I love Mass Effect! Shepherd is such an intergalactic superstar space pimp and his crew are a such a great bunch of characters - except Ashley, who can die of rabies for all I care.

One piece of advice: make absolutely sure you level up your Paragon and Persuasion stats! Your data dictates the story in the later games and you WILL want certain heads to make it through at all costs!

Mass Effect 2 is also absolutely brilliant. They've trimmed the whole system down massively, but the game does not suffer at all as a result. It's all so much more tightly designed and the magnitude of what's going down will blow you away. Get hold of the DLC missions for this game when you play though, I cannot stress how much you will be missing out on if you don't!

The Shadow Broker DLC is crazy good. Also the start of ME2 could be my fav start to any game...

I've been ignoring those stats.... Looks like I'll need to dick about in the Citadel for a bit longer to make sure I get those upgrades before going out into the big bad universe

Just about ready to blast off on the Normandy. Preparing for mind blowage... Smoke me a kipper.

Your mind will be blown. The scale of what's about to go down is awe-inspiring. I love all of the in-game lore too. The way they get around the mass problem with faster-than-light travel, in fact all of the technological stuff is so brilliantly written. I spent hours reading through everything.

BLOWN!

And I've not strayed off mission yet. That first foray into the galactic map when you zoom out and then zoom out again and then it hits you just how massive this game is going to be.

What's more impressive is the quality of the different levels (if I can call them that). This has that Metroid Prime exploration vibe going for it. The scripting, level design and variety are exceptional.

The interweaving of the main story missions and the optional assignments is also commendable. The assignments are nice and short bite sized bits of gaming that suit my available play time perfectly, so I can tick a few more of them off the ever growing list each time I play.

I've gone off mission now. Chasing monkeys around a toxic planet. It doesn't get freakier than this. The scope of the thing is mind boggling. My only gripe so far is the autosave feature doesn't really save frequently enough (yes I'm getting pwned). It should do a small incremental save everytime you upgrade your squad or switch equipment and at the end of every conversation. It's a bit of a bore to have to manually save every 10 minutes or so as you're not sure if you're going to get killed around the next corner and you don't want to sit through the same dialogue again (ok so you can skip through the dialogue sections, but you still have to go through the motions).

This is one of the things they sorted in the sequel. The system isn't quite there in Mass Effect 1, the inventory is very cumbersome for example. But in the sequel they massively trim out all the fat, leaving a very concise and streamline interface. Can't remember the exact mechanic of the autosave in the sequel, but it's pretty frequent.

I've not had too much of a beef with the inventory system as of yet, but as the number of items grows it's becoming a bit unwieldy. There doesn't appear to be any grouping of similar items, which is a bit strange.

I would say that the equipping of upgrades took a bit of getting used to; again this suffers from long lists of possible parts.

I love the fact that your whole party levels regardless of whether they're in your squad or not. I had feared that I would have to rotate out squad members to spread leveling. Oh and Wrex is a total baddass

I need to experiment more with shotguns and the potential for knockdowns or muck about with throwing skills some more. I'm playing as an infiltrator, so I can't train on shotties or assault rifles. I do have an absolutely wicked pistol though.

The vehicle control is a little bit odd and I've yet to see if gravity has a significant impact on the handling of the MAKO. This will take some getting used to.

I wasn't able to save all of the colonists on Feros, due to excessive stun grenade wastage, which meant I had to cap off about a third of them. Oh well. At least I got a chance to see how the game narrative changed due to my killing spree.

Combat wise the game could have benefited from a couple of minor tweaks. The cover mechanism on the whole works well, but I do sometimes find myself getting stuck to a wall or being blocked by a member of my own squad. I also find myself craving for some sort of evasive roll, to defend against melee attacks.

Wrex is such a PIMP! He's my favourite character out of all of them, make sure you listen to his stories, they're proper hench! XD

The system is far more focussed and concise in the sequels. In part 2 the whole inventory system was thrown out, and in part 3 you get an evasive roll and close range finishing strikes! Everything they've done to this game has been a step in the right direction, every change is a change for the better.

That's awesome. I really enjoyed the demo for 2, which is why I picked up the special edition of 1 with all the DLC. I'll do the same for 2 when I'm finished and that should bring me up in time for 3.

Really good to hear that they've actually improved the game as the series has progressed. It's just a shame that ME3 will be the last in the trilogy, but I have faith that BioWare will keep churning out quality titles. I mean just look at their back catalogue they've had an incredible run of great games!

Getting rid of BIGTRAX was the best move they made...I hated that bouncing buggy.

That was the worst part of the game for me too. It was nothing but tedium after a few planets and I used to dread having to drive it. The planet scanning in the sequel was tuned a bit after a while too, they eventually cut down the amount you had to do in order to gain enough minerals to do everything you needed to do.

Back on this for a sesh last night. Liberated the moon from a rouge virtual intelligence. I've not gone back on mission since completing Feros. I'm going to get stuck into a new mission soon as I feel I need to punt the narrative forward a little to keep it fresh.

I love the way you can influence the game. I had a mission where some bureaucrat had been kidnapped by some L2 biotics. I decided to put Kaidan, my biotic, in the squad after talking to him and finding out just how messed up he was from the implants and stuff they do to get the whole biotics thing going. Anyway long story short - not killing the kidnappers seemed like the just thing to do, so I tried a bit of negotiation and Kaidan pitched in at the right moment to sway the conversation by aligning our motives with theirs. No doubt something else would have happened if Kaidan had not been there.

What I'm not loving is the inventory system. Maximum of 150 items and endless scrolling. Converting items to biogel has to be done 1 item at a time and every time it punts you back to the top of the list when all the rubbish items are at the bottom. Very frustrating.

I hear you on the inventory system, it simply doesn't work. It's also very difficult to gauge what you should be keeping VS junk which for selling/melting down. They cut this entire system out of the sequel, and you don't miss it at all.

The way you're going about the missions is definitely the way to go. Also talk to your crew between missions, there's loads to learn about them and you get Paragon points out of it in the process. Make sure you get Paragon your persuasion stats up - or you will be inconsolable!

I've maxed out my persuasion abilities and I'm building Paragon whenever I get the chance. IT seems though that the crew only have something to say after missions, not assignments, which is why I want to push on with a new mission. If the next mission is anything like the last then I'm expecting something pretty large and epic in scale.

The assignments are addictive though as they're so short and compact that you can't help but get sucked in to ticking them off.

Incidentally when I started I set the combat difficulty to veteran and would now like to turn it down a little, but I can't seem to make the option stick between saves. Any idea what I'm doing wrong? I've got aim assist off and I've set all squad powers to manual, which makes the combat more strategic, but also less action focused as the game is paused a lot of the time whilst I manage my squads powers.

I've not seen that before, have you tried setting the difficulty on the main menu too?

No not tried that. Will have another look at it and see if I can get it to stick. I'm dying a lot at the moment, so would like to knock the combat down a little. It also means I'm falling back most of the time to get range and an opportunity with the sniper rifle, which is my specialism anyway, but means that the fights are less interesting as my strategy is just to funnel enemies through a corridor and snipe them from cover, using squad members to provide additional support from the flanks.

A brief observation on scripting.

This game handles it brilliantly. I'm generally OK with scripting, but I have had issues in the past when I've felt like I'm being channelled down a particular path in a game. Yes Half Life 2 I'm looking at you! Mass Effect has scripted events, but because you're totally immersed in the game world these don't feel forced or too contrived. The game is forever giving you options and whether it's an illusion or not these choices feel totally real. There are so many different ways to approach a situation or encounter that the scripting just feels natural. The game feels like it revolves around you and your choices not the other way around.

I'm finding the combat much easier now. Not sure if that's because I've leveled my characters up to a point where they're less vulnerable or because I'm approaching encounters in a more strategic way. Either way I had a good continuous run at it last night without getting killed and it felt epic.

PC version of Mass Effect 1, meant to be the definitive, £9.99 on Steam I'll pick that up and see if my craptop can handle it, otherwise I will stack this on what is going on my new RIG, eta Feb some time.

Forgive the Inventory system - just roll it it.

They completely ditch the system in Mass Effect 2. This is one of the few game series where you will actually end up agreeing completely with the changes.

Frankly you can get over the inventory system, by either converting to biogel or selling the bulk of it between missions. Items are so plentiful that there's little point in getting hung up on whether to save that pack of level V cryo rounds or not.

Oh and Saur the character that you particularly hated.... well let's just say they're no longer part of team Shepherd in my game

Good.

I hope she squealed like a pig, drowning in her own pissy vomit when she died.

- and make damn sure you show not even the slightest hint of remorse in dialogue. My Shepard goes Equilibrium Christian Bale whenever her name is mentioned.

Only to Kaiden. I couldn't go full military on him as he was well cut up about it. In reality I think I did him a favour

Borderline perfomance on my craptop so this will have to wait until "the rig" is welded together at the shipyards. Interface seems slick with mouse and keyboard, the decision wheel is a bit odd though, you appear to have to move the mouse up and down to rotate it, which is very "porty", I didn't really investigate anything beyond that.

Oddness. The UI on the 360 is totally designed around the circle selection thing, which works well with an analogue stick.

I wonder if it's been a mistake by Sony and Microsoft to not release new hardware for a longer period of time. There appears to be renewed interest in PC as a means of getting the latest and greatest eye candy (based on Jib and Saur at least).

The consoles are all using such ancient hardware now it's silly. Have you seen apparent specs of the next Xbox? It's based on an outdated AMD video card you can pick up for a score.

The consoles are not consoles anymore, they are very low-end PCs being forced to emulate modern PC functions and features. The biggest eye-opener for me was directly comparing the PC version of SF4 to the console versions. It's FAR easier and quicker to get online and begin a game on the PC version, there's no pissing around with slow and cumbersome system menus and it actually feels as immediate and accessible as an arcade game.

Given the choice of playing a game on the PS3/360 or my PC, I'd go with my PC every single time. The only game I'm playing on the consoles is Ultimate MAHVEL (Baby), but that's only because there's no PC version.

Mass Effect was a strange one. Mass Effect 1 on the PC is much better than the console versions, but Mass Effect 2 is a direct port of the 360 version and is pretty much identical. Absolutely nothing was modified to make better use of the PC input devices, and bizarrely you cannot use a PS3/360 controller either.

Well my PC thing is that since the current HD consoles have such crushingly derivative and predicatable titles, at least on PC there are more genres to play with and to take advantage of that most effectively you need to be on the bleeding edge. I can't really comment on online, other than the occasional dabble in Team Fortress 2, which has a dreadful getting into the game sequence, but once you are there its brilliant and the kind of experience impossible to recreate on a control pad or console. I also want to try Witcher 2 which got massive props from a buddy and since I seem to be going through an "RPGs aren't fundamentally terrible" phase, I fancy a pop. And Anno 2070 at a reasonable framerate would make that more approachable same with Cities XL 2012, AND the games are cheaper! AND digitally delivered!

Punched this proper over the weekend, circle selector thing works as I'd expect now. Really like the universe. Getting the drift of the combat, the abundance of stuff floating around, I'm not even having to think about inventory except when selling it, and I just sell what I am not using, the weapon perks are a little take it or leave it, I dunno I can't tell if its an RPG or a bad 3rd person game at times. I am enjoying it, but its clumky, I think its just the universe a totally fine sci fi setting that has been well executed that I am liking the most, ol'Shepherd is square jawing his way through most things ok, I haven't really got the gist of the talking trees and going down a particular route on that. Going Assult and Sniper for skills generally.

the skill trees are fine actually. Although based on Saur's posts I think these were dropped from the sequel. Basically you spend points level abilities and unlock new parts of the tree. That's is. Every possibility is well described in text before you commit, or just go for auto. I powered up the conversation abilities early doors as these give you access to a greater range of responses, which is cool.

How are you playing the combat. Have you got everything to manual, or are you using auto for your party members. I think the default is that they will use defensive 'spells' automatically. I've been playing on full manual, which is less action oriented and more strategic, which is out of character for me. I need to get back in, last time I played I fell asleep whilst in the citadel and then woke up in the middle of a conversation. No idea what initiated it...

The skill trees are still present in the sequel, it's the inventory system they dropped completely and the game is much better for it. In Mass Effect, you could create some seriously broken weapons with the ammo and bolt-on extras. They've ditched all of that stuff and made ammo a character specific ability, so different party members can give a squad a certain type of ammo via biotics.

I love the world and characters of Mass Effect, I recently played through both games on the PC and it was absolutely amazing. I cannot stress strongly enough how much you NEED to play the Mass Effect 2 DLC! The magnitude of what goes down is mind-boggling, the DLC missions are in no way little "side quest" extras, they're EPIC!

Coolio I'm about 1/2 way through 1 I think. The ammo buffs are a bit of a pain in the arse to manage as the system makes you want to tinker with the ammo and upgrades based on the type of enemy you're up against. You can usually take a good guess before you drop into a planet, but you never know exactly what's coming your way.

This game seems to have sidestepped the "its really a 16bit rpg underneath" issue I had with Fallout 3, I think its the pure scale that hoodwinks you into seeing the seams. The Citidel although has edges and some wonky lifts feels of a large enough scale that its big. Not as big as the equivilent in Xenoblade though, sheesh that thing is too big, still, enough of that.