First off, I have to give everyone who was waiting for me to review this game an apology! I realized that I said a review was on its way because I just finished it, but that was hardly the case. The game gives you the option to play through the game yet again with all your character stats and weapons and since I skipped out on a majority of the side quests, I thought it would be smart to get the full effect of the game rather than just its main missions and plot lines.

It is your mission. As Commander Shepard of the SS Normandy, you will take your elite recon squad across a galaxy in turmoil, in a desperate race to stop the return of an enemy without mercy. To stop this enemy, you must act without remorse, without hesitation, and outside the limits of the law. Your only imperative is to preserve the safety of civilized life in the galaxy – at any cost. You must become the tip of the spear of humanity, for you alone know the full extent of what is at stake if you should fail.

Fans of the Knights of the Old Republic games will recognize the play structure of the game right away with the Paragon and Renegade Morality system replacing the light side and the dark side of the Force. The game also borrows KOTOR’S dialog system and kicks it up a notch with extremely well detailed facial features and seamless delivery of the dialog and interactivity between characters. One thing that may put fans off from the Knights games is that the combat is all in real time. Think of all the different powers you had access to in KOTOR and put in the Gears of War cover and combat system and you have a pretty good picture of what the system is like. It does take a little bit of getting use to because you have to play the action scenes with RPG elements in mind. This means that you just can’t go rushing up to an enemy and expect to kick his ass because he has far more hits points and combat stats then you do.

Graphically the game seems to delivery pretty well, though the frame rate seems to have a definite slow down when a large chunk of enemies appears and when you enter larger areas. I’m not sure if this has to do with poor planning by Bioware or if my Xbox 360 DVD drive is to blame; it did seem to be spinning quite hard. The sound effects and soundtrack delivery very well in the game, giving you the complete feeling of space travel as well as action during combat scenes. The music never really seems out of place in any area which is good thing, as it helps pull you in to the overall experience.

The main storyline will have you travel the galaxy in order to hunt down your arch nemesis before he can get a hold of an ancient piece of technology that will bring all galactic civilizations down. The story stays interesting and allows you to interact with both your crew mates, enemies as well as other things. The main story can be completed in about 10 hours and as I mentioned before you can play the game through with the same stats a second time to complete the main story again, as well as doing side missions.

Side missions add about another 15-20 hours of game play depending on how quick you are able to piece things together. They range from doing simply deeds for people, boarding renegade ships, investigating distress beacons and stopping a nuclear bomb from completely destroying a planet. They keep things interesting and allow you to learn more about your character as well as your crew mates. They do add a lot to the game play and I recommend when you pick up the game you try all the side quests the first time around, it just makes the main plot that much more interesting.

At the end of a long two weeks, I was able to finish all most everything Mass Effect had for me content wise in about 28 hours total. Not bad at all, especially considering that cold winter days and nights have arrived for me here in Chicago. If you’re an RPG fan, you really owe it to yourself to check this game out and enjoy all it has to offer. I usually don’t go through a second play though on RPG’s, in fact I haven’t since Chrono Trigger; this one made me want to play through the second time.

All this makes Mass Effect a majorly recommended pickup, to buy or to rent.