At first glance, the Mass Effect is a typical Sci-Fi RPG blockbuster: the storyline is superbly written, the dialogue is well delivered, there are plenty of planet-exploring side quest shenanigans to take part in, and the graphics are just about the best I have seen from the Unreal 3 engine thus far, complete with astonishingly high resolution textures and effects made possible only by the sheer grunt of today's PC's.

What Mass Effect does differently is that it takes all this KoTOR-esque RPG goodness and combines it seamlessly with a equally awesome (if under used) combat system that employs a ‘cover & shoot’ mechanic similar to that found in dedicated shooters like Rainbow Six Vegas and Gears of War. That your effectiveness in combat is still effected by not only your own skill with a mouse, but your equipped weapon, upgrades, ammo and your experience level with said weapon makes the combat system almost as deep as the role-playing aspect, which is very deep indeed.

Like any ambitious game, Mass Effect isn't perfect: there are the occasional weapon overheating and loss of mouse control bugs, the odd side quest doesn't trigger properly and there are few quirks in the friendly and enemy AI, but Bioware is already working on a patch that is likely to fix most, if not all of these relatively minor shortcomings. Gameplay wise the game was a bit on the short side (around 20 hours) dialogue can drag on at times and I felt that the brilliant combat system wasn't used as often as it could have been, but hey – this is an RPG, right?

In short, if you like Bioware's past efforts, or just well-written Sci-Fi storytelling, then this game is well worth the purchase.

There's a lot to like about Mass Effect. The fun combat, the gripping plot, the awesome cinematics…the list goes on. This really is Bioware doing what they do best, a game which isn't just a whole heap of fun but is deep too.

The combat uses a cover based system, similar to Gears of War, so when you walk up to a wall your character pushes him/herself against the wall and leans round the corner to fire. This work really well and along with your team's abilities stops the combat getting tedious. You can pause at any time to give orders to your team mates which you'll want to do, as your AI friends have a tendency to not notice rockets headed straight for them.

The plot is fantastic. I won't give any spoilers about the plot itself, but I will praise the way in which it is told. Bioware have really outdone themselves with a smooth conversation system which lets you choose dialogue choices before the previous character has finished speaking, which creates a flow which feels natural without rushing you into decisions.

This is one of those games which you could niggle at it until it falls apart, but I'm not going to. The only major faults are the bad inventory interface (which throws hundreds of items at you and then expects you sort out the resulting mess) and the blandness of the uncharted worlds not related to the main plot, but again these are niggles. Buy this game now.

Note: Complaints of long elevator rides can be explained by the games readme. These extended rides are loading screens, which are made obsolete by the PCs faster loading times, which couldn't be shortened because of the conversations which often occur during them.

Mass Effect is one of the best space rpg of all time, the game play is solid, enviroments look great and the dialogue and story are superb. The game's main story is not very long and it can be completed in about 4 to 6 hours depending if you get suck on certan parts of the story, but the game also has a ton of side quest that help the story along.

These side quests can be given to you in ways that you dont relise that your getting them, for example the elevator rides have news messages that act as information for new missions. the biggest down side is the fact that the uncharted world exploration is not use as mutch as it could for missons and since there is so many worlds that you could explore it just seems very point less.

The games combat mechanic plays out diffrently to other bioware games, in Mass Effect its more of a realtime third person shooter with a slight touch of stratagy throne in to the mix, this system can be frustrating at times cause you are to fused on what you are doing to look after your team mates some times during epic battles, this really brings the game down, but otherwise its normaly realy good fun. This is a game worth getting just for the story alone, but apart from a few down side which will hopefuly fixed in the next game.

Inconclusion if you liked kotor ( knights of the old republic ) or any of bioware's other games you will definately enjoy this game alot for its price.