I just want to start out by saying that I loved this game. I want to make that perfectly clear, because later on I’m going to get kind of critical, and I don’t want anyone getting the wrong idea. If you have a 360 and you do not own this game, I would highly suggest you go buy it.

First off, you get to create your own character. Which, for me, is a huge plus. Not only do you get to design your character’s face, but you get to pick their class, which dictates what types of weapons you can use, what kinds of armor you can wear, etc. On top of that, you get to pick your character’s tragic back-story, which is referred to often throughout the game. I spent awhile customizing our character’s face, and I was pretty happy with the outcome. Once we started playing, though, I saw that our version of Sheppard had a really protruding caveman-like brow that I hadn’t noticed during my design, because you can’t really see the face from all angles until you’re in the game. This bugged me for the first few hours of gameplay, but eventually I just got used to it.

Every review out there (Chris’s included) talks about the storyline/dialogue options. It is difficult to express the scope of this, but I will give you an example. Someone approaches you asking if you would like to make some extra cash (or credits, as they’re called) by assisting in a smuggling operation. Right away you can either say something along the lines of “sure, how much?”, or “no, i would never!”. If you like, you can investigate further. What are you smuggling? Why is it illegal? Once you have all the information, you can decide whether or not gun smuggling is for you. But it doesn’t end there. Once you have the stolen goods, you have more choices. Do you bring it back to the guy who hired you? Do you keep the weapon for yourself? Do you turn the gun over to the authorities and report the smuggling? All the choices that you make earn you either Paragon or Renegade points, as well as dictating how that particular side plot will play out. Every scenario has different possible outcomes, and those in turn dictate what possible future side quests you can do. If you don’t turn in the smuggled weapon to the authorities, you won’t have them on your side later when you want access to something, so you’ll have to find another way to get through that door, etc, etc. And that is just ONE example.

While you start the game off alone, that doesn’t last long. In typical RPG fashion, you assemble a crew composed of people you meet and interact with along the way. You can only have two with you at a time, which works out nicely, otherwise the elevators would get too crowded. One of these crew members, if you play your cards right (and endure lots of really boring dialogue), will sleep with you. I will unashamedly admit that I became obsessed with this. I didn’t care if the entire galaxy imploded, I wanted to screw that alien. Every time we got back to our ship from a mission, I would immediately insist that we go talk to Liara. During one cut-scene where it looks like something is going to happen with them, but they get interrupted, I literally yelled at the tv. When she finally succumbed to our romantic advances, I cheered.

Mass Effect is ripe with side quests, which is something I really enjoy, but if it’s not your thing, you can just play through the heart of the game. If someone is annoyed at somebody else preaching in a public area, and that guy feels he has the right to express his opinions, just say screw them both, get on your spaceship and go kill robot aliens. The details are there, but they’re not forced on you. You don’t HAVE to read the encyclopedia of alien history that accompanies every planet. But you can, and I did.

Okay, now it’s time for nitpicking. While this game was truly enjoyable, and I would confidently recommend it to anyone, there were a few elements that I really think should be ironed out *cough*eliminated*cough* in the sequels.

Big Complaint #1: The Mako. Why, oh why, does this thing exist? Chris mentioned that I fell asleep during extended periods of driving, and that is true. Unfortunately for me, that was not always the case. Do you like watching someone try to ram themselves up a sheer rock wall fifty times to get to a mineral deposit, only to have them slide down into some sort of crater that they can’t drive out of? Me neither. It is possible that there are drivable paths to these objects of interest, but if so they should be made much more apparent. While I understand that the current system is more realistic than all planets being flat or having obvious roads, there has to be a happy medium that doesn’t make me want to stop playing. There were times when we were inching up a cliff so slowly, not even knowing if we could crest the top, that it was physically painful to watch. For the next game I recommend turning the Mako into some sort of hovercraft. Or incinerating it and dancing on its ashes.

Big Complaint #2: Enemy dialogue. I have sung the praises of the hero dialogue choices, and I stick by that. However, if I have to listen to a room full of people shout “Enemies Everywhere!” one more time, I am going to lose it. How a game with hundreds of spoken phrases that we never even get to hear, and detailed histories of planets we never even have to visit, ended up with only 3 phrases for bad guys to shout every 5 seconds is beyond me.

Demi-Complaints: You can’t scroll between floors on your map. This just makes no sense to me. Also, sometimes an exclamation point that denotes an “area of interest” appears on your map, but there’s nothing there. Somehow your map is able to see into the future and mark what will later be an area of interest, after you talk to some NPC on another floor. Chris claims that this is just a marker pointing to an area of interest on another floor. Which you cannot go to, because your map doesn’t scroll. Either way it’s pretty dumb. Chris mentioned the armor/weapon equipping screen, which was daunting, but some people are really into that kind of thing, and I believe there was an option to set it to be automatic, so I can’t really complain about that too much. I can, however, complain about my team confidently claiming “We got ‘em all Captain” just because I am hiding behind a rock and the enemies slipped off the radar. This becomes more annoying when you keep sneaking close to look, then backing away to regroup. “Area clear.” Really? Are you sure there aren’t fifty Geth right over that ridge? If an enemy is on the radar, and then disappears because I killed them, that’s one thing. Enemies slipping off the side of the radar because I am running away does not mean it’s time to “Bag ‘em and tag ‘em”.

The only one of these flaws that I feel really impeded the gameplay was the Mako. It just wasn’t fun. There’s no way around that, it totally sucked. However, unless Bioware decides to make Mass Effect 2 into some sort of Mako-centric planet-traversing frustration-fest, I will 100% be buying it. As long as I get to make it with hot aliens.