Having just finished Mass Effect, BioWare's epic new action-RPG for the Xbox 360, I felt I really had to get on my site and rave about it. This is one spectacular RPG, easily one of the greatest RPGs ever and definitely tied with Oblivion for best RPG on the 360. If you own a 360 and have even a passing interest in RPGs, you should get this title without delay.

For those who don't know, Mass Effect is a galaxy-sprawling action-RPG from the creators of the legendary Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic series for the original Xbox. In it you will find a rather sizable universe, replete with entire worlds to explore and aliens to meet. You'll have a mountain of content in the form of side-quests, exploration and resource location (such as finding mineable metals on planets or identifying gas giants with harvestable fuels). And you'll see gorgeous graphics rendering intricate and beautiful alien worlds.

The bottom line is this game is great. However, it's not perfect, and does have some problems. Read on for all the great things this game has to offer as well as some of the nitpicky problems it does have.

One of the biggest problems I have with Nintendo is how formulaic most of their first party games can be. Take a look at the Zelda series, it's a fine series with many memorable and excellent titles. However, most Zelda games can be reduced to the same basic formula: Green clad boy works to save the Kingdom of Hyrule and the Princess Zelda from some evil (usually some variation of Ganandorf). Over the course of the game, Link will hit all of the following: a Lava area (usually accompanied by the Goron), a Water area (usually accompanied by the Zora), a Forest area, an area where he will need to use "heavy boots" to avoid being blown or knocked away, and every dungeon will have keys that unlock doors in them. He will also obtain the following weapons and items: One boomerang, one bow, one bomb bag, and tons of crystals. In the end, most Zelda games can become boring simply because once you've played one, you've played them all.

The Mario games also can become formulaic. Sometimes this is a good thing (like "New Super Mario Brothers" for the DS, which perfected the formula so well you can easily look past the lack of new concepts in it), other times it can be a bad thing. However, generally speaking, I'm someone who loves to see new things tried in tired series (like Windwaker in the Zelda series, or Metroid Prime in the Metroid series). Which is part of the reason I love Super Mario Galaxy for the Wii so much.