Mass Effect Preview

Mass Effect is due to materialise on the Xbox 360 in just over a week and to celebrate VideoGamer.com is bringing you a series of reviewer's diary updates in the lead up to our huge review. So for those of you anxiously awaiting news of that dispatched pre-order, sit back and enjoy as we chart our progress through the game every sci-fi fan's been craving for months - there's a lot of universe to get through.

So, on to part two of our Mass Effect reviewer's diary. I've been hammering the game over the last two days, and what's coming through strongest is how huge the game is. It's absolutely immense. Once you're done with the Citadel, a planet-sized space station (I spent about five hours there) what seems like the whole universe opens up for you to explore. It's up to you to decide where to go next, what leads to chase and how best to track down the game's big bad dude, Saren. So far I've only visited a few planets, but each one feels like it could form the basis of a game in its own right. The snow world Noveria felt a lot like classic sci-fi action flick Aliens - mysterious installation, alien infestations and rogue agents. From what I've seen so far it looks like BioWare has packed that 360 disc like your girlfriend's suitcase - to bursting point.

I'm also starting to get to grips with the combat, which at first I found to be very difficult and complicated. When you first engage the enemy it feels like it's trying to be a Gears if War clone, and I played it as such - moving in and out of cover, ordering about your squad with the D-pad and trying to snipe as accurately as possible. But it's not. It's a complete illusion. This is an RPG in every sense of the term - all those dice are still being rolled, it's just well disguised. It took me a good few hours before I stopped thinking like Marcus Fenix and started thinking like Commander Shepard. It's taken a while, a few hours at least, but now I'm starting to enjoy it and intuitively use some of those special abilities we all purred over in the game's initial trailers - you remember seeing Shepard lift a bad guy into the sky? Yeah, I'm doing that now, and it's pretty sweet. So far one of my main motivations to level up is so I can spend my talent points and unlock more spectacular powers. I'll reserve final judgement for the review - and I do have some gripes with the combat - but right now it's great fun.

Mass Effect's conversation system has been hyped to death. Let's get things straight, from what I've seen so far it's certainly not revolutionary. In fact it's pretty much what we saw in KotOR except more intuitive and quicker. But it still works like most RPG conversation systems. It's clear what to choose to say if you what to drag your character towards the Dark side... sorry, the Renegade side, and it's obvious what will result in more points for the Light side... damn, did it again, for the Paragon side. While it's difficult at this stage to make a definitive judgement on whether what you say and what choices you make has a real effect on how the story and the game's characters develop, I've not seen my fellow squad members react badly to some of the horrific things I've done - and I've done some horrific things already.

I'm not sure I'm enjoying my class as much as I could be. I chose to play as an Infiltrator because I love sniping from a distance. But so far my sniping has been pretty much useless. In the early stages of the game the targeting reticule moves about so much I've often felt like a recovering alcoholic. I've been pouring points into my sniping ability, and bought some weapon upgrades that reduce recoil and boost accuracy in the hope that later in the game the sniper rifle becomes a much more useful tool of destruction, and, as a result, my class becomes a lot more fun to play. But right now, I take cover, fire my pistol at anything that moves and use the odd special ability to get the job done.

Mass Effect's resemblance with KotOR is striking. But it didn't click in my head until last night when I was playing the game at home and my girlfriend said it looked like that Star Wars game I had a while ago. And it's true. Mass Effect feels like KotOR in everything it does - from the moral decision making to the interplanetary travel, everything feels awfully familiar. I'm not saying it's a bad thing, and certainly from what I've seen so far it looks like BioWare has taken what it knows works in its RPGs and shaken the inefficiency out of them, but right now I'm hoping that there's going to be some megaton switch up I've yet to experience that will shake the genre by its very foundations.

That's it for now. Check back same time tomorrow for the last Mass Effect reviewer's diary, where I'll part with my final impressions of the game before our blockbuster review on Monday. Now, where was that Medi-gel pack?