Ages ago during my Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 review I envisioned a glorious allegory of the video game industry, calling up its loyal fanboys and fangirls, and let’s face it, probably sacrificing them on a whim to increase their stock prices.

During that review I toyed with the idea of joining Infinity Ward as an official fanboy grunt. I was, of course, lying out of my ass.

Awww, it’s not you, it’s me!

My loyalty goes without a second thought to Bioware, glorious CANADIAN maker of story-driven RPGs. On several occasions their games used the Dungeons and Dragons license, and in many other instances their games are clearly inspired by it (though what RPG isn’t by now?). What’s not to love? Alas, this relationship between Bioware and I was not a lifelong pact. In fact, it may be a younger relationship for me than for many other gamers out there.

Before I even enlisted, Bioware had already crafted the much-loved Baldur’s Gate franchise. At the time I was too young and stupid to get much out of the games, but consider this a tentative promise to review the franchise just for the Dojo! If I can find the damn things. While I was busy playing Diablo or some other silly game that only required one finger (about as much motor function as I could muster until age 16), Bioware was already sweeping up RPG fans left and right.

The company was probably damn near bored of mundane tasks like “redefining genres” and “busting up greatest video game lists of all time” when they went ahead and released Neverwinter Nights. I was ready to enter the 11th grade of high school, but I wasn’t ready for what came next! The game was very good, and it also used the Dungeons and Dragons 3rd edition as its gameplay model. At the time this meant very little to me, because I hadn’t been acquainted with many pen and paper, tabletop, or board games of any variety. However, I was immediately, and before long I would figure permanently, drawn in by the Aurora Toolset that allowed me to very easily create anything I saw in the game, and with very little difficulty. My creative side just went nuts, and I was lost to the world. Somehow, I managed to graduate high school, and during that time I grabbed the game’s two expansion packs: Shadows of Undrentide and Hordes of the Underdark.

Shamefully, I haven’t even fully completed the two single player campaigns. The multiplayer possibilities were so damn wide I found myself among a community of like-minded individuals piecing together our own little fantasy universe, which in the game lingo was called a Persistant World. It was basically an MMO with nobody playing. That’s a bad descriptor because I generally dislike MMOs and they’re even worse when no one is playing, but some of my fondest memories in gaming came from those years. I worked as a world builder and administrator until my eventual retirement in 2006, at the behest of my university GPA’s screams of twisted agony.

If you haven’t played Neverwinter Nights, you definitely should, because the Gold pack consisting of all of the main game and both its expansion packs probably goes for about ten to twenty bucks at most these days. I foresee myself returning to this tangent during my eventual Dragon Age: Origins review, so I will press forward slightly.
Noting my chronology, the observant will notice I actually became so engrossed in Neverwinter, that I missed two more Bioware games: Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic and Jade Empire. To date, I have only played through large portions of both games, completing neither. Some day, some day. However, I had been released from my haze in time for Mass Effect, and we’ve finally reached the point of the review where I almost briefly consider talking about the game I’m actually reviewing.

But first I need to talk a little more about Bioware! By 2007 I’m a Bioware fanboy in denial. I lurk their webpage and forums whenever possible, cherished their game titles thoroughly, but I didn’t make proclamations or enlist in their Royal Holy Army of Righteousness.

“This is Eden Prime bitch, you gonna die!”

Through Neverwinter Nights and my partial experiences of KotOR and Jade Empire, I was well antiquated with Bioware’s style. They strive, not necessarily for the best gameplay (though they have often achieved this category too), but for some definitive story-driven experiences. They like giving the players choices, and later on, and each game has progressed with heavier and heavier consequences behind those choices. In earlier games, you would be subjected to immense volumes of text. As voice acting has progressed in the industry as a whole, there’s been less of a burden on your eyes while screen reading, and more on your ears. Bioware either loves its writers or works them to death frequently. Until I visit their office, I won’t be able to tell which.

If you’re not much into absorbing yourselves into lore, Bioware games may be a harder sell. And now without the Star Wars license, with only one science fiction title in the decade, Bioware cooked up and released Mass Effect.

Why am I reviewing the game two-plus years after its release? First of all, jerk, I’m reviewing both the Xbox 360 version and the PC version of the game. The Xbox version released in late 2007 and the PC version released in the middle of 2008. If you take the average, you find yourself somewhere in the first quarter of 2008, and so it’s only almost two years. Yeah. The real reason I’m reviewing Mass Effect so late is that, firstly, I didn’t have a website to publish my reviews on in 2007. Secondly, it’s an awesome game worth replaying and the sequel comes out next week. Thirdly, the sequel, at the time I am writing this, comes out next week. Fourthly, Bioware at one point mentioned in passing that Mass Effect save games and the critical choices made within can have an effect on the progression of the story in the sequel. I have no such save game on my PC version, and so I figured, review at the same time! Finally, the fucking sequel is coming out next week holy shit!

This begs a new question: why am I so excited for the sequel? I’ll actually start talking about Mass Effect now so you can bask in how ridiculously awesome it is. Is the game flawless? Nope. Could you find plenty of things to whine about? Definitely. Is it still absolutely fantastic in its own way, and deserving of the overwhelming praise it has received since 2007? Yup.

Mass Effect takes place in an original science fiction setting, where ancient alien technology is discovered allowing humans to essentially have their spaceships ignore that whole pesky mass thing and travel anywhere in the galaxy with little effort. You’re Commander Shepard, though not necessarily the generic white, gruff, handsome, probably heterosexual, Conservative male on the cover. Bioware’s character creation system is ever-present, and this one is decent like all the others. Several commentators have noted, however, that they had trouble creating characters with oriental features. These commentators have since requested an “Asian” button added to all future Bioware character generators to make the process easier. Actually, adding some ethnic presets isn’t a horrible idea. Even if some poor fool over at Fox News did try to call it out as racist, I’m pretty sure Bioware wouldn’t have a problem with it. After all, they practically used Fox and other media outlets as a free marketing tool by including absolutely scandalous human-alien sex scenes! At one point I think you almost see an ass crack! Raise the alarm, to the pew-mobile!

“Sales are up 9000%! We’re even nominated for an Oscar!”

The game plays relatively smoothly, as most third-person action games you find yourself looking over Shepard’s right shoulder, much to the protest of the Left-Handed Association For Lefties Against Right-Handed Propoganda. The advanced technology of the setting that is a few centuries ahead of our own time allows you to use any of the four generic weapon types in the game: pistol, assault rifle, shotgun, or sniper rifle. Different weapon manufacturers augment these types, and the game is further complicated by a variety of different upgrades. All in all, you’re looking at a futuristic version of Modern Warfare 2 customization ability, and that is not a bad thing.

There are some immediate drawbacks, however. On the console (and launch) version, the inventory interface definitely leaves something to be desired. The whole thing just seems too dense, and it can be a bit of a pain equipping your characters until you finally acclimate to the system after 15 hours of play.

The physics engine also leaves something to be desired. One of my biggest lingering complaints with Bioware games is that none of them seem to feature a Z-axis. Let me jump around, god damn it! I imagine somewhere in the Bioware offices the conversation of adding one has come up, but the engine programmers quickly slam their doors, plug their ears, and go “lalalalala” for the next two hours.

Mass Effect’s drawbacks can be overlooked for its quick, but not shooter quick, real-time action and intriguing RPG elements. Bioware, however, is the North American story-driven master. The real reason I think Mass Effect is absolutely fantastic is the dialogue, the characters, the lore, and some of the plot-changing decisions that the player gets to toy around with. You can choose to bring two other characters along with you on your adventures, and the game levels all of them up equally, so if you decide to switch characters halfway through, you aren’t towing a level 2 soldier.

Mass Effect had the next big step in Bioware’s resume of neat story delivery systems. Conversation trees were already used in Neverwinter Nights, so I was used to them, and they changed little in KotOR or Jade Empire. In Mass Effect, however, your dialogue options were short and sweet little blurbs. When you chose an option, that wasn’t necessarily what Shepard said. Shepard would say something along those lines, but it was new and fresh. This is such a tiny modification, but it made a huge difference for me as I soaked in the game.

As part of my transformation into a Bioware fanboy, I also read and enjoyed the Mass Effect Codex, which is the compilation of universe lore that Shepard collects throughout the game. I love science fiction novels, and I considered Mass Effect to be right up near the calibre I would expect from a novel. And as you guide Shepard on the hunt for the notorious and powerful Saren, and reveal horrifying reasons for why SETI wasn’t able to easily contact other alien civilizations, you can really start to immerse yourself in the history. I did find the start of the game a little odd, because a supporting character, Captain Anderson, is quick to blame Saren and infer that he is obviously on a quest to destroy humanity and maybe the universe. Then, as an initiate fanboy, I bought my first novel based on a video game, Mass Effect Revelations, and learned about the history between Anderson and Saren. God damn, a cut scene would have cleared it up for those who hadn’t bought the book.

Previous titles include Mass Effect: Anderson Used To Be Like Shepard You Know and Mass Effect: Saren Is A Big Dumb Dumb Head.

Mass Effect just manages to tell its story properly. The game also features stunning graphics, although it suffered from some serious pop-in issues on the Xbox. Then, the install to hard drive feature was released, and it was downgraded to still-fairly-shitty pop-in issues. Despite the graphical issues, the mixture of a great dialogue system and compelling cut scenes does the game justice.

So I played the shit out of this game. As I write this review I’m on my fifth play through. I already know the game is great, but my past experiences can still highlight the game’s other flaws. For one, there seem to only be a handful of maps for side missions, and they’ll repeat. If you actually do all of the missions like I did, they’ll repeat a lot. They are even re-used in the $15 DLC. It is quite unfortunate, because Bioware is usually great for its side missions, but I guess they were busy making game endings that cause me to shit myself in pleasure.

The DLC for the game was also very underwhelming. Mass Effect features a nice galaxy map allowing you to travel to the various locales, and just begging for downloadable content to come out and expand it up. And the fans waited. And waited. And waited. Finally Bioware releases the first DLC, Bring Down The Sky, and it’s…enh. You know what, it’s actually pretty fun, but it was expensive and short. What seemed like years later, they released the even smaller DLC known as Pinnacle Station.

The Mako is a gigantic annoying piece of crap of a vehicle, and I only discovered it had a cannon on my third play through. I used that fucking pea-shooter machine gun for two entire games! Then I stopped using the Mako entirely. It was a point A to B vehicle at times, yes, but if I saw an enemy, I fought it on foot. This improved the Mass Effect experience greatly for me, and for several reasons. For one, I wasn’t in the Mako. Two, your experience rewards are doubled if you fight outside the Mako (in other words, the Mako halves XP). And lastly, it’s just hard as hell and that made it pretty damn fun.

By my fourth play through I was playing on Insane difficulty, though some stupid bug of some kind ended up robbing me of the glorious achievement on my gamertag. Bioware!!!! After that little incident, I was rather sad and figured, “hey, maybe I’ve played Mass Effect enough, maybe I should feed the cat.” I retired the game to my shelf and now two years have passed. The rest of my commentary will try to focus on my thoughts of the PC version.

For my fifth time through the game, I was immediately impressed by the improvements made in the interface department. The inventory system was no longer a complete nightmare to navigate! Texture pop-in was no longer a problem, though I suppose that has something to do with the power of one’s gaming rig. Unexpectedly, Bring Down The Sky was even included in the package, I had missed that fine print, but it was nice because I wasn’t about to go spending five or ten bucks on it. Hell, even the Mako is an easier beast to navigate on the PC.

There were some glitches here and there. For some reason, Tali loved to superimpose herself onto the other character sprites in the level-up screen, including herself. Those quarians and their quantum superposition! Oh, and the game is still pretty, even after I’ve acclimated to the games of 2009. All in all, I enjoyed my fifth romp through the game, though I have to admit on a few occasions I was sitting there going “I totally could have added better dialogue here/expanded dialogue options here.” But then I guess five-fold hindsight has its benefits?

Mass Effect is an original science fiction story, but it definitely isn’t knocking down any boundaries when we talk about the overall science fiction genre. With big shots like Asimov and Card, how’s a lowly CANADIAN game company to compete? What about it tickled my fancy so? Ultimately, I think Mass Effect went down well with me because the way the story unfolded, and the way the “twist” (if you want to call it that) came around, was well executed compared to 99% of any other games out there. Most other games just don’t bother with twists. Hell, the ones that do tend to be better for it.

If only I could think of more examples of that.

I think the superb voice acting also had its part. And if anyone out there actually thought the voice acting sucked, well, I think your voice acting sucks. In fact, I challenge you to submit some of your voice acting, so we can all laugh at how shitty it is! Ahem.

Finally, as I mentioned before, the endings just do it for me. Although the “game changing” consequences only occur in the last fifteen minutes of gameplay, I am sympathetic to the developmental barriers of such pursuits. How they allowed you to be able to convince the final boss to blow his brains out without firing a single shot is award-worthy. How they streamed space combat cut scenes with the final boss part deux was the perfect way to end the game. They finish on an epic, space opera cliff hanger that left me in withdrawal for a sequel in 2007. Even after the fifth time, I have the same feeling. The only difference is, now I’m holding the sequel in my hands. And, apparently, all this story shit will matter in Mass Effect 2. That, however, I’ll leave as reflection for ME2′s forthcoming review.

For creating a new sci-fi RPG that the game industry honestly needed, for standing the (relatively short thus far) test of time, and for making a goddamn fanboy out of me, I award Bioware’s Mass Effect my first maximum score on the Dojo. Five Vaguely Lovecraftian Villain References out of five.