Mass Effect

Mass Effect
A scientifically proven divination. This is what the future is going to be like.
Developer(s)	A combined effort by Jane Austen and Chuck Norris
Publisher(s)	Harbinger's little sister
Release date	And God said, Let there be Mass Effect on the First Day
Genre	Dickensian novel
Platform(s)	Played entirely in your imagination.
Rating	The shittiest clusterfuck you've ever played.

Mass Effect is a video game trilogy in which the goal is to score and have sexytimes with hot aliens, shoot up drug dealers, and be a general, all round dickwad to whoever you want to be. There are three games spanning the series: "Mass Effect: The Reapers Are Coming", "Mass Effect 2: The Reapers Are Still Coming" and "Mass Effect 3: Told Ya, Dumb-ass". The plot revolves heavily around putting up with bitching from the crew members, choosing the correct dialogue options, and getting them not to hate you enough that you can call them upstairs for a quickie, right before some really dangerous missions about important future space politics and similar matters, which should hardly concern you. There is also a race of space/robot zombies called the Reapers that want to make everyone in the galaxy one of them, and you are sort of forced to deal with them in some unimportant side missions. The protagonist is called Shepard, and he/she (for Shepard is both and neither at the same time) could kick your ass halfway to Palaven. With his/her laser eyes alone.

Mass Effect Plot

A game, alas created before the time that Bioware realised that games aren't all about unimportant matters such as guns and depth of background and lore.

Humble beginnings

Shepard lands on a planet, shoots up some baloons, hits some douche on the back of the head so he'll shut up already, and eventually meets Saren. Saren is not very streetwise and he supports Free love with the Reapers. Little does he know that one day he will be overcome with the robo-zombies' AIDS, and will wish to spread the love. He shoots his BFF in the head, and flies away, with a few of his flashlight henchmen behind him. Shepard is a little sad that they did not manage to place a bullet in the back of his head, or a nice kick to his genitals, but doesn't really care about the matter for now.

Saren is not only afflicted by herpes, Reaper HIV, and meningitis, but is also known to suffer from severe bouts of constipation.

Apparently this was a bigger deal than Shepard thought, so s/he is instructed to go to the alien council on the massive floating space Citadel, so that they can whine about Saren secretly being their Fuckbuddy who would never betray them.

Shepard is not very happy to hear of Saren's intimate dealings with the council, and decides to go and try to prove that he's cheating on them. In the process s/he hires a sniper detective called Garrus Vakarian, who is apparently pissed at Executor Pallin because he was fired for being too much of a badass. S/he also hires some cannon fodder under the name of Urdnot Wrex. These two immediately replace tutorial losers Kaidan and Ashley as your best bros. Together they go and blow up a strip club for no apparent reason. Fortunately no fleeing hoes get in the way of your unstoppable crossfires.

After going to the strip club, you discover that this space babe Tali is in danger. You go and rescue her, and find evidence that Saren was cheating on the council. This is in the form of a sex tape that she happens to own, of Saren and Matriarch Benezia (doggy style, with a few of the henchmen now known to be Geth, also participating).

The council are furious that Saren would cheat on them in such a way, and subsequently denounce him as their Fuckbuddy. They are very pleased with all the good work Shepard's done, so they assign him/her the honoured rank of Council Fuckbuddy (something s/he hasdreamed of all his/her life).

What follows are some very meaningful missions on Concrete planet and Science planet, that mostly involve eliminating the flashlight robots and killing cockroaches with giant guns.

There was a lot of hard work, and hundreds of hours of level design placed in the making of Concrete Planet.

You are also required to recruit the alien doctor Liara T'soni. Things take a turn for the worse, however when she boards your ship, as she instantly desires a piece of Shepard's sweet ass. She says that she finds you "fascinating", which is actually quite a nice thing to do. She was only stating the obvious by saying it.

Virmire

You are forced to come to a difficult choice on the next mission. Saren is building a hippie type brothel on Virmire, due to his beliefs on free love. Shepard, as the destroyer of all, has to blow it up with a gigantic nuke. This brothel caters specifically to the Krogan, so that Saren can raise up an army of bastard children to fight for him. Because the Krogan are so goddamn ugly, they do not get much action, even among one another, and only one in a thousand couplings end with a pair not being repulsed enough by each other to say the safety word.The Salarians and Turians also, at one time, incinerated every whorehouse on the Krogan homeworld, so there were not even unintentional pregnancies among prostitutes.

Wrex, as someone who wants to get laid desperately wants his species to continue, does not approve of Shepard blowing up such a facility. By default, Shepard has to gun him down, or get Ashley to do it, but if one has enough Goody-Two-Shoes or Badass points, Shepard can decide to give Wrex a free gift card to Chora's Den strip club, and it will satisfy his urges.

Another mildly important thing is that you will get into some deep shit involving your squad. One of the humans must live, while the other must die. Whoever you decide to kill, Shepard will moan about their death for the rest of the series. You have three options:

Kill Ashley: Never get called Skipper again. She won't stand around on the bottom deck any more, judgementally watching you flirt with Garrus. You can now do the Kaidan romance plot if you're a female. If he lives through to ME3, you yourself can kill him, and it makes the victory much sweeter.

"Skipper. Skipper. Skipper Skipper. Skipper Skipper Skipper. Skipperskipperskipperskipperskipperskipperskipperskipperskipper"

Kill Kaidan: SHUT UP ABOUT YOUR DAMN IMPLANT ALREADY. RAHNA NEVER LOVED YOU. NEVER. I'M SURE YOUR ACTUAL RELATIONSHIP WITH HER WAS A DELUSIONAL FANTASY BROUGHT ON BY BEING SO INCREDIBLY LAME.

Order Garrus to save them both: Garrus isn't afraid of a nuke, the nuke is afraid of Garrus, and it damn well has good reason to be. It is also a fact that Garrus is literally capable of being in two places at once, bending time, teleporting at leisure and surviving the vacuum of space. The problem with selecting this option, however, is that you will now have to put up with both of them aboard your ship. As badass as Garrus is, there is no way he would be able to stop the endless torrents of nagging that would come from them.

You meet Saren at the end of the mission, and he explains that he desires to merge with the Reapers. It is obvious that the Reapers have been messing with him, and he is testing positive to their techno HIV, so no one believes him. There's a face off, but since Garrus is busy trying to save Ashley and Kaidan, he isn't there to kill Saren for you.

The Grand Finale

After a series of events revolving around the council actually accusing you of cheating on them, your ship is grounded at the Citadel. While docked there, you can go and bust a sweet move at the local nightclub, listen to awkward elevator talk, or demand stimulants from Garrus' doctor girlfriend.

It's time to go and save the galaxy.

Eventually your clan chief Anderson comes to you and tells you to get your mind out of the gutter, which is slightly ironic, as you meet up with him in the hippest nightclub in town. One can only presume that Anderson had been drinking there for a few hours before you came in, as he has some pretty shit ideas. First of all, he actually wants you to save the galaxy, YOU? Where is that concept coming from? You were a janitor aboard the Normandy a few weeks ago, now look where you've come. Commander of your own Pimpmobile, and a Council Fuckbuddy into the mix? You have a lot of responsibility.

Anderson is certainly drunk though, because he is willing to go and beat up the human councilor, if Shepard deems it the right course of action. There is probably a choice in there somewhere, something concerning Anderson's safety that the Goody Goody Paragons can make... But of course, Shepard votes beating up Udina to be the correct path. Anderson gives you a very obvious You ain't coming back here it's the end of the game, "Do you want to leave now?" confirmation. Shepard politely declines. After all, Wrex has to use that gift card Shepard got him.

When you leave, you head to Illos, and you have to endure the final romance scene. Shepard finally gets some booty, which is a nice change from just talking calmly to your love interest. It can be assumed, that for most of the game, Shepard just watches porn on his/her computer in his/her cabin, because there is a serious lack to the amount of action you get.

Eventually you land on Illos, Saren's über secret base. It's here where he's developing the smallpox virus, or some more potent HIV or something. There are hundreds of dead Protheans all around, and it gets creepy. In the Mako, however, the squadmates are likely to shit themselves from the movement anyway, so being so scared that you soil your pants is OK. Eventually Saren springs a trap on you (he has a lot of those lying around, the kinky bastard), so you go off to a side chamber to go and have tea and scones with the Prothean robot intelligence Vigil. Vigil answers your questions with vague plot devices, but at least he makes a damn fine crumpet. Vigil magics Saren's trap away with his space mojo and you can head on your merry way. Vigil's told you that there is actually a teleportation relay that leads to the Citadel in the back yard, and if you don't go through it, the goddamnmotherfucking Reapers will attack.

Shepard complies, mowing down Geth gleefully on the way. The squad get to the Citadel, but realise that the Reaper invasion can only be shut down by the big, pointy, huge, straight, Praesidium tower. So everyone slugs up there, and they enter their final conflict with Saren.

Ending

Garrus was too busy to deal with this menace in your place. Like the Reaper itself, he was in the middle of some penetrations.

After doing an pitiful attempt at assassins creed style anti gravity roof run through, the final boss lies in wait for you . You could tell him to STFU and hurt his feelings so much that he kills himself, but you promised Garrus and Tali a bullet through his head, and well, it wouldn't be the same without the last sniping headshot through the bastard's face. That and you spent too much time getting 'renegade points' with Wrex over at the strip club to do the Paragon persuasion option.

You think everything is fine, and okay, and you are just about to call up the Meadow delivery hotline so you can go skipping through gleeful daisies with all your new buddies, but at that moment, Saren's Reaper HIV develops into full on AIDS! And then he goes apeshit; trying to kill you from lasers and projectiles shot from his mouth, and multiple other orifices. This boss fight is difficult, even on easy mode (and I never, ever play on easy mode AT ALL, so I wouldn't know), but by spamming the number keys in no particular order, random red triangles shoot from the sky, and those sometimes do some minor damage, if any at all.

Eventually, after watching the cutscenes a million ass times before dying in the fight, you might manage to kill Saren. Then you can destroy the giant alien that is currently using the building you stand in as a dildo, and all is once again peaceful.

Or is it?

A spare piece of something from the Reaper's insides flicked off during its violent masturbation, and flew into the window, crushing everyone inside, and killing off Commander Shepard.

Big, Disney eyes ensue for a couple seconds, but it turns out our party loving hero is safe. Many tears were shed in the brief seconds when we thought them dead.

And then everyone goes back for a great big house party on the Normandy, Wrex handing out free beer, Garrus insisting that he's never even heard the term L.A. Noire, yet alone acted in a foolish human video game from last century based on it, Tali chatting to Kal'Reegar for the first time on Hotornot.com. Liara might take the distraction of the party to sneak into Shepard's cabin, smell their clothes, take their treasured possessions, everything else a healthy stalker would do. Shepard will likely get drunk and end up in bed with whoever the opposite of their romance choice was, (abruptly saying, "I should go") and Kaidan, well...

Who gives a fuck about Kaidan?

Combat gameplay

No headshots for you, playa! The red triangles got it all covered.

As mentioned earlier, the combat largely involves the player summoning space triangles from almighty God, or whichever other divine being Shepard is roleplayed to believe in. Little is known about these triangles, except that some aspects about them can be changed, by either praying, or opening the squad menu Very little is known about these red triangles, but top scientists suspect that they may be similar to razor sharp ninja stars, previously charged with some Mass Effect.

But explaining biotics? That's easy. Click here for the full scientific report on why biotics happen.

Alternatively to throwing your red triangles, you could try shooting the gun which has mistakenly been placed in your hand. It never runs out of bullets, but complains more than Ashley says skipper if you shoot it too often.

Turning the difficulty of the game to "easy" is considered one of the best skill sets for your character, if not THE most intelligent tactical move you can make. Gamers all across the world will respect you for your wise, if not courageous, new choice. On easy, the squadmates will all but do all the killing for you, so guilty Paragons will have no unwashable blood on their hands.

Another very successful tactic is to mash buttons at complete random, followed by more praying.

"Romance"

A sweet piece of alien ass that is, most unfortunately, unavailable until the second game

Yes, I know why you came here. I know why you bought this game for $2 off the Winter Steam sale. It wasn't for the story, it wasn't even because your friends have told you to buy it for years.

What you really came for, was some of that sweet alien ass. Here in Mass Effect, you know you're going to get it.

The most effective use of your sniper rifle scope is to look at the butts of your squadmates.

You even get to chose which blue end you put your blue pointy thing into. A luxury that eludes most humans in day to day life. The options are limited in comparison to the later games, but remember, always: that you're stuck on a spaceship for months with them. They only have one cabin, one sleeping bunk.

And you know where they live.

You have a few options...

Romance Liara: Liara is a charming Asari, who only follows your every move because she wants your love. Like a loyal puppy, one who is more than willing to do it doggy style. She is young and spritely, at the tender age of 106. That's right, 106. But thankfully, due to Pedobear's dating equation, the age difference isn't a problem. Many male players choose Liara as their love interest throughout the series, preferring her over Tali, Jack, Skipper-woman and even Miranda. Many female Shepards choose to go with Liara as well, because informing Kaidan that you're a lesbian and forcing yourself to have lesbian sex with an alien is far preferable to a horror-struck night with Alenko.

Liara brings a whole new meaning to 'Embrace Eternity' on the night before Illos.

The Pope was very annoyed and personally offended by the sex scene with Liara, and subsequently had to play the entire game and watch all the romance cutscenes to make sure that it was safe for little children to watch.

Romance Ashley: Skipper! Oh skipper... Oh! Oh! Skipper! God in heaven, Skipper. Skipper, keep going Skipper! Don't stop, don't ever stop... skipping. Wikipedia defines a Skipper as "a licensed mariner in ultimate command of the vessel." No prizes for guessing what vessel they're referring to here.

A sneak attack from behind.

Romance Kaidan: There was a reason the apocalypse didn't happen in 2012. God was saving it for the night that Kaidan and Shepard decided to fuck without each other's consent. In Mass Effect 3, Kaidan mentions that he would like a "Nice steak sandwich," but developers have confirmed that Kaidan could not possibly know what the foodstuff "Steak" is,(being too lame to understand it) and therefore heard rumour of it in some man-banter between Garrus and Javik. With his new found knowledge, he tried to impress Shepard with expressing desire for the meat. You do get an achievement, however, for screwing the twat. The badge depicts a man shooting himself in front of the computer, with the title "Achievement: A sad day in video game history".

Romance Garrus: Garrus was a romance option in Mass Effect 1, he just rocked your world so hard that you don't remember a thing.

And there's evidence for that!

Here, unseen before by the eyes of the fans, or the developers, is a screenshot during one of Mass Effect 1's Garrus romance scenes:

When you get to this scene, random noises of gunfire in the background start to play.

Do you think that Kaidan would just cross his arms and casually watch as this went on? In front of ten or so other people? I think not.