Top 10 PC Games of the Year 2008

Three – Mass Effect PC

Publisher: Electronic Arts
UK Price: £20.99 (inc. VAT)
US Price: $21.99 (ex. Tax)
Full Review Here

Released very early this year, initial response to Mass Effect was only lukewarm as players realised that the game was still very much designed as a console game first and a PC game second. The inventory system was a tad clunky and large for a mouse-driven interface and managing multiple squad members was a pain.

But, you know what? It didn’t matter a single bit because what Mass Effect PC lacked in regards to interface design they more than compensated for in terms of story, character design and sheer epic scale.

To say that Mass Effect is a story like no other would be a little unfair as the game does tread very similar lines to some previous BioWare games, but the story at least has never been this well told. It’s the future and you, Commander Shepherd, have been elected as the first human SPECTRE – a series of covert agents that work for the interstellar government. Your first mission? To track down a dangerous alien and former SPECTRE called Saren.


Thus begins a thirty-hour space opera which sees you recruiting a squad of strange aliens to help you on your mission and dealing with everything from the personal problems of the reptilian warlord Wrex to trying to justify mass genocide to your direct superiors and to yourself.

It’s this ability to put players in ethical grey zones that’s always made BioWare games so very worth playing, whether they cast you as the human son of the God of Murder, the amnesiac Sith-lord who almost wiped out the galaxy or simply just a distinguished solider who gets caught up in the politics of a complex universe.

Admittedly these ethical situations can be a little ham-handed sometimes, but when it works, there’s nothing quite as nail biting as making an ethical choice in a BioWare game. That goes double for Mass Effect, where a wrong decision can come between you and the one thing that we all really, really want; sex with a hot, blue-skinned alien.


What makes Mass Effect PC stand out is the sheer quality of the writing, which gives each character an appreciable sense of realism. Saving the galaxy is all very well and good, but it’s the connection you make with your crew that really drives Mass Effect PC forward and earns it a place on this list.

Still, it isn’t all just about the quests and the artistry either. BioWare has been trying a number of different things with combat over its last few games, experimenting with the blends of turn-based and real-time action ever since Baldur’s Gate. The company has introduced us to some truly difficult and unwieldy systems in the last few years – Knights of the Old Republic, anyone? – but it seems that BioWare has finally found the right recipe. By giving player full real-time control of their players and a tactics overlay that pops up at a button press, Mass Effect can be as action-driven or tactical as you want.

Really, we think that’s the core of what makes Mass Effect so interesting and hugely replayable too – you can get what you want out of it. You can be an explorer and chart any of the hundred planets in the galaxy, or you can be a vicious manipulator who threatens and intimidates his crew. Most people will tend to go for the goody-two-shoes lockpick expert the first time round obviously, but the option is always there to do something that might make you really uncomfortable with yourself.