s love interest and the character who has been with your crew since the beginning volunteer for it… who do you choose?
Most people will play games like these and just click through moments like this, but I eat this sort of stuff up - and it was definitely a different experience going to bed last night feeling solemn with the fact I’d sacrificed two incredibly fleshed out characters with my decisions.
As for the reported bugs, I personally never experienced any of them - however, reading the BioWare, forums it appears that some people either have huge problems with bugs or don’t have any problems. It makes me wonder if they fixed something after going “gold”, and if the first copies sent out were bugged…
All I can say is, hats off to BioWare, and Dave? I’ve got more gamertag points than you AGAIN.
