Sliding block puzzles. With hindsight, that should have been the first clue that something was up with Mass Effect. It certainly does a good job of pretending to be an RPG, with all the stats-based character development, combat and inventory management you'd expect, and it goes out of its way to convince you that it is actually, thank you very much, an RPG. It makes perfect business sense when you consider that the developers, BioWare, have a platinum-clad reputation as purveyors of the world's best RPGs. No marketing department worth their weight in BMWs is going to put out a BioWare title without stamping 'RPG' all over it.

Sliding block puzzles, though. They're cunningly designed as nuclear reactors, computer security systems and electronic gate openers, but if you're moving that over there, which puts this out of position until that bit is put there - it's a sliding block puzzle. And if sliding block puzzles scream one thing, it's adventure game. We spent a good few hours with Mass Effect wondering why it all felt so... wrong. The character development was rudimentary, the combat rough and unfinished, inventory management bafflingly unwieldy and it all felt slightly bent out of shape. It was only when we realised that the RPG elements were almost irrelevant to the story - the adventure - taking place, that everything clicked and we were spirited away on one of the most accomplished and professional slabs of storytelling we've yet encountered on any gaming platform.

Before we get to the good stuff, let's scrape those RPG barnacles off the prow of the good ship Mass Effect. Inventory management goes out of its way to stop you doing what you want to - which, in an RPG, is to kit out your character with an optimum arrangement of battle-pants, boomsticks and delightful hats. Mass Effect unhelpfully squirrels all your stuff away into individual compartments, and puts those compartments several clicks deep. It's tiresomely difficult to get a clear overview of what your party is carrying and whether or not that widget buried at the bottom of your backpack is better than the one currently dangling around your neck. Here's the thing to keep in mind, though: it doesn't matter.
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It's interesting to wonder how Mass Effect would have been received if its RPG aspects has been trimmed down, or even removed completely. BioWare have always known how to put together a good story, convey it in an interactive fashion, and support it with some seriously crunchy role-playing rules. If we had to boil Mass Effect's problems down to their most basic, it's that its rules don't mesh sufficiently with the story, producing an almost audible grinding of gears as the game flips from story to role-playing and back again. The miracle is that even though someone burst in and fired a shotgun full of RPG flaws point blank at Mass Effect, they didn't hit any major organs or arteries. As an exercise in interactive storytelling, Mass Effect is a resounding success and an experience that you'd be mad to miss.