In the near future, mankind discovers advanced alien technology buried in ruins on Mars. We swiftly begin to unravel the secrets of this find, and in a matter of years our technology is advanced to a level that would otherwise have taken centuries to reach.

We discover a so-called mass relay at the edge of the solar system, a gateway to a greater galactic community of diverse and intelligent species. In the year 2183, humans are newcomers on the galactic stage, and the events of Mass Effect begin. You are in for quite a ride.

Made by veteran Canadian developer BioWare, Mass Effect follows their hallmark recipe of a story-driven, single-player RPG. There will be lengthy dialogues, plenty of team members to pick up as you go along, and if you so desire, romantic involvement.

The Mass Effect universe is BioWare’s own intellectual property, their second such endeavor following Jade Empire, and it shows that a lot of effort has gone into creating a believable setting with plenty of detail and background fluff. The game itself was announced as the first of a planned trilogy, with its own series of novels to support and expand it.

Mass Effect puts you in the shoes of Commander Shepard, one of the most capable individuals humanity has to offer. At the onset of the game you can choose between a pre-made male or female commander and jump right in, or you can create your own Shepard in the rather deep character customization system, where you can control anything from iris color and facial scarring to cheek bone prominence and neck thickness.

You can also give your character an early history and a military background of your choice. Mayhap you were an orphan growing up in the slums of Earth, and early on in your career alone survived an encounter that claimed the lives of everyone around you.

No matter your appearance or background, the game starts out with you on board the SSV Normandy SR-1 frigate, en route to a planet called Eden Prime on a mission to investigate a beacon left behind by the same race that left the ruins on Mars.

Virtually every advanced piece of technology in existence comes from what these aliens, the Protheans, left behind. It is their mass relays that enable vessels to travel across the vast light years, and their giant Citadel space station that functions as a galactic hub. Without them, the galactic community could not exist.

Unfortunately, after having an empire spanning the width of the galaxy, the Protheans mysteriously vanished around 50,000 years ago, leaving only faint traces of their civilization behind. Today, every find that involves them is a high priority.

Eden Prime will also be the first time you’re confronted with the game’s main villain, Saren, an operative of the galactic council’s special tactics and reconnaissance branch, known as a Spectre. Spectres only answer to the council, and have a license to go anywhere and do almost anything.

So far there are no human Spectres in the galaxy, but if you play your cards right, that could be about to change. Humanity is certainly in need of a hero, as a plot where all life in the galaxy hangs in the balance is starting to unravel.

Gameplay-wise, Mass Effect has been called somewhat of a hybrid between a standard RPG and an FPS, due to the over-the-shoulder view and real-time combat system. Players with little or no shooter experience need not worry though.

Though the game might look like a shooter, familiar RPG mechanics rest under the hood, and in the thick of fighting the outcome will still depend more on your character’s equipment and weapon proficiencies than your skill at handling the controller.

There is also an adjustable auto-aiming system, and since all weapons come with unlimited ammunition you never have to worry about running out. Your guns will overheat and be unusable for a few seconds if you become too trigger happy though, so you also can’t let loose for too long.

You fight together with two of your team members (that you can re-select between missions or whenever you return to the Normandy) and you can issue simple commands to them such as moving to certain spots or attacking a specific enemy.

Even when left to their own devices though, their AI does a decent job of backing you up. This goes for the opposition as well, in the sense that enemies will frequently go for cover, support each other, and do what they can to flush you out too.

The combat controls work reasonably well, but if you’re used to PC gaming, you might well find yourself missing a hotbar. As it stands, all classes gain a number of special abilities as they progress, but you can only map a single one of them to a button.

To access the other abilities, you will have to bring up a wheel menu, effectively pausing the game, and scroll to the ability you want. This leads to a lot of pausing every time you want to use several abilities in quick succession, slightly breaking up the flow of the game. With a title that made it a point to feature real-time combat, this can be a bit irritating.

Visually, Mass Effect comes off sharp and well-designed. Especially the facial expressions and animations have received a lot of care, and in a few situations, the expression of a character actually comes off as more telling than even a well-written dialogue could have. It’s a bit of a shame this wasn’t utilized more, though.

The high-quality graphics also come at a cost on the XBOX 360, which is plagued by frequent texture pop-ups. Supposedly this has more to do with Microsoft’s decree that all 360 titles have to run without utilizing a hard drive than mistakes in development, but it’s still annoying to see a cutscene start out with texture-less, clay-like characters, and then start working its way through textures of increasing quality, only to reach “full” graphics when the scene is already halfway done.

Other loading times, such as transitions between areas, are often disguised as elevator rides. Granted, it’s a lot better to listen to newscasts and banter from your team members from within an elevator than it is to stare at a loading screen, but you will probably still find the elevator rides a bit too numerous and lengthy.

Audio-wise, Mass Effect sounds even better than it looks. The voice work is excellent for the most part, and many of the ambient tracks give you the feeling of an old sci-fi movie. The music also always rises to the occasion when an action-packed or majestic situation calls for it, pulling you into the game and making you feel that the fate of the galaxy is truly at stake.

Speaking of majestic, this brings us to what is undoubtedly Mass Effect’s strongest point (which shouldn’t come as much of a surprise, given its developer): the story. From when you first land on Eden Prime, Mass Effect will take you on a long, well-written ride across the galaxy, sprinkled with several companions with their own backgrounds and desires, and place a great many decisions in your own hands.

Like in previous BioWare games, you can choose to be kind and just, referred to as a paragon; or ruthless and brutal, referred to as a renegade. What is new is that the paragon and renegade meters aren’t mutually exclusive, so if you want to, you can swing a bit back and forth depending on the situation and progress down both paths, albeit more slowly. Since high progress toward either extreme unlocks special bonuses and increases your skill at persuasion though (charm if you’re a paragon, intimidation if you’re a renegade), too much swinging is not advised.

A full play-through of Mass Effect will take around 35 hours if you aim to do all of the side quests and explore all the uncharted worlds, whereas if you only progress down the main story as fast as you can, you could rip through it in as little as 10. This leads us to the main drawback with the story: the division between critical path story content, and side content.

As it stands, Mass Effect comes with a galaxy full of uncharted worlds to land on and explore, which is mainly done from within the Mako, a tank/rover terrain vehicle with great traction for navigating those mountainous worlds. However, the missions relating to uncharted worlds will, with few exceptions, follow the same pattern, and before soon most of the worlds you explore will start blending in with each other, as you do the exact same things whenever you land on one.

This is quite the contrast against the worlds concerning the main storyline, as they are each like an adventure in itself, well-designed and with large amounts of character interaction. It is a shame then, that the time spent doing side quests can easily amount to more than what you would spend on the parts that really shine. This is not to say that the uncharted worlds are all bad.

Indeed, some of them are very well designed: you will land on planets beset by meteor showers, orbiting beautiful binary stars, or where the temperature is 150 degrees below zero. It can really put you inside the game and make you feel like a planetary explorer – but in the long run they are just too similar.

In the end though, the story that Mass Effect delivers is a solid one with plenty of awe-inspiring moments. It may not be as complex as the Baldur’s Gate games, but certainly BioWare’s best effort since Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic – better in some ways, since this game also works as a great introduction to a new and well thought-out sci-fi universe of their own creation. When you reach the ending credits, you will have been rocked in your chair several times and will be, we believe, one happy gamer.