Seriously. Seriously. I love it so much I would have its babies. Christ, where do I start?

Shepard. Oh crap, Shepard. I realise it's mostly down to how I play her dialogue, but I can't remember the last time I saw someone so goddam badass. Killing anyone who even so much as passed Saren in the street, chargrilling the final survivors of extinct races, talking the main bad guy into shooting himself in the head. Dude. Shepard would kick Master Chief's butt to Virmire and back.

And the rest of the crew as well, they are all awesome. Garrus. Wrex. Oh Wrex, how I heart thee. How glad I am that I was able to talk you out of joining Saren so I could keep hearing your sweet cynical one-liners. Joker - oh my God, it's Seth Green! Eee! And Kaidan. Oh Kaidan, my cute lil studmuffin. I'll be yours forever, although you'll never know about that time with the asari consort.

The storyline is ace as well, even with an over-reliance on mind control and shady research. Virmire makes up for everything. The Sovereign reveal came out of nowhere, the salarians are epic and I got to leave my least favourite character to die! The ending (Renegade ending, at least) is one great big tremor of doom. Seriously, we're in charge now. There's no way we're not going to fuck this all up.

Even the things I don't love in this game I still kinda love. The Mako is annoying as hell to control, but its still pretty cool jumping from one mountain range to another. And when it crashed through the Conduit at the end (dude!) I was actually a bit sad. And the things I don't love in this game are gone from the next game, yes!

In short, Mass Effect rocks. It's got the perfect balance of challenge and fun, the attention to detail is fantastic (they hinted the Conduit right at the start!), the galaxy building shows so much depth (shame about the bland uncharted worlds but whatevs) and Shepard is the best character I've played in ages! I think I'm gonna have to bump the sequel some spots up my To Play list.