It’s been almost a decade since the last Mass Effect game, and we’re still waiting for BioWare’s upcoming reboot. (Hey, at least Owlcat’s The Expanse game looks good!) As fans still wait endlessly for any scraps of official Mass Effect news, one talented modder has crafted a gorgeous Halo mod that may scratch that itch.
Dubbed Halo Effect, download here, developer MythicJaqui has released the first demo for their impressive and ambitious mod on the Steam Workshop. A vertical slice of what the modder is cooking up, this first release brings the world of Mass Effect to life in the Halo: Reach engine.
In the demo, two missions of a possible six are included. In the vein of Combat Evolved, you awake from cryo sleep and fight through an invasion of husks and Geth before jumping into your ship and facing off against an armada in an epic space battle.
Right from the off, Halo Effect has that Mass Effect feel. While there are now a lot of Halo mods for a multitude of games, many of them don’t really bother to add too many new weapons or vehicles. After all, it’s a lot of work and, honestly, adding weapons with the Halo engine’s annoying tags system can be a pain.
However, modder MythicJacqui has gone above and beyond. There’s a tonne of Mass Effect weaponry here from the iconic Katana to the Omni-Blade. You can even use bionic powers in the form of Halo: Reach’s Spartan Abilities system. It looks and sounds Mass Effect, but with the powerful combat of Halo: Reach, and it plays great.
Of course, there’s always the issue of wanting more, and modder MythicJaqui has something extremely special on their hands. With some great feeling weapons, brilliant abilities and a knack for making everything fit in the Halo engine.
The second mission, Eden Prime, takes you back to the original Mass Effect’s opening location for an epic fight against the Geth. Similar to Combat Evolved’s second mission, Halo, you start on foot, fighting through enemy lines before catching up with your friendly marines and finding a vehicle. In Combat Evolved, it’s a Warthog, here it’s the Mako, and you’ll fight through hordes of Geth before coming face to face with an imposing Reaper and, obviously, retreating.
As someone who has played a lot of Halo mods, Halo Effect isn’t the most polished and the levels are really short, but it has so much heart and love that it’s impossible not to have a great time playing it. While fighting the Geth does feel like fighting reskinned Elites and some of the weapons feel like Halo weapons, the Mako feels extraordinarily close to its actual Mass Effect counterpart, for better and for worse.
Halo Effect is great, and it’s a true labour of love. If you own Halo: The Master Chief Collection on Steam—why wouldn’t you at this point—you should definitely give the mod a shot, and I’m incredibly excited to see what else is coming in future updates.
