Games that make you turn them off in utter frustration shouldn't exist. A game shouldn't autosave directly before a mini-boss fight, allow you to play the game for a good 30 minutes after that fight and then NOT autosave before the actual boss fight. You shouldn't feel the need to save every two minutes to guard against failure in the next boss fight. In a galactic space station - the centre for all inter-species politics -elevators shouldn't take nearly a minute to go from one floor to another. I don't even care if the game is using this to hide loading.

Yet Mass Effect does all these things and more. It has bugs that will see you clip through a wall in your spaceship and fall into space. There are times where it drops more frames than an EA Sports game on the PS3. The economy is broken - you'll start the game with nothing and by the time you complete your first mission you'll have so many Milky Way bars or whatever passes for legal tender in the galaxy you'll never go hungry again - and yet, despite all these things I still love it.

Why do I love it? Well, while it might have a few things wrong with it, when it gets it right - it gets it right. It's a massive game with literally hours and hours of spoken dialog, dozens of planets to visit and an alien love scene. There's so much to do and you're compelled to do it all.

Combat is fantastic. It takes third person shooter elements and combines it beautifully with the role playing features the game is based around. You will start the game timing your sniper shots against the heavily swaying sight and by the time you finish you will be snap railing with the weapon. A combination of RPG and shooter elements hasn't worked this well since Deus Ex.

The story is great as well. In a few words, Mass Effect is a sci-fi epic where a human joins the galactic Special Forces - his mission is to take down a rogue agent. It's a bit of a "24 in space" premise so it doesn't seem like anything different or special, but the way it's told separates it from your typical sci-fi shooter fare. The voice acting is amazing, the cast really embody their characters, and the massive galaxy you can explore drives home the epic nature of the title. And despite having a cliché foundation, the plot is a solid piece of work that engages you and keeps you enthralled.

The real magic is in the dialog, and the dialog wheel. Instead of writing everything you're about to say, you choose an attitude (something like "I'll kill you" or "Maybe we can talk things out") and the game will change what it says according to your choice. Often it won't make a drastic change in the outcome of a conversation, but it still feels real, and you always know that at some point it's going to have a real effect on the way things pan out.

The visuals in this game are hit and miss. The places where they know you'll go are beautiful. The Citadel is fantastic and the core story planets are extremely detailed. The places you're not necessarily going though... I hope you like the same colour continuously, because that's what's coming. A snow planet is all white, a dirt planet is all brown, and a tropical paradise is green. It's not terrible, it just seems... lazy. Again, on the planets you can actually land on there's typically some sort of building you can enter but you'll quickly realise that these are all the same as well. Each mineshaft has the same layout, each space pirate HQ the same crates, doors, walls and stairs. It's hard to complain about it though, as the game is still massive and you have to appreciate the magnitude of what they've accomplished, however it can get a little repetitive.

Mass Effect is an epic game. You find yourself admiring what BioWare have attempted here and ignoring the few mistakes they make along the way. The game is over 25 hours long if you really get into it and the only thing that will stop you from playing this in one hit are a few bugs, the annoying autosave system and common sense. There's absolutely no reason why you shouldn't buy this game. It is by far the best value for money in any game this year.