First appearances are not everything. Speculation around the net told me that Mass Effect was one of the best games for the Xbox 360. Of course, this is all speculation and other people’s opinions. I began playing and wondered what the hype was all about. Creating my character was fun, choosing my class and all that jazz reminded me a lot of Oblivion. And if it even was half the fun as Oblivion was/is I’d be pleased.
I start the game and wonder to myself "Why is my screen all grainy?" Thinking there is something wrong with the game itself, I restart only for it to do the same thing. Just deal with it, I tell myself. So I continue and complete the first part of the mission. After playing about 2 hours of the game itself, i wondered what the hype was all about. It has a grainy screen, slow game play, and my characters have to level up? Maybe I missed something here, but I thought i was supposed to be playing a GOOD game.
As i said before, first appearances are not everything. It appeared to me that everyone on the interweb was wrong. It appeared to me that I would be taking this game back for something else. I finally figured out how to turn off the film grain effect which i so kindly slapped myself in the forehead, as that was dumb of me to not think of it before. However, i still had a major beef with the game. It wasn’t all that fun. The graphics take some time to load in some areas and I’ve come to ignore that and just get over it. After playing and completing a couple missions, I really just got bored with it. Which also could mean that Call of Duty 4 was slowly sucking my soul away.
Now I’m back to playing it again, and amazingly, I’m addicted. After such a slow start i got the ball rolling and started to figure things out. I have to come appreciate the dialogue system and the fighting system. The latter part, isn’t where it shines though. Nonetheless, it’s effective. The infamous romance plot was rather interesting and I think I’ll try and continue it further to see where it goes. Obviously Mass Effect isn’t a game where you dive right in and run straight into action. You need to have some type of tactic and plan to carry on through the game.
So, to anyone that is still on the fence about this game, I say to rent it. You NEED to put time into the game in order to fully understand it’s capabilities and the level of fun it can achieve.
–BD
BD's Bodacious Blog 
It does take a while to get rolling, kind of the same way KOTOR did, but it does get better. My problem is finding the time to play it!
KOTOR was so much better. Perhaps I\’ll give it another try, but it just doesn\’t do it for me and there are better games in this genre out there.
Mass Effect is a great game, its just no KOTOR.
I never took the chance with KOTOR. Please put down your pitchforks and torches…I wasnt really into anything except sports games and Halo 1&2 on the original Xbox.
lol
You have some awsome game reviews, I agree with you about Halo 3 online and I feel the same way about Mass Effect, I wish they would have put a little more time on the uncharted worlds, there cool and all, and the Mako is hella fun to drive around but I wanted a little more detail to them like some trees or grass, something like that to draw me in a little bit more. The main mission planets are cool though. All in all Mass Effect is a massive game with massive ideas (puns) and I wish they had more time to develop it before the brought it out. Hopefully they get down to the nitty gridy with ME2. Its kinda funny others say that about Knights, that was an awsome game, well worth checking out. Exscuse all the text, your like the first person in allmost a year that has comment my blog.
truly i agree Mass effect is one of the best games for the xbox360