Mass Effect rating: asin: B000OLXX86 binding: Video Game list price: $39.99 USD amazon price: $39.99 USD

Starship battles. Compelling characters. A timeless battle of good and evil. If you instantly think “Star Wars”, think again. Mass Effect has the potential to become the next big Sci-Fi element, rivaling the greatness of at the very least, the new “Star Wars” prequels, and even the classic trilogy. Mass Effect aspires to greatness, and succeeds in almost all areas.

The game starts out with several Human Alliance military personal talking about your future, specifically, your role as an intergalactic peace-keeper. Humanity has just been accepted among a huge galactic community, and so far, have been stonewalled as far as say over the future of the galaxy. You, playing as Commander Shepard, hold the key to humanity being more widely accepted as a sentient race in the interstellar community. But before all that, there’s creating your vision of Commander Shepard. Through a in-depth character creation, you can make Shepard exactly as you can imagine him, any race, any gender. You can even create Shepard’s past, from a Sole Survivor, to an off-world colonist. The opportunity to create your own unique hero is mind-numbing, but not just through character creation, but also through development.

Throughout the game, you’ll make choices that can help or hinder, and will come back to haunt you even late in the game. Every choice you make has a profound effect on the game as a whole, from a quickie news interview to a life-or-death confrontation with a crew member. Your choices effect everything around you. Around these choices, there will be combat, which is handled in a tactical, 3rd-person perspective, with your weaponry and power choices dependent on character class and leveling of your character. Soldiers will have access to all standard weapons, including Sniper and Assault Rifles, Shotguns and Pistols, along with shield and health upgrades. Adepts (the psychics / mages of science fiction) have powers that can throw, lift, and freeze their enemies in place using their minds. Engineers are the tech specialists, who use their hacking and electronics skills to get into weapon containers and storage lockers to get valuable equipment, and to hack enemy synthetics. Synthetics in “Mass Effect” are the enemy of every organic being in the galaxy, advanced combinations of machine and artificial intelligence bent on the “harvesting” of organic life in the galaxy. Most of the story revolves around understanding and stopping the synthetics from eradicating life from the galaxy, but don’t expect your typical story canon here. There are plenty of twists and turns in the game along the way. There’s even a romance sub-plot if you play your cards right (Note: Game is Rated M for Mature.)

Although, not everything is perfect. The game suffers from a classic problem of “Texture Pop-In,” a term used when you watch blurry textures get very detailed, very quickly, almost as the texture (a term used for the “picture” on an object in a 3D game) pops in. This could be due to a technical limitation of the 360 itself. Usually in PC and PS3 games, where a hard drive is required and always present, the textures are pre-loaded into a part of hard drive, so the textures are there and ready when the particular scene loads up. This is not the case for the 360, seeing as Microsoft allowed the 360 to be marketed without the Hard Disc Drive (HDD), developers have to work around being able to pre-load textures, so with a combination long load times and tedious work-around loadings (e.g., the game fools you by having an insanely long elevator ride, which is just a work-around for not forcing an actual loading screen,) the texture popping is reduced to a minimum, but is still very obnoxious.

There are also very slight problems with the game’s AI programming. While your squad mates and enemies are usually very smart, they can also be pretty dense. Shooting walls, running in circles, and standing in place are sometimes an occasional problem. Later in the game, as well, it becomes clear that there is a limited number on different enemy types, as well as different types of locations (based purely on the physical make up of interior bases, science labs, and secret bases.)

All in all, this game has its share of flaws, but all are very minor compared to the main cannon. The depth and replay value of this game is second to none, and the enjoyment of participating in the story of the “Mass Effect” universe is a pleasure and a privilege as a gamer and a Sci-Fi fan. You shouldn’t pass this up for the world. (Author's note: Article was originally written for my local college paper in a small town of Iowa by myself.)