Mass Effect is one of the best games out on the 360, simple as that. The story is epic and fresh, the voice acting and facial animations are stunning, and the combat leaves me feeling fulfilled, and all of that will be even further inproved with the sequel which I will be waiting in line for come opening day. As for the original, I think it is a masterpiece in gaming. Much like Bioshock, I think that it has played its part in elevating video games to something more than just throw away entertainment (or childish as some people peg video games as). The story and even the digital acting rival many sci-fi movies. It also provides a rich lore for people to delve into. This game inculdes something that I would like to see in more games: the Codex. I tediously explore everything and talk to everyone to squeeze every last drop of info out of the game. The narrated protions of the codex are great. They provide a rich and colorful background history for all of the races you encounter, from Krogans to the Elcor (who are awesome, by the way). I also love the description of how all of the technology operates! Its so detailed that even though its all far fetched sci-fi tech talk, I almost believe its real. Just the whole concept of the Mass Effect Relays and what a mass effect is is extremely cool, and as far as I know its unique to this story line. Element Zero cores and their effect of objects (with negative charges running through element zero reducing the mass of an object, and a positive charge increasing it) was really interesting and unique. And how mass accelerator technology was used to make weapons is a neat idea, like an advanced and much smaller version of the rail gun being developed for the Navy. Another facet of this game that I truly love is the planet descriptions. I go to every planet and read the little blurb about it. Some are pretty mundane (but I still find it interesting), but some are so cool and thought provoking that I wish I could investigate further. One instance sticks out in my mind of a gas planet that had been surveyed by a ship, and the crew noticed regular geometric patterns just under the surface of the gas clouds, but as they approached, the shapes sunk and dissappeared. No other survey teams had success in seeing these objects. Another gas planet gave out strange readings and signals, and a survey team tried to check it out but were drawn into the gravity well and crushed, leaving the reason for the signals unanswered. So many planets had interesting descriptions that I sometimes find myself sitting there wondering what it could be. Instances like the alleged "Jupiter Brain" which was supposed to be a planet sized super computer, or strange lights on the dark sides of a tidally locked terrestrial world. There is a wealth of interesting and thought provoking material in this game that some people might ignore. Its not crucial to the game or the plot and you could easily play and enjoy this game without it. But the fact that so much info was added should you want to learn about the story behind the story makes this game that much better. I find that becuase of all of these added bits of knowledge I found myself much more involved not just in the main story line, but in the universe as a whole. Everything in this game is stellar in my opinion despite a few hiccups in flow (namely slow elevators) but those hiccups are minor and do not detract from this stellar experience. I doubt many, in any, people will read this long winded rant on Mass Effect. But if you did brave the over worded rant I present to you, I thank you and hope that you are as big a fan of Mass Effect as I am.

I downloaded Broken Steel DLC recently, which is awesome. I love Fallout 3, and the new additions are amazing. But then a few very buggy moments almost made me swear at my Fallout 3 disc. I was finishing the final mission of the main quest, just before the Broken Steel missions kick in, where you kill Colonel Autumn. But then Sarah Lyons just kept running around saying that we needed to secure the room before doing anything else. A good idea, except the room was completely empty. I reloaded the save, went back a little further and played through that segment again, to no avail. The finish line was in sight, but I couldn't cross it. I wanted to jump into the new missions, but this was stalling me. In my rage, I almost said mean things that I could never take back about FAllout. But before I totally lost my cool, I deleted then re-downloaded the DLC, and it ran smoothly. Close call. THis concludes my rant.