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BrainBoxLtd on 19 November 2007
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I got to take issue with few things IGN said involving choices in the game in thier written review.

"The two sides of the coin are called paragon and renegade. Both will get the job done. The question, though, is at what cost? Are you willing to sacrifice lives to achieve your goals? Be careful how you answer that question. Mass Effect can be so brutal at times that it will leave you slack jawed -- stunned that a game can hit you at your very core. The decisions aren't always cut and dry. The line between doing the right thing and going too far gets blurry at times and smudged out of existence at others."

No, it's not. The conversation wheel is actually set-up to make it easy. Anytime you can choose Paragon or Renegade choices, Paragon appear at the top of the wheel, and Renegade at the bottom. Fairly certain they even tell you in the manual that’s how it works. A lot of the decisions are very cut and dry.

To be honest most of the decisions aren’t that tough. Usually comes down to negotiating or killing to a solution. Or being an ass to get what you want, or being a nice guy to get what you want. A lot of time you wind up in the same resolution anyways. They even mention this in the next paragraph.

Though you are faced with many tough decisions with the paragon and renegade system, few of your actions appear to affect anything in the long term. In KOTOR, you had one decision to gas a planet to make finishing a quest easier. Doing this, however, raised the price of medkits for the remainder of the game (since you just gassed the plants used for medicine throughout the galaxy). That same level of cause and effect seems fairly absent in Mass Effect.

Now there are couple of tough calls on the last planet before the climax. (Provided you do them in the order you hear about them.) One of which really has no right or wrong choice. And that really was a masterful stroke, but for such a cinematic game, it really doesn’t dwell on it that long, which is a shame since it was probably the only decision I wasn’t sure how to make and it would have been nice to spend a little time exploring it.

They mentioned the crummy combat A.I. and the look and play a like uncharted worlds. Big disconnect would be if you like Cinematic gaming or not. I’m not a fan of it so for me it was a good game with flaws, if you love cinematic gaming you’ll probably be so taken you won’t mind them as much.