Fractured Reality

The galaxy is in danger.

This seems to happen quite a lot. If one was to examine all existing works of science fiction, the galaxy (or at least it's human or human-friendly inhabitants) being in danger would probably form basis for the vast majority of the genre's stories. It's amazing we survive long enough to make it out of bed each morning. But if dramatic space operas are your thing then Bioware has delivered a galaxy well worth saving, in the form of Mass Effect.

It's incredibly difficult to tell a sci-fi story which seems completely original, and indeed the background and history of Mass Effect's galaxy is quite derivative in places. In fact it borrows many concepts from classic sci-fi stories, most noticeably the TV series Battlestar Galactica and Orson Scott Card's novel, Ender's Game, with the latter case treading dangerously close to plagiarism. It is therefore impressive that, despite these obvious influences, the story that plays out through the game feels both compelling and unique.

Enter the protagonist, Commander Shepard. This being an RPG, character creation is rather important. Mass Effect allows you to choose your avatar's sex, appearance, class and back-story. Character classes come in six flavours: three specialist classes of soldier, engineer and adept, and three more interestingly named hybrids called vanguard, sentinel and infiltrator. Your choice of class will greatly affect your style of play – soldiers are obviously more about the guns-blazing approach, engineers have abilities to disable enemy's shields or disrupt their weapons, while adepts can use biotic "it's not the Force, honest" powers. The hybrid classes each combine two of these, so they might seem the natural choice for a first play through. Your character's back-story, meanwhile, will not have much impact on the game, but references to it are made during numerous conversations, increasing the feeling that Shepard is a real person.

This feeling of realism is something that Bioware strives for throughout Mass Effect, and achieves with stunning grace. This is most noticeable during conversations, which is especially important as there are so many of them to be had – the amount of dialogue that has been recorded for the game is staggering.

The dialogue system meanwhile, is equally impressive. It provides you with the ability to choose next dialogue option before current speaker has finished talking, thus eliminating the long pauses in conversation which have plagued Bioware games in the past. These options appear on a wheel at the bottom of the screen, and supply the context of your character's dialogue rather than the entire text. Additionally, the options always appear in the same place on the wheel – top right for paragon (good) dialogue, bottom right for renegade (evil), centre right for the middle of the road, with the left hand side providing further investigation options, along with charm and intimidation, dependant on your skills. This means that if you are playing a consistent role you don't even have to pay attention to the text – you can just flick the stick to the relevant position when the wheel pops up, and thus keep listening to the conversation without a break in concentration. This system is backed up by superb voice acting throughout, and does much to create and maintain the impressive cinematic style of the game.

Away from the dialogue, Mass Effect offers much to appreciate in terms of action. There's a galaxy to explore, missions to complete and, of course, a lot of combat. The combat system has been somewhat unjustly maligned. Mass Effect is not a pure shooter, and expecting a game to play like Gears of War just because it uses the same over the shoulder camera angle is rather unfair.

This is an RPG, so instead of relying on twitchy reflexes, it examines stats for each shot – those of your enemy, your character, weapons and mods – and calculates how much damage has been done. This all takes place behind the scenes, but it is important to understand the difference in concept if you are expecting a "straight" shooter experience.

As with many of Bioware's previous games, success in combat relies on a good tactical use of the pause menus. In Mass Effect these are accessed via the bumpers – holding the left bumper brings up a wheel which allows you to select each squad member's active weapon, and the right gives access to abilities and biotic powers. These take a while to recharge, so it is important to choose the right moment to use them. The weapons meanwhile have an infinite supply of ammunition, but will overheat if used for an extended length of time. It is important to keep a close eye on your weapon's heat gauge and make good use of cover so you do not find yourself overexposed with no way to attack the enemy.

Additionally there are basic squad commands available on the d-pad: hold position, attack a specific enemy, form up on Shepard or move to a specific location. Somewhat annoyingly these commands cannot be given to your squad members individually however, and the ability to take active control of Shepard's companions which was seen during previews didn't make the final build.

There is one undeniable weakness of the combat system though. If members of your squad lose all their health, they become incapacitated until all the enemies are defeated, or you use Shepard's Unity power to revive them. If this happens to Shepard however, the game is over, even if both your companions still have full health. It's a cheap kill which, after Bioware did away with it in KotOR, makes an unexpected and unwelcome return.

So back to the galaxy then. Bioware has created a vast array of star systems and planets to explore, along with the beautiful hub of galactic civilization, the mysterious Citadel. Most of the game's missions will be obtained while exploring its many areas, but many will take you on journeys away from the station, to the numerous uncharted worlds that Mass Effect contains. This is where the realism breaks down somewhat, as there is some noticeable repeating of environments on the uncharted worlds – building interiors and exteriors will be revisited in many different locations. Your activities on these worlds will also be rather repetitive. You land in the Mako – an all terrain vehicle which feels a bit Warthog-lite – and drive between places of interest marked on your map. The worlds themselves are usually desolate and mountainous, but there are occasional reprieves from this theme.

The planets on which the main missions occur, thankfully, provide a stark contrast. These are much more detailed, and obviously contain an abundance of things to do. Unfortunately with this increase in visual delights comes one of the game's biggest problems – that of frame rate slowdown. It doesn't happen too often, but along with the large amount of texture popup after loading, it mars a game whose production values are otherwise very high.

If you can overlook this though (and you should), Mass Effect is clearly one of the best games in a year of many high quality releases. It represents a sizeable investment of time – around 30 hours to complete with the majority of side quests – but is well worth the effort. The game could probably be completed in about a third of that time, but to do so would be to do a disservice to it. Mass Effect is a game which gives back what the player puts in. The more time you spend interacting with the characters and the world around you, the more you will enjoy the wonderful experience it has to offer. This is a galaxy truly worth saving.