Mass Effect: First Impressions

As is most likely evidenced by my TDKR review, I'm not one to give into hype.  Sure, I check the web daily for news and such (do yourself a favor and check out toplessrobot.com, my nerd news site of choice) and get excited for upcoming releases (again: ASS.  CREED.  III.), but generally I try to avoid getting too invested in any one thing.  Entertainment should be entertainment--nothing more.  But even I have my limits. So when I tell you that I resisted the hype of Bioware's sci-fi epic Mass Effect franchise for 5 years, I just want to make clear exactly what that means.

A little back story: I'm a unequivocal nerd (SPOILERS!) and one of my favorite nerd outlets, aside from toplessrobot (which is entirely safe for work, by the way), is a podcast from a couple of journalists down in south Florida called Chaos Theater.  They wax about stuff they enjoy, and are generally right on the money (thanks for introducing me to Dresden, but not so much for The Wheel of Time), and their most recent episode was on Mass Effect.  Sure I had heard about it (how could anyone not miss the sheer idiocy of the Mass Effect 3 ending "controversy"), but never had had any real interest.  But they liked it, and I generally trust them, so last night I fired up the first game in the series.

So I've put about 4 hours into this game, and I am flabbergasted.  Flabbergasted at how the subsequent games in the series can improve on this one.  Because this game, right here, is a work of video game art.

Okay sure, the writing (especially for the baddies) can be ultra-Hollywood at times, and the music is a bit of an acquired taste, and textures certainly don't look as crisp as recent releases, but all of that is outweighed by the sheer depth of the dialog, the satisfying combat and most of all the engaging and endlessly interesting characters.  Including, surprisingly, my own.

Oftentimes RPG characters are bland, and I would presume this is to allow the player to project themselves onto the character (here's looking at you, Skyrim), but this is so not the case with ME.  The player character (Lt. Commander Shepard) is fully voiced in both genders (though go with the female--her voice, Jennifer Hale's, is a gem of voice acting).  And the VAs are not simply voicing one character either--your decisions, whether to be a Paragon (boy scout) or Renegade (dickwad) or anything in between result in branching dialog paths that really make this game play out like a TV show, and in a good way.

(As a side note, one of the writers for Mass Effect 3 said that she wished there were a way to remove the playing portions of the game and merely experience it as something akin to a movie or TV show or novel.  And with a story as strong as this, it wouldn't necessarily be a bad idea.)

But that is not to say the gameplay isn't any good either.  I LOVE 3rd person action games; they very may well be my favorite genre (behind aerial shooters by a smidge, maybe), and Mass Effect is a top-notch one.  For all that people complain about awkward menu systems, you get used to them.  Aiming should be floaty (have you even ever fired a gun before?).  While I realize it's not for everyone, ME's combat is right up my alley.

I do miss a dialog skip option, and admittedly I haven't tried the nearly universally-panned exploration missions yet, but so far, I am quite digging Mass Effect and looking forward to 2 and 3 more than a bit.  This is a masterpiece so far, probably the best RPG I've ever played.

And I'm only 4 hours in.