IGN has a nice little wishlist of fixes and refinements that they’d like to see in the upcoming—late 2009—Mass Effect 2. I’ll be the first to say that I love Mass Effect, it is neck and neck with Fallout 3 for being my all-time favorite Xbox 360 game. At the time, Mass Effect had a unique style of gameplay by blending RPG equipment and team management with third-person shooter combat. The backstory is rich (however similar to Star Wars), Bioware created believable races and worlds, and Drew Karpyshyn was able breathe additional life into the story as the game’s lead writer and author of the two companion novels, Revelation and Ascension. Mass Effect is simply pretty all over.

That said, Mass Effect was not perfect and IGN hit the nail on the head with it’s list.

Bland Planets and Terrain

While the worlds that you hit along the main quest were quite beautiful, the side-quests and uncharted planets got pretty boring. I can remember spending gobs of time driving that slow-assed rover across one barren waste of a planet after another.

Clunkiness and Bugs

I never had a problem with this. Almost every game has clipping issues, and Mass Effect wasn’t any worse than the others. Although, I never got stuck either, so…

Repetition in Quest Design

This follows along with number one. The main quest was pretty good, but all of the side quests felt pretty much the same. There were like two or three different maps types throughout the side quests, the only difference being some blocked off doors and crate placement.

DLC? MIA.

‘Tis true, there’s only been one DLC quest pack, Bringing Down the Sky, and even that was kind of meh. Aside from bringing in the Batarians into the game, there was little else to make this DLC exciting. I’d recommend that you just pick up Mass Effect: Revelation if you want to find out what’s up with that particular species.

Graphical Issues and Hardware Strain

I have to agree here to some degree. The game was graphically beautiful, and that came at a—considerably small—price. Mass Effect is a processor hog. It will have your console screaming for mercy after a couple hours. As far as the texture redraw issue goes, I noticed it, but it didn’t bother me too much, the only place I really noticed it was in the equipment screen, and upon immediately hitting a new area.

I think the only thing that I could possibly add to this list would be if they could speed up the insanely long elevator rides, which were just an advanced load screen were you could spin the camera around your character model until you got dizzy.

It sounds like I’m bagging a lot on a game that I actually enjoyed quite a bit. The fact that I did enjoy it despite these minor annoyances says a lot about the overall quality of the game. I’ll admit, Mass Effect probably isn’t for everyone. There’s a fair amount of action, but there’s also a lot of running here and there, fiddling with equipment, and talking to NPCs. Which makes it perfect for someone like me who’s both a little OCD and a little ADD. Plus, as I’ve said before, the story is great. It’s probably the best science fiction that I’ve seen in years. Even though it’s set in the future on a giant space station, and there’s Omni-Gel for pretty much anything that ails you, the story isn’t outlandish. The characters and the environments are believable, and the fact that it’s an RPG allows you to really get into your character’s shoes. I think if Bioware can take heed of some of the consumer complaints that have been flying around about Mass Effect, then Mass Effect 2 will be a blockbuster hit.