If you’ve had previous experience with the KOTOR series, you will feel very much at home, but the lack of tutorials and guides within the game can cause some steep learning curves for those starting fresh. You may begin by selecting one of the game’s predetermined characters or you can customise this all yourself - don’t be worried if you find yourself spending upwards of an hour building your character, it’s all part of the experience. Sadly in the beginning, it’s like you’ve been thrown into the deep end, with very few (if any) tutorials provided to assist you with handling some of the more advanced concepts found in-game.

You are Commander Shepard, Captain of the SSV Normany, a Human Systems Alliance ship, tasked with tracking down your arch nemesis Saren and hopefully saving the universe. But this is an RPG and it’s not all about your final goal, its how you get there that matters most. Along the way you’ll enlist the help of others as well as keeping yourself busy with side quests which will give you both the experience and the equipment you’ll need to survive.

Throughout the Mass Effect universe, you will get the chance to explore uninhabited planets in distant systems, board rogue vessels and survey many different locations. These are generally connected to your side-quests, the outcome and handling of which will affect your general “vibe”, whether is be Renegade (ruthless/darker) or Paragon (typically heroic/lighter) and the direction in which you take your dialogue with NPC’s greatly affects these qualities. In the past, dialogue has been chosen based on exactly what you wish to say, within Mass Effect, you select the direction you’d like to take the conversation, generally Renegade, neutral or Paragon, with some responses falling in between. This is a fresh new take and adds to the “full motion picture” feel.

Combat in Mass Effect is half-way between KOTOR and Gears of War. It’s a traditional Third Person Shooter with the option to pause combat and supply orders to your team. You move, fire and cover all in real time – a step away from KOTOR’s turn based system of combat, but still retaining the ability to hold, select Techs (technology based attacks) or Biotics (similar to traditional “force” powers) and re-enter combat. Again - the lack of tutorials hinder early adoption of some of the more advanced features of combat, as with the controls of your planet-side transportation – MAKO, though in time you will no doubt become familiar with these complexities.

Although beautifully rendered and visually what we have come to expect of this-gen, Mass Effect suffers from drops in frame rate, texture pop-up and general slowdowns when entering new areas or loading new scenes, on top of sub-par shadow rendering against characters. Though thankfully, these negatives are far outweighed by the positives found in both the superior gameplay and breathtaking visuals found nearly everywhere you look and along with excellently recorded audio and voice acting, the graphical errors become almost a non-issue.

Through the fusion of immersive stories, in-game cinematics and action packed gameplay, developers like Bioware are forging new ideas and concepts never thought possible in gaming. Mass Effect is one such product of Bioware’s innovative vision for the future and it would be an injustice to overlook this amazing interactive experience. Even with it’s flaws, Mass Effect delivers in spades and this is the game to own in 2007.