"Mass Effect & Fallout 3"

I finally completed Mass Effect the other day.  Mass Effect is an Action\Role Playing Game focussing on one Commander Shepard as he saves the day against an evil mind controlling machine\spaceship called Sovereign and its crony Saren.

While I agree with some of the reviews I read that there is a lot of dialogue, I liked the way that you can choose your response and score your character Paragon and Renegade points.  This allows you to shape the commander as you see fit, hence the role playing aspect.  I played Commander Shepard as a valiant, noble commander who couldn’t stand politicians, which ended me up with a nice set of Paragon points and a few Renegade points to stop me looking so boring.

My feelings about Mass Effect stands in stark contrast to Fallout 3, a Role Playing Game I picked up months ago and dropped in favour of Mass Effect.  I didn’t get on with Fallout 3, it seemed to take ages to do everything and I felt like I kept missing out on things thanks to my own ineptitude.  It seems as though the designers of Fallout 3, took the best parts of a quality game such as Eve Online, the internet and the spaceships, and discarded it in favour of the worst bits, the stilted, unrealistic dialogue and the fact it takes ages to do anything.  It’s a shame because the dystopia, premise and story behind Fallout 3 looks really good, I just didn’t feel particularly able to access it.

Mass Effect on the other hand does have a very good story and the game play design behind it made me feel like I was following it rather than accidentally uncovering it as I blundered about the distressed, post-apocalyptic terrain that was Capital Wasteland.  Mass Effect also has a very good back story, and a very well developed universe, which continues to be expanded in Mass Effect 2 that I should probably purchase at some point.

Next on my list of games to play is Civilization V and Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit, which my uni friends bought me for my birthday.