“It’s a strange complaint to begin a review with, but why oh why do character creators never include an option for sideburns? Mass Effect has the most fully featured face creation tool we’ve seen since the Xbox 360′s last (western) RPG of note, Oblivion, but as usual you’re stuck with a limited range of base components. As a result, if you’re like me and like to spend hours trying to create a digital representation of yourself in any game which offers you the opportunity, you’ll still end up with something that could only charitably be claimed to look anything like you through half closed eyes full of Vaseline. It’s still better than the blandly handsome “John Shepard” that the game offers as the base starting character.

The character creation tool works as a neat microcosm of my experience of Mass Effect: it doesn’t live up to its promise, yet somehow it seems worth the effort anyway.”

Mass Effect is a strange title. It’s incredibly flawed – so flawed, in fact, that there are ton of issues that I didn’t have space in this (largely critical) review for – and yet I still want to keep playing it.

If I were to speculate on what the reason for the title’s problems are, I would imagine it would be a case of being a title that was bug tested far more than it was play tested. Any (half decent) play tester should have picked up on things like the inventory system being an absolute abomination, amongst others, and the game would be a lot better for it. I wouldn’t say this was a flawed gem, but it is a sort-of nice rock, or something?