Mass Effect was produced by Bioware, one of my favourite RPG developers - mainly for the Knights of the Old Republic and Jade Empire games they made for the original Xbox and PC. With a pedigree like that I was expecting a lot from Mass Effect.

Mass Effect (ME) is set a few hundred years in the future. Humanity has just discovered faster-than-light travel and is trying to establish itself as a power in the galaxy alongside various other races. Playing as Commander Shepard, an elite human soldier, you will fight to save the galaxy from destruction. The storyline sounds familiar - its essentially the same as Halo and Star Wars, and all the stereotypes are there. But its very well told, and it will definitely keep you interested until the end credits.

The gameplay of ME is a mixture of an RPG and a tactical shooter, and there is some success in this. Typical RPG elements are that you choose your characters appearance and then choose what skills you want him to be build up - and ME lets you do both of these quite well. But people who have played other RPGs (Oblivion) will be a little disappointed that all the character classes in the game are pre-sets, so ME might feel limited. Typical of RPGs, ME also has quite a lot of side quests - but these don’t tend to be particularly varied, and will usually consist of the same formula of “go here, clear out this building, return for reward”. The side quest planets themselves offer little variety, and are mostly uninhabited. Its often tedious, and something most casual gamers won’t bother doing more than 2 or 3 times. Its not that the role-playing aspect of ME is bad, its just that it doesn’t have enough to it.

The graphics engine doesn’t help matters - its hard to feel like you’re part of a world, when every time you open a new door you have to wait 3 seconds for the right textures to pop up.

Then there’s the tactical shooter element. Before ME I’d played Gears of War, Rainbow 6 Vegas etc, so I know how the best tactical shooters play - Mass Effect just doesn’t reach the bar set by these games. Every time you want to swap a weapon or use an ability you will find yourself pausing the game and scrolling through the abilities. Admittedly the menus for abilities and weapons are quite accessible, but its unnecessary, and the gameplay feels very staggered because of all the fiddling you’ll end up doing. There is also no real way of controlling your squad, and the only use I managed to find for them was as a human/alien shield. The enemy AI is a little bit smarter, but you’ll occasionally have moments when the enemy won’t even try to cover, instead embracing the idea of martyrdom and throwing themselves into your rifle fire.

I suppose what I’m trying to say is that Mass Effect has tried to please both RPG and Tactical shooter players and ended up with a game that isn’t going to please either, at least not enough to excuse the 2 years of hype there has been. However, all that said, there are some redeeming factors to Mass Effect. The digital characters are the best I have ever seen, and you really notice this during the conversations, which are all superbly voice acted. It’s the only aspect of gameplay where ME raises the bar. The main quest planets you will visit during the game are highly detailed, with different scenarios for each one, and are much more enjoyable than the side quests.

However, I’m sad to say ME didn’t live up to the hype - it’s a decent game, but neither aspect of its gameplay is good enough to make it the title we all wanted it to be. The dual gameplay aspects serve to make ME too shallow to be considered a good RPG (the main storyline is around 8 hours long, which is probably only a little more than Halo 3), and there is too much fussing to be considered a good tactical shooter.

7/10 - Its more of a disappointment than anything else. Mass Effect is not a bad game, its a good game with too many performance issues. Unfortunately there isn’t a demo on Xbox Live Marketplace to download, so if you do want to check it out you’ll have to buy or rent it.