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I have been playing Mass Effect for the past week or so when I have find time. I was looking forward to this title for a long time, as were a lot of people, and now that it is here I can say that it was (mostly) worth the wait. You can find a myriad of forum posts, blog entries, and whatnot on the visual glitches, stutters, and just flat out bugs this game has but there is more the game than its flaws.

The other day I was in one of the notoriously slow elevators and one of my squad members struck up a conversation, which was cool because it seemed very natural and most of the time these sound bites are well done. But midway through the sentence she just dropped right through the floor of the elevator and out of existence. I laughed out loud. For several minutes I giggled to myself and wondered if I had lost a squad member forever, or if she would reappear when I got to some invisible location that would restore the squad. She did come back, and despite jarring bugs like these I still think the game is pretty damn good.

Textures stream in slower than 6 month old honey pours out of a jar, the frame rate pops and stutters more than an arthritic speech therapy patient, but on the other hand the game strikes the sweet spot between action, adventure, and RPG pretty well for me. The dialog is pretty well done, there are a good number of options as to how your character progresses, and the story is good enough. I suck at the combat parts, and they definitely have a pretty arbitrary outcome that seems heavily swayed by the luck of the draw and how stupid your squad decides to be at any given moment, but I still plan to finish it.

So how can this be? Why does a game with so many flaws still occupy my time? I’m not sure. Maybe I just like the space theme. Maybe I just like the latest decent game for the Xbox360 that isn’t a shooter or a driving game. Whatever the reason is, I just like this game.