Mass Effect

an even worse than usual james cameron movie clumsily grafted onto a terrible cover shooter. you know, i can sort of understand why people might be into something like morrowind, even if i'm not. it's janky as all hell, but as a result has its own janky as all hell personality. i find it difficult to understand, however, why someone would be moved by this hollow husk of a game, this lifeless corporate product without meaning or consequence. genuinely worthless.

I honestly don't get the appeal of this game - your choices rarely mattered and the combat was the most basic cover shooter shit imaginable. It has a cool setting, but instead of capitalizing on that it forces some really lame "save the universe" plotline that's way overdone and uninteresting. Exploring random planets is boring given how empty they feel, and none of the party characters connected to me aside from Garrus. Easily one of the most overrated games of all time.

A clunky but ambitious space opera—the RPG depth and lore dazzle, yet the Mako missions and gunplay aged like milk.

gameplay is not as smooth as later games but the story is still fantastic

Mass Effect interrogates the juridical void. The Spectre embodies the state of exception, operating where law is in force but does not signify—the sovereign decision made flesh. Opposing this is a cosmic apparatus seeking to strip bios (political existence) into zoē (bare life). The galaxy functions as a zone of indistinction, a biopolitical trap where the subject must navigate the collapse of the border between civilization and the raw, unmediated mechanism of power. - Full Review

What a great start to the series - I was enamored with Mass Effect when I first played it years ago, and recently played through it again with the Legendary Edition. There is definitely some jank to the gameplay that was cleaned up in future entries, but this was just outstanding sci-fi and got me into the genre. The level of player choice, true impact, and replayability is awesome.

I played this game towards the end of 2023, and though the graphics are passable, it sadly hasn't aged well. The game showcases a magnificent world with diverse races and a rich history, but the gameplay disappoints. It primarily revolves around running and shooting, occasionally under time constraints. The locations feel barren, and navigating the game space is unintuitive, often leading to a random search for mission objectives.

As someone who bounced off of the gameplay side of the original version of this a couple of times, the Legendary Edition's quality-of-life improvements were enough to get me over that hump and finally experience this compelling story and world properly. There's still plenty that doesn't work for me, like how obviously fake a lot of dialogue "choices" are and how unacceptably bad the Mako handles. Excited to dive into the second one.

I really enjoyed this game. I think it takes a while to sort of start understanding the lore and the characters, but once you do, there's a great story here. Some of the side mission worlds are unfortunately pretty dull though, with Mako exploration being extremely frustrating. The main missions though are fantastic, and I loved the way everything came together in the end. Can't wait to check out the second game!

The gameplay direction is awful, the sidequests are copy-paste prefab shit, the weapon balancing suffers from neglect, and the combat AI is lacking. And I got roped into a romance that made me retch. Hopefully the rest of the trilogy doesn't disappoint me as much.