Mass Effect (PC)

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Games and gamers were once categorized into compact little genres with specialized fans. You played computer role-playing games -- stat-based dungeon hacking affairs where there was no time for talk, just turn-based action and numbers, lots and lots of numbers. Adventure gamers had their text parsers, point-and-click object gathering and often lengthy, entertaining dialogue. Action junkies picked up a first-person shooter and filled people with holes until the bullets dried up. All these genres were easily defined and pigeonholed you among your peers if you only delved into one of those disciplines.

BioWare's Mass Effect puts genre purists on notice. It's got all three of those rigid ideals rolled up into one medium-sized monster mash with a pinch of an ancient Electronic Arts classic to spice things up.

Strong 1970's and 80's style science fiction is at the heart of the game. Humans found the remains of a space-faring civilization while colonizing Mars, thus thrusting the entire race into a much larger universe of aliens, politics and unrest. Mass Effect tells you a story, and the detailed history that backdrops the central plotline is extensive. The codex of the galaxy makes for good reading between missions, or once you've finished the game. Main character Commander Shepard is either Han Solo or Dirty Harry, depending how you define him (or her -- the game allows you to choose a gender). You can even straddle the line as a far-future "Snake" Plissken, and all these film character influences are evident in the portrayal of your leading man as well as the depiction of the world itself. Even the music has an "Escape from New York" vibe.

The game starts off slowly, with lots of dialogue and exposition leading into a lengthy tutorial. That's the game's Achilles heel from start to finish: pacing. Every time things seem to pick up, you're pulled back down by extensive dialogue trees or a frustrating fight you can't seem to win. Dialogue is well written, making it enjoyable to chat up various non-player characters, but sometimes you just know you need to listen to more talking heads and what you really want to do is get back to some kind of action. Side-missions often suffer from this same stop/start combination of dialogue, action and role-playing, too. It takes so long for the game to find its groove that you might easily give up before it gets on the rails.

Perseverance eventually gets you a ship and the freedom you crave. It's a worthy reward and here the game can be compared with an ancient gem, Electronic Arts' Starflight. In that 720k blast from the past, you flew from system to system, scouted planets, and roved around their surface looking for mining sites and artifacts, all while furthering a plotline and encountering new types of aliens. Mass Effect seems to pay homage to that old title with some great exploration and discovery on distant worlds of its own. Many of the planets can be explored in the Mako, a six-wheeled rover that's far easier to control with mouse and keyboard than it was with dual analog joysticks in the Xbox 360 version of the game. Unfortunately, the difficulty wasn't ramped up in the PC version to counter the new easier-to-handle controls, and much of the time you feel indestructible when inside Mako's metal shell, but it's still entertaining to blast the game's robotic bad guys while on wheels.