Page 4

And as much as the peppy dialogue and explosive combat liven up Mass Effect, too many dull quests and disappointing level design bog it down in tedious repetition. There are a lot of Romper Room side assignments here where you deliver junk to random aliens, push levers to activate machinery, solve dreary set puzzles, and decrypt lots of locks with a new PC-only minigame where you guide an arrow through a rotating maze. At times you seem to be jetting all over the galaxy and visiting strange new worlds just to help out strangers in bars. Most of the big-picture stuff that occurs at the end of story missions is seriously awesome, with multiple routes to the finish lines and numerous killer firefights. There is just too much busywork needed to get to these great moments.

Even worse, you're forced to run all over some seriously large levels to complete tasks. Many areas don't have any shortcuts courtesy of the usual RPG transit system where you can instantly move from one key point of a map to another, so you're generally stuck hoofing it. Most of this level sprawl isn't necessary, either. It's as if the developers decided to lengthen the game simply by throwing in a lot of long hallways, stairwells, and seemingly endless elevator rides. Good lord, don't get me started on the elevator rides. It takes 20 seconds or more just to ride up or down a single floor, just like on the 360. And at least these rides in the console version hid level loading times; here, they're just holdovers that really desperately need to be cut down in length.


Sense of wonder is further beaten down by bland backdrops. I didn't feel like I was gallivanting around the universe as much as I was visiting factories and old concrete strip malls. And even though Mass Effect was designed as a showcase for the next-gen 360, most rooms are devoid of decorations and furniture. At a glance, the game looks more like a port from the original Xbox, not its higher-powered successor. Only the often excellent character art saves the day. Some of the aliens look almost photo-realistic, particularly the dinosaur-like Krogan.


A great musical score compensates somewhat for the pedestrian art, however. Describing the tunes is actually kind of difficult, although everything sounds a bit ethereal and weird, almost like an update of old 70s sci-fi scores like the groovy one that Jerry Goldsmith did for Logan's Run. Close your eyes and you can readily imagine bizarre alien landscapes in the far-flung future. Unfortunately, you eventually have to re-open them again to actually play the game.