Publisher Microsoft Developer BioWare Players 1 Online DLC Customise Characters, weapons

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Mass Effect
The best Star Trek game never made
Reviewer

Dan Griliopoulos OXM Grill

his is all your fault. Im not blaming you per se, but the unfortunate consequence of my getting to review the best games in the world rst, is that I have to stop playing after only a couple of weeks. It feels like Ive hardly scraped Mass Effect s surface, yet here I am obliged to cease and write about it, just to tell you what you already know; that its brilliant, that its massive and that if you dont like plot in your games (fans of Crackdown and Gears of War exit now please), you might not like this. Right, can I get back to playing now? No?! Grr. Okay, you remember Knights of the Old Republic, the Star Wars prequel that was better than the last three movies? Well, this is made by the same people, BioWare, who also made genius old-skool RPGs like Baldurs Gate and Neverwinter Nights. This is Knights of the Old Republic 3, but outside of the auspices of Star Wars, a galaxy-spanning epic with a twisty plot and lots of humanoid aliens banging on about morality while you massacre

THE KNOWLEDGE
What is it?
A galaxy-roaming role-player with a twisty plot.

Whats it like?

Knights of the Old Republic meets Star Trek, and its good.

Whos it for?

RPG geeks and those who wanted more meat from Halo 3.

hundreds of people. Its a bit like Babylon 5 or Star Trek but with a giant body count and you as the hero. The plot follows Commander Shepard, humanitys pre-eminent soldier, 50 years after humans have made rst contact with alien species. Shepard is a candidate to be the rst human Spectre, basically an intergalactic 00-agent who can go anywhere and do anything. During his testing mission, a rogue Spectre called Saren with a grudge against the human race kills another Spectre and Shepard has a technology-induced vision

of a galactic genocide from 50,000 years before, with the insinuation that Saren is seeking to recreate it. From that point youre chasing Saren and his robot sidekicks across the galaxy, seeking to catch up with him and foil whatever it is hes trying to do.

Star Trekking

And now the good bit. Fly about in your ultra-magic Starship the SSV Normandy, thats packed with all sorts of wonderful techno-babble, visiting various planets throughout the universe; chase

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You only have ten saves in Mass Effect and youll need to use them regularly, as the autosave system is crap. We played for two hours on one occasion and lost everything because of the lack of a save.

RUBBISH AUTOSAVES

Did you know?

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ZOOM, ZOOM, ZOOM

Were all going on a summer holiday Were on the bridge of the Normandy, having evicted its old man owner, and fancy a cheap weekend somewhere. Lets have a shufti at the galaxy map.

Right, this is the galaxy. You can only visit star clusters linked by giant alien jump gate things. Think of them as the ferry to the Normandys Ford Cortina.

Pistols: surprisingly effective against robot menaces.

Enemies jam your radar, but weapon mods can unjam it.

Once your spaceship has jumped to a star cluster, you can pick which system to explore. As Bognor Regis is closed, weve popped to Artemis Tau.

Every system you can visit is packed with planets. This system has four, but theyre all a bit crap. Even the seafood stall is rubbish (only eels, yuck!).

down clues to where Saren is and what hes up to. Once youve got to a planet, depending on its civilisation level you either dock your spaceship on the surface, or drop the MAKO (your APC) from orbit for a bit of dune-buggying. (see Dream Rover, Where Are You?, page 85). When youve got command of the Normandy, you can explore the uncharted worlds of the universe, solving peoples problems galaxy-wide. The missions on these extraneous worlds are entirely selfcontained, giving them the feeling of Star Trek episodes; you know that anyone whos introduced in one of these will either

stay on the planet or be dead by the missions end, like the infamous redshirts of Trek history. Downloadable content is therefore likely to take the form of new systems with more planets to explore. The most important place youll visit though is the Galactic hub called the Citadel, an amazing ve-pronged habitat oating free in space, which trumps Halos Ringworlds for sheer grandeur and scale. Its here that you recruit most of your team members in the initial plot setup element after the training level, and here that most of the roaming missions are given out. Of course, inside all the buildings it feels just like KOTOR and thats the only major problem with the game. At its heart, Mass Effect is an old-style roleplaying game with the now-irritating KOTOR framework at the heart of it. This structure is the only reason this game hasnt made a

Out-haloing Halo

We were going to pop to Mars, but were told it has no atmosphere. No problem, because of our spacesuits, but its shut for refurbishment.

These robot zombies move like 1980s TOTP dancers.

Success! We found a nice B&B on the moon and the whole planetoids denitely a beach. Bit dusty, though. Still, you cant beat that view.

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Renegade chats almost always end in executions.

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While waiting in the lift, youll often get news reports.

Before entering a mission, you select a balanced squad. Enemies use deployable shields for cover.

Theres a massive selection of armour types available.

BioWare can do almost anything, but they still cant do sexy.

ten; the branching conversational trees, though amazingly uid, are tired and the options arent always clear. Meanwhile, the locations (save the planets wide-open surfaces) have the same old circumscribed feel; it often seems like youre just running down empty corridors between areas to make the game a bit longer. Indeed, there are some loading issues (which could be a function of our dying debug Xbox 360) which BioWare has attempted to rectify by slackening the pace of your movements with slow lifts and non-automatic doors, making it even more irritating to move between areas. There are fast-travel methods in the Citadel, but nowhere else. Indeed, some time-saving features from KOTOR have been removed, like the ability to change your team at any point outside of your ship or return to it at any point here you have

to make a lengthy backtrack to the Normandy to switch characters.

Fire and forget

Surprisingly, though, this time BioWare has moved away from the totally automatic ghting that has characterised all its games towards a real-time combat system. There are still turn-based elements if you hold down either shoulder button the game pauses while you tell your team-mates to change weapons, use special powers and move around or attack enemies. However, youre responsible for all your characters shooting, which improves alongside your weapon skills, and its good solid fun with enemies anking, charging into close combat, and mostly using explosives correctly. Okay so theyre not amazingly bright, but on the other hand its denitely not easy either.

The Citadel is an amazing vepronged habitat oating in space that trumps Halos Ringworlds
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You can play as the default Shepard, if you must.

The exceedingly tough yet short-lived Nihilus. The MAKO can travel up nearly any surface.

Enemy biotics (psychics) can cause real trouble in ghts. You can get out of the MAKO anywhere on a planet.

The levelling system and special powers themselves are a bit of a disappointment, though you do appreciate them more as the game goes on. Each class has its own special abilities, with the aliens who join your team having their own special classes for example, Wrex is a Krogan Battlemaster, essentially a soldier with psychic powers, and Garrus a Turian Agent (a technical sniper). Your character has two additional skills Charm and Intimidate which unlock conversation options and improve your bartering skills. Beyond that, there are not a huge number of biotic powers to unlock and you wont be able to control most of them in your rst play through, making most combats similar, if tough.

PLAY AND REPLAY

If youve seen the adverts, you know what Commander Shepard looks like: a strong jaw, a shaved head, a muscular body. Well, thats one option, but he can be anything you want him (or her) to be. Not only can you customise his appearance, you can customise his background as well, from nine combinations. We chose to be a female space traveller who was the only survivor of a battle on Akuze. Indeed, there was even a whole mission based around the battle, the scientic experiments at its heart and its outcome.
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The weapon system is unique, too. Every character has access to just four weapons: a pistol, shotgun, rie and sniper rie. These are tucked away on their backs and when you switch between them they kind of fold out into the weapon proper. If youre not skilled with a particular weapon, you can use it but youll hit almost nothing. Weapons dont have ammo, but they do overheat if you use them too much, seizing them up briey. Meanwhile, close combat is nearly non-existent, the largest change from KOTOR s lightsaber and vibroblade fest merely a random smack happening automatically when two soldiers are close enough.

Body-modding

These weapons arent all the same either, with hundreds of variations on each type and modications available for each. Each gun can take two mods at once, a body modication (no, not the nipple studs, Gillen!) that improves accuracy, damage,

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Mass Effect
DREAM ROVER, WHERE ARE YOU?

3 1 2 4
THE SHEEP Your team-mates will follow you into any danger because youre a Spectre. You can explore their motivations for doing this by befriending them between missions.

HEAT GAUGE The more you re, the higher this goes. If it hits maximum you have to wait for it to cool down completely, like Halos plasma rie, which can be lethal in combat.

MARKY MAKO This lovable buggy is your ATV, capable of accessing all but the most hostile planets. It can jump about 20 feet in the air and has a machine-gun and cannon.

BAR ME The red bars are your health; the white bars are your shields. To the right are your health packs and grenades (good for chucking into a packed room of nincompoops).

ORDNANCE SURVEY This minimap tells you about objectives and enemies. It can be jammed by enemies, but gun mods unjam it. Theres also a larger map you can pull up anytime.

Almost every time you kill someone they drop swag, so youre soon carrying round lots of items
Characters can combine two of three possible classes: a soldier, a tech and a biotic.

balance or heat, and ammo modications that alter the effects of the shots freezing, burning, knocking back or just plain killing the enemy (if you want to do things the old-fashioned way). Its satisfying to use them and they dont bind to the guns so you can change mods on the y as battles change (anti-personnel rounds for organic enemies, penetrators for heavily shielded enemies, and so on). Theres a nice variety of enemies to ght, from biotic Asari to insectoid Rachni, but youll spend most of your time battling the Geth, Krogans and various mercenaries. Almost every time you kill someone they drop swag, so youre soon carrying around lots of items. If youre a pack-rat youll need to know theres an arbitrary maximum limit of 150 items you can carry, after which you start breaking them down into Omni-gel a multipurpose material that can be used for hacking, decryption and other activities.

Theres far too much other stuff to go into here and I wish I had the same amount of pages again. Sufce to say, the astounding vistas of each planet combined with swelling synth chords and the cheesy sci- plots of Babylon 5, make this a game for lovers of science ction and RPGs everywhere. Roll on the sequels!

A galaxy to explore Consistent design Cheesy but exciting plot Driving your buggies straightforward Framerate-induced designed problems

A mammoth, stunning universe to explore

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