Mass Effect Review, Continued

Boss battles, without revealing much, were pretty poor. In KOTOR or even the original Baldur's Gate, I had more fun defeating just one of their bosses than I did in defeating all of the Mass Effect bosses combined. Most of the satisfaction is going to come from the storyline itself, and things that you can't actually directly battle yourself. Overall, the actual story itself from start to finish is very well done, especially the beginning and ending sequences,; I think that's the one thing gamers can really expect out of BioWare no matter what they churn out. It's a story that you're going to be driven to continue and pursue right until the very end. Unfortunately, once you reach that end point, there's not much left. While I'd like to elaborate more, I feel that it'd be difficult to do so without spoiling certain aspects. Just rest assured, for the story alone, Mass Effect certainly does deliver.

Now that the story element of Mass Effect has been covered, I'd like to focus on some of the ways that BioWare really screwed up with their next generation RPG. By some cruel twist of fate, BioWare, a company that used to deliver on inventory management and unique items, seems to now believe that gamers these days have lost the ability to manage a basic inventory, let alone an inventory consisting of anything unique. In this great future world of Mass Effect that BioWare dreamt up, everyone - and I mean everyone - carries the same damn weapons and upgrades, and the only way that they differentiate them is by manufacturer, race, and "rank." You'll start by finding rank "I" weapons first, then "II", then "III", and so on. It is really unimaginative, boring, and stupid; I cannot express that enough.

Mass Effect has great graphics, but the inventory system and upgrades are lackluster.

Granted, most weapons, armor, and grenades are customizable, but they suffer the same fate. You'll be stuffing Cryo Ammo IV into your Edge IV pistol to try to give yourself (pardon the pun) an edge, but it's the same boring system to enhance the same boring weapons. The inventory and upgrades system in Mass Effect is complete and utter crap compared to what we've seen in other RPGs, including ones previously made by BioWare. By the end of the game, I was a multimillionaire from selling off all the redundant junk that I found. I had nothing to do with my excess of money, as I kept finding new replacements and upgrades scattered about as if they were given out like candy.

Going beyond the inventory, you have an all-terrain vehicle at your disposal in the form of the "Mako," and you'll drive it frequently when exploring new worlds or traveling during missions. Oddly however, you're literally the only person in the galaxy with a ground vehicle that is still operational, as you'll never come across a vehicle in the entire game that is being driven by anyone else. If you were hoping for some sort of race mission at some point, sorry to burst your bubble, but it doesn't exist. To make matters worse, the Mako handles and drives as if it were designed and operated by orangutan engineers with a mail order degree. The Mako's jet boosters are absolutely pointless and will at best send you to your death, and the driving controls make no sense at all. The driving control issues will become the most frustrating to those who've played other games with solid vehicle controls. It just doesn't make sense to auto-steer in the direction that you're aiming, nor does the method of backing up make sense.

Biotic and Technician skills are the new magic, but don't expect any big branching lists of powers and abilities to unlock. I chose to play a pure Biotic character and was significantly let down, as there are only a handful of powers to unlock. You'll spend the entire game mainly upgrading very simple things like the range of the powers, or the force behind them. It's quite sad to see a magic system fall into such simplicity and become so boring. If you choose to play a Bio- or Tech-based character (or a hybrid of such), you'll find yourself using the same damn abilities and powers over and over again from start until finish. Sure, by the end of the game your Singularity or Lift power might have a bigger range, last longer, and recharge faster. But they're still the same abilities that you had been using most of the game.