Mass Effect

Tired of us heralding BioWare’s space opus, Mass Effect, as the second coming? Well, get your moon pants on, because we’re nowhere near done yet — in fact, the machine is revving back up again with our hands-on playtest of two very different parts of the game: the combat and the on-ship dialogue.

First off, if you were always a bit wary of BioWare titles because of the pseudo–realtime nature of their role-playing battle engines, sit back and relax. Or actually, don’t, because Mass Effect sports realtime combat. Battles were fast and frenetic in some areas: swapping between a Force push–like attack and standard firearm gunplay, we shot up floating enemies and knocked around reanimated corpses. Our demo also gave us a long look at just how much you can customize your character. Slots to upgrade armor and weapons, the ability to hotkey attacks…the list goes on — all from a pretty user-friendly menu.

Chatting with different characters aboard your hub-like star cruiser presented different options as well. During a chat, you’re routinely presented with multiple choices onscreen, and you can shift conversations from friendly to hostile with a flick of the analog stick. Where you decide to take it is entirely up to you — as long as you’re willing to accept the consequences of your behavior.

The best news of all is that after being seemingly lost in the void of release-date space, the Mass Effect satellite has re-emerged, and Microsoft has confirmed the game’s November release. Pre-ordering in 3, 2, 1…