While Mass Effect is certainly a high-end game, a few annoying issues stop it from becoming a true classic.
So, on the surface, ME is revolutionary, innovative, new, fantastic, flashy and all the rest. The graphics are also something to comment on - they take it to a whole new level. However, despite this games unavoidable awesomeness, there are problems. One, for instance, is that textures take far too long to load sometimes, meaning that as you're looking at a character, their armour will get more and more detailed, going from a red spandex suit to a suit of heavy armour, which can be unfortunately quite jarring.
Another thing is that, during conversation, you have the option to pull up your conversation choices before the NPC has finished speaking. This can be useful, allowing you to select what you're going to say before they finish or even skip straight to your dialogue if you choose, but sometimes the game opens the interface a split second before you press the button to do so, resulting in you not being able to read the choices and sometimes causing you to select and option you don't like.
However, these small annoyances more than vanish in the light of the game's virtues. Despite GS' review saying that vehicle controls are bad, I found that that the MAKO's turret fired up if i wanted it to.
The story is well told and perfectly paced, just as KOTOR's was, and right up until just before the end of the main missions you can go AWOL and do some side quests.
Enemy AI was also good I thought. The normal Geth troopers tend to take some form of cover, while the juggernauts and destroyers - the tougher Geth - tend to do an all-out assault, which can be very effective, not least because of their masses of armour and health.
Characters' backstories are interesting, but if you don't want to listen to Kaiden talk about his bastard turian teacher you don't have to even approach him. The loot system is yet another good aspect - Shepard automatically takes weapons, amour and upgrades from fallen opponents, while you must hack into or open containers to get the goodies within!
All in all, ME is a fantastic game, which fortunately only has a few small minor problems, which I'm sure can be fixed with out creating new ones as long as EA leave Bioware to do their own thing and not turn ME into a space soccer game. £5 says Mass Effect 2 will have about fifty minigames and a tiny story after EA get their slimy mitts on it.