Now Playing: Mass Effect Remastered

When Mass Effect released in 2007 it instantly became one of my favourite games. I must have played it a dozen times on the 360 before later playing it several more times on PC. The thing I liked the most about it was the world and the characters. I loved the universe BioWare had created and the cool aliens that became a part of your team. The overall story was also pretty good, and the way you could shape who your Commander Shepard was through dialogue was pretty fun.

Spin on to 2023 and I just played Mass Effect Remastered as part of the Mass Effect Legendary Edition. I’m pleased to say that the game still holds up well today – although that’s largely thanks to the aforementioned world and characters. From a gameplay point of view, Mass Effect is certainly a little dated.

 

This remastered version does attempt to streamline the combat into something more similar to the later games in the series and it works, for the most part. But Mass Effect 1 wasn’t really that great as a third person shooter in 2007 and this new edition certainly doesn’t change that. What it was good (and still is) at doing was giving you lots of cool abilities to play with – especially biotics – which to me, were always best and most fun to play with in ME1, perhaps because of how ridiculously powerful they are.

The AI is as stupid as it always was, sometimes taking cover, but other times randomly charging at you. Sometimes it just stands still. Sometimes it runs in circles on the spot. I’ll never get tired of hearing ‘Enemies everywhere!’ and ‘I will destroy you!’ though. That shit is seared into my brain forever.

I cleared all of the content in about 20 hours and it’s amazing how much of the dialogue I still know by heart. I’ll also always love Shepard’s vacant expressions which may be even more amusing in this remastered version than the original. The Mako still kind of sucks, but that’s mostly because of how they designed the terrain on many of the uncharted worlds to be as irritating and frustrating to navigate as possible.

If you’ve not played Mass Effect before then this Legendary Edition which includes all three games and all DLC is certainly the best way to go about it. I don’t think ME2 or 3 have had much in the way of an overhaul, but they probably didn’t need it. Just having all the DLC bundled together is the reason I picked it up because ME2 in particular was a real nightmare when it came to additional content.

I don’t think I’m ready to jump into Mass Effect 2 just yet though. I’ll probably take a break and come back to it. And then there’s Mass Effect 3, a game I’ve done my very best to forget and I’m really not sure if I actually want to play again.

Overall, Mass Effect Remastered is a decent upgrade of a classic game that’s worth picking up if you’re a new player or an old fan. Oh, and Tali is and forever will be my waifu.

8/10