Mass Effect Review
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As for the Renegade and Paragon options, they have little to no bearing on the actual course of the game. The main purpose is for different outcomes in fairly narrow situations. The overall storyline is completely altered by an 11th hour whim. I could roll around being the a-hole of the universe yet still repent at the last second. I can also want to save every fuzzy creature in the universe and hug people's sadness away then stab them in the back for no apparent reason. When I figured this out I was kicking myself for completing a second play through. All I had to do was save it right before that critical decision point, load up, and see the alternate ending without spending another 12 hours getting there.
The story wouldn't have been problematic had the gameplay been well designed. However, like every other part of Mass Effect, the gameplay is also inconsistent. The ground game is very well done. Mass Effect is a hybrid shooter/RPG, with a strong emphasis on the RPG side. The success of your attacks is defined around stats, both character related and weapon related, and ammo is not a concern. However, like a shooter, you can't just stand out in the open, blazing your gun around and expect to do well. You do have to worry about cover, your allies to draw off the attack and shield levels that deplete rapidly. Basically, you can't just stand out in the open like in Knights of the Old Republic because you'll get slaughtered. Unfortunately, the excellence of the third person shooting scenes is completely sullied by the horror that is called the Mako. The Mako is an armored personnel carrier that functions as a drop ship when going down to various planets. The vehicle controls erratically, has horrible speed control and bounces around like there isn't any gravity. You can hit a small object and go flying off course which is particularly bad in the main storyline missions. In the main story, you frequently jump into the Mako and drive around narrow paths with this unwieldy vehicle and run into frequent danger of falling off the side into a pool of lava or to your death thousands of feet below. Other issues come from you getting stuck because the Mako frequently defies the laws of gravity; even the jump jets are completely useless. What's worse, half the main storyline missions and nearly all the side quests rely heavily on using the Mako, which is insult to injury as far as I'm concerned.
