Woot Effect

Yes, it's the thing that makes me go woot. And if you can't already tell that I bought Mass Effect, I'll tell you that I bought it.

Guys, I bought Mass Effect today.

And because It's so late, I'm going to be very brief and elaborate more on the topic later.

Mass Effect is awesome.

After having seen videos of it, and reading about it, I had a fairly clear picture in my mind of what ME was. I understood that it was merely Gears of War + RPG. I was very wrong. Whilst it does retain that 3rd person shooter style, the RPG bit is not just tacked on like I thought it would be. There is everything you'd find in your stock standard RPG. Running around a central HUB city looking for quests, buying new equipment, or just talking to people. In fact, once I hit the main hub city, I managed to get myself stuck for about an hour because I couldn't find where I was meant to go (damn elusive docking bay). It's like the style of a standard RPG formula mixed in with some open world-ness. Upon receiving your ship you're able to traverse the Milky Way in search of planets to explore and quests/missions to complete.

It's all quite good.

But I have some complaints.

My squad dies almost all the time. I've been playing this practically on my own, and if it wasn't for them waking up after the enemies were all dead, I'd have no squad. When ME2 rolls out some time in the future, squad AI will hopefully be improved. And I'll be damned if they don't show some initiative and throw in some Co-op play. Being able to bring my main character over to someone else's game, and play with them, would be awesome.

Next, elevators are way too fucking slow. It's the future. Technology is elite. Elevators move at lightning speed, if lightning was Egyptian slang for grandma. They absolutely crawllllll and it's terrible. Saving the blue alien chick involved a boss encounter at the top of an elevator. Unfortunately for me I failed it a few times and had to restart that section from the bottom of the elevator. That coupled with the slow load times made for a less than pleasant experience.

Yes load times are bad, but considering that they only happen when you change planets or die (and sometimes but not often during a stage) they're not that bad. Unless you die a lot.

Desipte those bad things, I started playing as soon as I got home, and stopped playing not very long ago. This game is good. I look forward to playing through it, then trying again with a different class.

I also wouldn't mind picking my own damn surname. Rufati Shepard is the weirdest main character name I've ever had.

I'm out.