Mass Effect was released by Bioware in 2006 for the 360/PC. 

While you can play as whoever you want, by default you play as John Shepard, a lieutenant who has been recognized as the council as a potential Spectre.  While on a mission with a Spectre that will also be judging his performance, the Specre is killed and John Shepard has a vision that Reapers, along with a rogue Spectre, are going to come back and annihilate all life except those who conform to slavery.  Overall the story isn't amazing, but it's good, and the dialogue is well written and voiced, which makes it stand out more.

Whether it's the main story, side quests, or random people who have more than a sentence to say, the player chooses all of Shepard's responses.  During a lot of points in the game you'll find out it really doesn't matter what you choose because the game sometimes has the same response or mostly the same response.  The only ones that really make a difference are those with paragon or renegade status tied to them.  You can be a jerk the entire game and answer specific make good decisions during very specific points and it'll be the same outcome if you were trying to be good the entire game.  Story is decent and dialogue is written well, and the concept of making decisions make it seem like all your answers have an impact on the game.

At the beginning of the game, Shepard can be one of six classes.  While there are classes that allow your character to use mind powers and other skills and abilities to defeat enemies, the game is pretty much a shooter above all else.  The assault class is the only class that can become proficient in all types of weapons, while every other class can use more skills and abilities and all but one is proficient with the pistol.  The abilities you can use might one shot enemies, overheat their weapons, remove their shields, put you in an undamageable frozen statis if you need time for your other skills to recharge, etc.  There are skills like decryption and electronics that are beneficial outside of combat.  These skills allow for you to unlock storage containers so you can get equipment.

Most classes being good with pistols is a good thing as that's the only weapon you'll be using for three fourths of the game because it's the only weapon worth a damn.  The assault rifles have horrible accuracy and you can be right next to the enemy and half of your shots will miss, the shotguns are a bit more powerful and have good accuracy than the other weapons but their fire rate is so slow it nullifies any bonus damage you do, while the sniper rifle is inaccurate plus it must weigh a couple hundred pounds as the shaking of the weapon is so bad that you'll probably have cleared the room out with a pistol before you can accurately target an enemy, plus slow fire rate and heat recovery.    

You'll gain experience as you progress through the game, open storage containers or purcharacter equipment, so there's an RPG aspect to the game.   You'll get one point per level to level up your skills and abilities to your liking.  With weapons, you'll have many different brands of weapons with different rankings, all of them having different damage, accuracy, and continuous shots until they overheat.  Each weapon can be customized with different types of ammo or attachments allowing you to take extra damage against certain enemies, take elemental damage from enemies, bullet penetration through shields, heat reduction, better stability, etc.  

Along with Shepard, there are six different allies you acquire, all of which are different variations of the jobs you Shepard can be.  So if ou want to be able to open storage countainers or do other stuff but have Shepard play differently, you have up to two AI characters tag along with you.  When I say tag along, I mean exactly that.  Your allies AI at the start of the game is some of the worst AI in any video game ever.  They'll never come close to killing an enemy, much less even removing their shield.  As Shepard you're pretty much a one man army and your allies do nothing more than get in your way.  You can also control your allies telling them where to move, or stay back, but if you tell them to stay back they don't get into cover, if you tell them where to move, one of them might get into cover the other might stay out in the open and sometimes neither one of them get into cover.  You can never tell whether they're going to help or whether they're going to sit there and do nothing.  Now I'm not sure if the AI gets smarter later in the game because you leveled up more or if it's just the weapons and equipment they had at that point, but it atleast seemed that they shot more and died less at the end than in the beginning.

Unlike your allies, enemy AI on the other hand is great.  They sit in cover, popping out every once and awhile, and if you're sitting back waiting for them to pop out, the AI is sometimes programmed to sprint all the way up to you and melee you.  Unlock the players melee which almost never wants to work and when it does work takes next to no damage, enemies melee attacks will one shot you all the way up to the end of the game.  If they don't one shot you at the end, then they'll do a quick follow up melee to get the job done.  Once they rush up on you if you don't quickly kill them you're done for as they seem to have infinite sprint because they're still on you even if you sprint away.  When enemies aren't sprinting at you, they have near perfect accuracy from the beginning of the game.  If you're not behind cover or your allies aren't being targetted, almost every shot the enemies fire is going to hit you.

As you travel across the galaxy there are some points in the game Shepard and his part will get in a ship called the Mako.  This is basically a lunar tank with hover.  The majority of the time you'll ride this around unexplored planets that mostly look the same as one another aside from the textures on the ground, while a few other times you'll drive through unique areas to progress through the game.  Using the vehicle is kind of fun at first, but it quickly becomes monotonous.  The best thing about the Mako, unlike most of your other weapons, is that what you aim at is going to get hit.  It doesn't have terrible accuracy where firing with it is useless throughout the entire game.

Mass Effect is very rough around the edges but future games in the series have the potential to be good.  This wasn't reflected in the score, but the consoles have very bad framerate issues that gets near unplayable at times during the end missions.  Play the PC version or wait for the rumored next gen version if you're interested.   

5/10

Scoring system.  I changed this again, only doing whole numbers.  4-5 are both playable.  A 4/10 obviously has more issues.

1-3 - Bad
4 - 5 Playable.  Not good, but has redeeming qualities.
6 - 10 - Good to excellent

mind powers *snort* *snicker*
It's called Biotics *snort*

So it should be obvious I didn't care enough to go look it up so labeled it whatever first came to mind.

Well, that's real promising. Really puts in a good word for the quality of reviews.

So this would be an 8 in normal reviews? :P

I didn't care about enough about the game to waste my time.  It's not like I'm not doing this on my free time or anything.

Doesnt sound like you played around with it that much . It certainly has some technical issues as it was early gen, but you are forgetting that it is an rpg when you complain about weapon accuracy. All the weapons are very effective if you level them up.

The first mass effect can be kind of rough, a lot of the rpg systems seem to hamper more than help, which is why they went away from them in the subsequent games. The story is great though, and it brought me back to playing through the game many times. I admit it is hard for me to play the first one after playing 2 and 3, but 5/10 seems way too rough for this game.

"I got bored and didn't finish the game, so I don't even know what it's about, so I can totally make a terrible review, but hey you can't say it's bad because I'm doing it for free. Here, 5/10."

Mass Effect was designed as an RPG first and a shooter second. Latter games were designed as true RPG/shooter hybrids which is why I personally prefer them. However, if you played the original Star Wars: KoToR, Mass Effect is really a natural evolution of that system.

Mechanically, the game has aged poorly so I can kind of understand your review, but if you go into the game expecting more of an old-school wRPG than a shooter, it's actually pretty good.

I get it, some people like games more than other. I loved ME1 and even more the sequels. Free review or whatever you call it, it doesn't sound like you made a real effort to get thru the game, even if you didn't enjoy it, making your review pretty...meh.