[Gaming Monday] The Mass Effect post

I've been playing Mass Effect like crazy today and managed to reach the last area of the game, so if there were any startling revelations in the world of gaming, I must have missed them. I doubt there were, but I do believe that Silent Hill: Homecoming was supposed to be released today in the States?*

At any rate, today was a cold, rainy day. In other words, the perfect day for a Roleplaying Game. And Mass Effect is my favorite entry in the genre in a long while. Given that the game is almost a year old, pretty much everyone has already developed his/her opinion on it, so I won't bother praising/criticising it for the same things everybody else has (i.e. graphics/sound/gameworld/storyline Vs. crappy friendly A.I./too much text).

Instead, I'll focus on my favorite part of the game; space exploration. While there have been RPG's that took place in space rather than some parallel universe closely resembling England in the past, none of them did so in such detail. Solar Winds comes close, but the technology of its times (1993!) didn't allow for such niceties. At any rate, Mass Effect gives my inner Star Trek geek to actually go where no (well, a few) person has gone before. There's several clusters of our Milky Way galaxy to be explored, each with its own solar system and respective planets. And each planet is so unique and beautiful in its own way, it's quite awe-inspiring. Driving your space vehicle (called Mako) on an uncharted planet, as you're heading straight into a space storm makes for a pants-wetting good experience, trust me. Wish I had a screenshot of that.

I understand that some people complained about the planets, but from an aesthetics point of view, I could never agree with that**. I will agree that objectives on every planet were pretty much the same 3-4 missions over and over, and that the buildings in said planets suffered from a severe lack of variety, though.

Before I headed into the last areas of the game, I also wrapped up the extra downloadable mission, Bring Down the Sky. It's not wildly different than the rest of the quests and it certainly didn't feel like the 90 minute-long mission it was advertised to be (felt like half of that, really) but it does have an entirely new building which is beautiful, and one awesome and intense fight that takes part in this building. Definitely one of the best fights in the game.

In closing, while Mass Effect is pretty formulaic as far as RPG's go, the added space exploration and amazing aesthetics are enough to make it stand out from the rest of the entries in the genre. Yes, I'm wrapping this up quickly because I want to get back to the game now. Lawsuits at the usual address.

TL;DR version:

While the game is brilliant, they really need to fix the friendly A.I. in the sequel if they don't want to hear the (justified) bitching of players and reviewers alike. If I had a euro for every time my teammates stepped right in front of me as I was about to finish off an enemy and blocked my shot, allowing for the enemy to heal up, I'd have enough money to buy one of those discounted Arcade version Xbox 360's. Suffice to say, that is not hot.

(SPOILERS)

In case anyone is wondering, I boinked*** Liara, perhaps because she's a total dork. And I let Ashley die so I would avoid any relationship drama, because I'm petty and cruel like that.

* A quick search revealed it's coming next week, on the 30th. Oh well.

** Seriously, lay off the crack pipe.

*** Urban Dictionary has a hilarious entry for the verb "boink", check it out.