Mass Effect Reviews

A couple more enthusiastic reviews of BioWare's Mass Effect surfaced over the holiday weekend. The first is at AtomicGamer with an overall score of 91%:
Is this Bioware's best game? No. But Mass Effect is still a damn fine game with a huge scope, dozens of hours of play from beginning to end, and it's got just about everything that makes sci-fi so compelling in the first place. While it's got a lot of wacky aliens, the game never tries to gain extra mileage just by having designed up some cool-looking new being - even the aliens have histories, emotions, and motives. Combat is tough at first and the Mako gets tiresome after a while, but I think you'll find there's still plenty for RPG veterans to look forward to. Mass Effect won't be ushering any new golden ages of role playing or sci-fi, but it's still a top-notch game that any RPG fan with a 360 should put at the top of their list.

And the other is at Game Revolution with an overall score of "A-":
Mass Effect isn't altogether immune. Driving over unexplored worlds, which should be ecstatic fun, often means climbing and bouncing through mountain ranges with little control. The rover frequently gets stuck, moves annoyingly slow, and gets totally screwy when trying to back up. This is compounded by the fact that there is little to find on the planets, and long bouncy stretches of terrain between them.

And there are a host of other little problems: the menu interface is non-intuitive, the maps, especially of the huge Citadel starport, are confusing, and the autosave feature often hangs you out to dry at the worst moments. There is a discernable lack of polish on Mass Effect, and one wonders what might have been if Christmas was more than a month away.

Call it inertia, but when Mass Effect is rolling, even these apparent problems are brushed aside. For Mass Effect is truly massive, with enough material for at least three all-nighters. . . the first time through.