I am a total whore for science fiction. I love to read sci fi, I love to play sci-fi games, see sci-fimovies, watch things on TV like Lexx and think about what might happen if any given scenario happened in real life (which is one of the reasons why I love the Fallout franchise so much). In any case, you can say that I was absolutely hyped when I first heard about Mass Effect.

I bought it about a week after it came out. Keep in mind that my 360 purchase had a lot to do with a plan to buy this particular game later on.

This is by no means a review, and I do not apologize to anyone who thought the game was flawed. Of course it was flawed. In my experience, it was the most enjoyable and engrossing action RPG game I've yet played for either the 360 or the original Xbox.

Things I loved about the game: The facial feature options in the character creation. The revolutionizing of the dialogue tree wheel (you get it, right?). The NPC character work. The mix up of third person shooting and turn based teammate manipulation. The vocal work that went into it. The graphics. Interstellar exploration. A plot that made me feel like my decisions, whether or not I chose the nasty, nice, or neutral dialogue option were critically important, even for the stupidest little microcosmic choice. A *really* well paced story, with an ending that sends the player home with a truly satisfying feeling. An explosion of awesome that resonated inside my imagination for days and days, knowing that there will probably be a sequel, but not feeling gypped at all.

Things which weren't so good: Mako. The 'Hacking' skill. Sniping. Obvious and frequent graphical errors. Many more, probably, but I didn't focus on the bad parts. How could you with such an exciting game? Best single player game on the 360 IMHO.

Anyway, This is a long and circuitous way of telling you that I found Mass Effect to be fun. Very fun. More fun than a barrel of monkeys, ten friends, a hotel room and a sheet of high power LSD.

Reason being, is that I read tons of science ficiton. Authors like Larry Niven, Richard Morgan, and Charles Stross are a few of my tops. The amount of speculative technology that these guys manage to work into their stories as ambient background information is always interesting and fun to read. Mass effect's integration of such information in the form of the Codex really 'did it' for me. I read every single entry, and even though its just pseudo science that had been borrowed from all over the genre, this stuff realy enhanced my gaming experience.

My favourite books I've read within the last year or so are as follows:
Charles Stross, Accellerando
Richard Morgan, Altered Carbon, Broken Angels, and soon I'll hopefully be able to read Market Forces and Woken Furies
Larry Niven: Ringworld I-IV, Currently Destiny's Road, Also Rainbow Mars, which has some wicked time travel stuff
Gibson, Idoru

What science fiction authors can you guys reccomend? Who else loved Mass effect?

T