I suppose if you're just looking at then it wouldn't really stand out, but it still play pretty different from everything else. Lots of small things, and it's actually got a balanced sandbox (Halo 5) which every other FPS seems to fail miserably at accomplishing.

 

Well it still plays radicallydifferent from CoD, battlefield, titanfall and destiny. And it has far better single player gameplay than all of them.

 

Funny how you mention Star Wars, since Mass Effect was Bioware's 3P Star Wars game, as they pretty much just stripped out the Lucasarts IP from Knights of the Old Republic.

It's a bit hard to compare the two, since Halo is an FPS and Mass Effect is an RPG (hell in Mass Effect 1, it doesn't matter if you aim well, it's all decided by dice rolls like Dragon Age and KOTOR).

 

Mass Effect because that's all I've ever played. Tried Halo... hated it. And plus I do not have an Xbox.

 

Overall, Mass Effect for me.

Theres some thinking involved during fights. You have powers and enemies have weaknesses that don't involve shoot the foot and then shoot the head. Why use 1-3 mags when you can just use overload to disable their shields. You could just keep shooting bullets till they're all dead, but that just gets boring.

 

Any type of special ammo + biotic charge = no thinking   Also there are plenty of weapons that one hit kill the standard enemies.

 

Well not every class has biotic charge, I think only Vanguard has that ability. If you have an enemy thats constantly moving/warping around, stasis is an option or you could just keep shooting and hoping all enemies will ignore you. Plus knowing what type of ammo works best against an enemy helps since they all have different effects. I think incendiary ammo doesn't work or just does way less damage on synthetics. Disruptor ammo does more shield damage and then incendiary does more armor damage and keeps them from regenerating. I don't remember if you can use Pull to strip an enemy from an actual shield.

Standard enemies die easily because they're... well... standard. Rocket launchers, plasma swords, sniper rifles.... all one hit kill weapons against standard enemies. You can even use one bullet from a magnum to kill a Hunter (think that was only possible in Halo 1 though).