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Plenty of Xbox games focus on player-made-choices in the progression of the story, but it essentially boils down to an illusion that your decisions as the player are changing anything. BioShock, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and Fable all allowed us access to a seemingly influential list of choices that ended up being binary in their result. More often than not, the ultimate choice in the game dictates the “Good-Guy” or “Bad-Guy” ending regardless of everything leading up to it. While Mass Effect still offers that choice in the finale, literally every choice from start to finish will impact the world around you. People will live or die by your decisions, affecting not just the story, but the combat and many future conversation option as well.

While these critical life/death decisions affect you as a player directly, many optional dialogue trees will branch out to give you some insight to the encyclopedic world that BioWare has created. Aside from optionally accessible depth, you can score some details on side-quests, characters, races and the mysterious history behind the Protheans, an ancient race responsible for the terrible things happening in the galaxy, as well as your key to saving it. Mass Effect’s well realized universe is as fleshed out as any Star Wars or Star Trek, and literally hours of recorded, well done voice overs, convey it to you at your own pace, if you choose to dig in to it at all. If you’re bored with the idea of conversation with various characters throughout the game, avoiding this aspect of the game won’t hamper your experience, it can only enhance the gripping and riveting story.

These 3 choices will all have a very different, fleshed out response.

While dialogue plays a heavy part in Mass Effect, it’s not without its excitement. If you’re in the market for less chit-chat and more boom-stickin’, be prepared for a ton of bouncing around on breadth of battlefields. This year has seen a ludicrous amount of shooters, but the versatility and great feel to the incredibly complex combat in this title make it one to consider if you’re looking for something fresh. Mass Effect can be played like a balls-to-the-wall action-packed shooter if that’s how you dig it, mowing down aliens with a shotgun or automatic pulse rifle and what-not, but its depth stretches beyond being a stop-and-pop cover based shooter to being a fairly familiar RPG. Tech and Biotic (think of The Force) powers mix up things to create what is essentially magic spells in the future. This is Dungeons and Dragons in space if you let it be, or you can rock it like Gears of War or Rainbow Six: Vegas.  Weapon, power, and statistical upgrades dictate your efficiency on the battlefield, though. Optional squad commands and varying character traits further complicate, but also enhance the combat experience, but again, it’s up to you how you play.

Shut up and shoot!

Like it or not, though, fighting will always lead to more conversation. The intensely interesting dialogue helps the flow of the sci-fi story, which seems a little generic to begin with. Don’t, even for a second, doubt Mass Effect’s story. It rockets from zero to sixty within the initial hours of the game. It goes from plain to powerful consistently over a series of events and doesn’t ever slow down. Right up until the chilling finale you’ll be on the edge of your seat and rarin’ to go forward. This is, without a shadow of a doubt, the most interesting and well told story in a video game ever. The primary villain, Saren Arterius, begins as a standard destroy-the-world bad guy, but his motives are believable, almost to the point where you feel like you want to help him, and he escalates to become something you never thought he’d be. He and his army of Geth, ancient synthetic aliens, are absolutely frightening. Always. But the protagonist Commander Shepard, is what you make him/her. Whether you’re playing as a goody-two-shoes Paragon or a maniacal jerk of a Renegade, the potential for Shepard to fail, or go beyond the call of duty to succeed are there, depending on your choices. Hostages can be rescued or killed at your own accord, so take the right course of action as you see fit. Your choices, as mentioned earlier, are crucial to the specifics of the story.

 ”Excuse me, we’re looking to destroy the galaxy. Which way do we go?”

Mass Effect’s fleshed out universe is your playground. Everything you do affects the universe, whether you realize it or not. Even the sometimes tedious side-quests will hold interest for many players, and despite the game’s errors, you’ll still be enthralled with it all. Terrible vehicular control and some serious texture popping plague Mass Effect, but you’re never once thinking “I’m having a bad time”, since the characters and story will have your eyes pinned to your TV, hands glued to the controller, and ears tuned in to the bitchin’ original 80s-sci-fi soundtrack in a game that is exactly what you make it. Despite how you play it, you’ll have a seriously kick-ass time with the best game to come out all year.

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