Shields! Shields!!!

Just like in Star Trek, if your shields go down, you'll be in trouble. Shields are a part of any suit of armor. At the outset of the game, you're likely only going to have a very small amount of shielding, but as you pick up better armor and better skills, you'll be able to make it through most firefights without your shields dropping at all, which means that your health won't be dropping at all, which means that you won't be dying. And that's good!

Enemies have shields that you'll need to bust through, too.

Anyway, the shields in Mass Effect work just like in Halo; they go down a bit when you get hit, then regenerate when you step out of combat for a few seconds. Your enemies don't necessarily have to be dead for the shields to regen, they just can't hit you for 10 seconds or so. If your enemies are particularly persistent, though, you can always rely on some of the defense-boosting skills, like Shield Boost, which regenerates your shielding even while you're taking damage, or Barrier, which will temporarily overcharge your shields to prevent much more damage than they normally would.

In the end, shielding winds up being much more important to you than health will be, so keep an eye out for ways to maximize it. In terms of armor, we always found shielding to be more important than either damage protection or tech/biotic protection. Large amounts of shielding will prevent you from taking damage, which will let you save your medi-gels for truly dire situations.

Kneel Before Zod; It's Good For You!

Keep in mind that kneeling (clicking on the left analog stick) does improve accuracy. It's a cheap way to make better use of your assault rifle and sniper rifles early on in the game, when your weapon skills are poor and the equipment you have not so hot. You'll move slowly when you kneel, obviously, but you'll be able to hit what you're aiming at, at least.

Difficulty Levels

Mass Effect has a good amount of challenge up until level 20 or so. After that, though, your equipment will start to make most fights a bit of a breeze. If you want a bit more challenge, bump the difficulty up to Veteran and switch Target Assist to Low. That'll force you to aim more carefully and allow your targets to take a bit more damage, thus making the fights a bit more exciting.

Mako Combat

Every once in a while, you'll be asked to head planetside in your Mako, a tough APC-like vehicle that will escort you and your crew to whatever destinations you choose. It may not be stylish, but it'll get you where you're going, and will let you take out almost anything in your path, to boot.

There's a few things you need to know about the Mako, however.

Firing The Weapons

Your Mako has two weapons: a machinegun (right trigger) and a cannon (right bumper). The machinegun is great for taking down enemy soldiers and troops; it'll tear through their shields and can be fired continuously for around 15 seconds without overheating. The cannon is the brute force here, though; it can scatter soldiers, but also deals a lot of damage to enemy tanks.

Unfortunately, firing weapons can be wonky if height elevations are involved. Although military strategy usually favors the combatant with the advantage of high terrain, the cannon and machineguns here are actually almost impossible to fire on enemies below the plane of the Mako. If you're at the top of a hill, you won't be able to fire downward; if you move onto the slope of the hill so that you're angled downward at your foes, though, you'll have an easier time hitting them.

The confusing thing here is that the crosshairs will move outside of the range that you can fire on. Even if you get your crosshairs over an enemy that's below you, your cannon fire will still often fly over their heads. Keep that in mind and adjust your elevation to compensate.

Shields And Damage

The Mako has a lot of shielding. A lot of shielding. Luckily for you, only the nasty thresher maws are capable of penetrating your shields and dealing damage directly to the Mako; everything else will have to drop your shields before it can hurt you. You take absolutely no damage from falling or being bounced around; only enemy fire can hurt your shields.

In most cases, the only kind of weapons that can really damage your shields (at least on the normal difficulty) are the rockets fired from enemy tanks, like Geth Armatures, Geth Collosi, and heavy turrets. Small arms fire and rockets fired from enemy soldiers will damage you, but only a very small amount. It's the larger fire that you need to dodge. We'll cover that in a second, though.

Keep in mind that Thresher Maws can fire through your shields. A single hit will almost destroy your Mako, so be careful around them!

Keep in mind that you have a lot of shielding, but it regenerates very, very slowly, to the point where you might be waiting around for a few minutes if you get real low on them. If your shields drop and you start to take damage, the only way to repair it is to get out of combat and spend 15 omni-gel to repair the Mako. The amount of hull damage that's repaired will depend on the highest Electronics skill of the characters in your group, but even with high Electronics, it'll still take a couple of pauses to get back into ship-shape form from a near-death. It's usually easier to return to your ship and re-drop to repair the damage, assuming you're on a mission where that's possible.

Dodging Fire

If you just let people shoot you, the Mako is going to be a hulking mass of molten metal in short order. The solution to avoiding fire is actually to make your vehicle a bigger target. If you attempt to head towards your targets straight-on, you'll be a narrow target, but will have a hard time dodging attacks. The better way to go is to turn your vehicle sideways, so that you're firing on your enemies from the side. When you do so, you'll be able to move your vehicle left and right (relative to your TV screen) by tilting the analog stick left and right (not up and down, like you might expect).

If you find it difficult to strafe, keep in mind that you can hold down your left trigger to zoom in on your foes. Without the distraction of checking the vehicle's orientation, it can sometimes be easier to make your way around by feel instead of by sight.

This maneuver will let you more easily dodge the slow-moving but powerful projectiles that will be coming your way. It won't work well unless you have the space to maneuver, but if you do, you'll find it handy.

Experience Penalty

One thing to note is that experience gained from combat in the Mako is cut to half or a third of its normal values. In most cases it's simply easier to stay in your Mako at all times, but if you're fighting a tough enemy, sometimes it can be handy to fight it down with the Mako, then pop out of your vehicle and finish it off with your normal weapons.