Mass Effect Review
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Mass Effect is the epitome of a double-edged sword. It's good enough to be worth playing, but you must be willing to accept the fact that while it gives with one hand it takes away with the other. Then it pats you on the head, scratches behind your ear, and pokes you in the eye. You just can't go any significant length of time without being annoyed by something, and it really sucks because there are parts of this game that are so good they'll make you cry. The story is immersive, the dialog, and the spirited reading of that dialog, is superlative, the main game areas are solid, and everything else ranges from filler to irritation. You want to play more and more, but the more you play the more annoying the annoyances become. Whatever the reasons technical, economic, philosophical, whatever BioWare has lost their first battle against next-gen game development. Put it up on the board: Xbox 360 1, BioWare 0. It is a tribute to how good they are at what they do that their worst winds up being better than most developers' best. Mass Effect ends up being very good, nearly great, and worthy of recommendation even if this is probably BioWare's weakest game to date.
