Similarly, if your only idea of console fun is charging round a race track faster than anyone else, Mass Effect will be the gaming equivalent of watching paint dry. And very thick, gloopy magnolia paint at that.

If, on the other hand, you're the sort of person who doesn't mind playing games which actually have a rich, detailed and epic storyline, reams of fully developed characters, and so much conversation that you'll probably end up chatting with computer-generated 'people' for hours by the time you finish the game, then Mass Effect is a dream come true. Especially if you also happen to be an unabashed sci-fi geek.

I'm proud(ish) to say I fall into the latter 'story-loving' camp, complete with added sci-fi geekery. Which is to say that if someone says to me 'There are FOUR lights!!', I actually feel tearful*.

Anyway, provided you meet most of the Mass Effect conditions specified above and have decided that it sounds right up your cosmic street, you probably want to know just why it's any different to other sci-fi games - especially those generally deeply ropey Star Trek efforts that have come and gone over the years.

First, there’s the quality and scope of its storyline. For although at heart the tale of a human captain forced by timing and bad/good luck into trying to save the galaxy is pure sci-fi hokum, it's delivered with such panache that the narrative pulls you along like a fish on a line.

Contributing immensely to the story's epicness is the phenomenal effort BioWare has put into providing 'background' on the various people, races, technologies and planets you encounter as your journey unfolds. For instance, you can get involved in remarkably deep conversations with countless other beings, learning about their culture and ways in extreme depth. You can also choose to be nice or nasty in these conversations, with your intimidation and charm ratings increasing depending on what conversational path you choose to take. Get these charm/intimidate levels up high enough, and you get access to conversation options otherwise unavailable. For the record, being nasty is way more fun…

Then there's the 'Codex' you carry around with you, which updates with detailed information on stuff like FTL ship drives or space crew jargon whenever you take the time to investigate particular objects in the game.

Such stunningly detailed 'backgrounding' soon creates the sense that the Mass Effect events you're witnessing really are just a tiny part of a much bigger mythology - a Star Wars-like effect which makes the world of the game much more convincing and immersive.

Progressing your character in Mass Effect is classic role-playing stuff; ie, you earn enough experience points through combat, exploration and conversations to go up an experience 'level', at which point you're granted development 'points' you can spend on improving any of your character's abilities.

These abilities are varied and interesting enough to really make the way you spend your development points genuinely important - a fact which added to my passion for grabbing every last experience point I could. The only warning I should add here is that the baddies in Mass Effect level up whenever you do. So getting to, say, Level 40 does not mean you'll have a stunning advantage over some Level 5 bad guy. You will, however, have access to a wider range of far more powerful 'biotic', 'tech' and standard weapon attacks that should - and do - make your life much easier.

Biotics and tech abilities are effectively this game's 'magic' attacks, with the idea being that you use the power of your mind or the power of technology to achieve such effects as throwing enemies through the air, putting them in Stasis fields, or overloading their weapons.

Probably the most controversial aspect of Mass Effect is its combat system. It’s come in for some major stick from just about every quarter, with the biggest complaint being that its 'real time' nature makes it feel clumsy and somehow 'out of control'. And actually, for the first few hours of play I would probably have to agree with such complaints, for until you get your characters up to at least Level 20, the combat options available to you seem hopelessly and frustratingly limited.

However, persevere until you're a high enough level to have reams of different combat options opened up and suddenly combat becomes a fluid, varied, and actually really rewarding affair that gives you a fantastically satisfying sense of how far your character has come.

So far, so very, very good. But Mass Effect does let itself down in a number of little ways.

First of all, for some reason (sheer laziness?!) many of the bases and mines that host Mass Effect's reams of side quests look totally identical, using the same graphics and even the same facility lay outs. Every time this happens you are suddenly reminded that you're merely playing a computer game, shattering the immersive atmosphere the game otherwise tries so hard to create. This situation also makes many of the side missions lack character and thus feel rather 'grindy'.

Another huge irritation with Mass Effect is its Auto Save system. The game has one, but it's completely inadequate, failing to kick in anywhere near as often as it should. The result is that you can lose as much as an hour of play at times if you haven't remembered to make a more recent manual save yourself.

Particularly galling is the way there's seldom an auto save after you've watched an unskippable cut scene, meaning that if you die shortly after that, you'll have to sit through the same cut scene again upon rebooting your progress. Duh and double-duh.

Problem three concerns the vehicle driving sections of the game. Whenever you land on an uncharted planet you have to explore it in a MAKO all-terrain vehicle. And controlling this vehicle is far more fiddly than it surely needs to be, especially when trying to use it to shoot enemies. You do get better at it over time, but it never feels intuitive.

There are also too many tedious occasions when you spend an eternity trying to find a driveable route up a steep range of mountains in order to get to a marked location on your map. Not fun.

Connected to the often rather tedious experience of exploring planets in the MAKO is the fact that the alien artefacts you can sometimes find hidden away on planets' surfaces just aren't very interesting. They're included - along with hidden deposits of valuable minerals - to try and persuade really dedicated players to explore every last inch of every planet surface. But there are seldom if ever any truly radical weapons or armours hidden away. Even worse, when you happen to find a historical artefact such as a Protean data disc or some of the Matriarch's Writings, you can't actually explore the content of those artefacts for more background information.

This seems a really peculiar oversight given the attention to detail so rife throughout the rest of the game, and it definitely reduces the compulsion to explore.

My last bone of contention with Mass Effect concerns the amount of graphical glitches it throws up. Covered in detail in the Graphics section of this review, these glitches can generate another barrier between you and the game world you're so eager to be embroiled in.

For all its numerous glitches, though, I've so far put 47 hours of mostly superbly enjoyable play time into Mass Effect, including a few spent on a second playthrough. And I’m happily contemplating putting in plenty of hours more before the game goes anywhere near Ebay.

Told you I was a sci-fi geek, didn't I?

*Fellow sci-fi geeks will know what I’m talking about here. For the rest of you, see Star Trek: The Next Generation Season 6, Episode Chain of Command Part 2!

The first area of controversy concerns the default graphics settings the game ships with. These include a 'Film Grain' option set to 'on', which applies a filter to the images to make them look slightly rougher and grittier, like you'd see with film stock. However, while I personally found that this did slightly boost the atmospheric quality of the game's visuals, I can imagine more than a few players just thinking it makes the games graphics look, well, pretty average. So I urge you to toggle the filter on an off from the Options menu to see which style you prefer.

At least the Film Grain option really is only there as an effect; it certainly isn't there to hide any weakness in the detail and general clarity of the graphics. This is every inch a high definition game, as can clearly be seen in everything from the awesome amount of detail often visible in characters' faces to the vast draw distances apparent in some of the game's environments.

The fact that some of the textures can take as much as a second or two to materialise over the basic graphics when a new scene loads, though, can be rather distracting. As can the way the picture regularly stutters and shears quite overtly when panning around - especially if you happen to be moving forward at the same time.

Other distracting oddities find faces regularly suffering with a weird dotting noise around hairlines and shaded facial features; an odd effect whereby faces sometimes seem to be divided by a horizontal line glitch; and some slightly unimpressive animation that leaves big, butch Commander Shepard sometimes looking more like John Inman.

Still, a game this ambitious deserves to have us finish on a high note graphically, so let's hear it for Mass Effect's frequently bold and stylish lighting choices; the superbly cinematic flare with which cut scenes are directed; the bold use of close-ups to help you engage emotionally with the characters; the clever use of soft focus backdrops during cut-scenes to create a cinematic sense of depth; and the way the whole world feels completely organic and unified.

The game's score is also outstanding, managing to underpin practically the entire game with subtle, atmospheric but never intrusive music which, remarkably, also avoids ever sounding repetitive no matter how many hours you play for.

Obviously the soundstage in this RPG isn't as dynamic as something frenetic like Call Of Duty 4, but action scenes still have a decently aggressive feeling to them, and the rear channels are certainly not neglected in the mix.

My only real audio complaint is that the synching of the audio with the actor's lips isn't always very convincing.

And nor are there any 'Massive Multiplayer' elements for you to get lost in, which is arguably inevitable in a game as tightly scripted as this one.

The only reasons to bother ever logging online with Mass Effect are 1) to show off your gamerscore for it (assuming it's actually good), and 2) to keep an eye out for the inevitable downloadable extra content that will be coming its way. This content could take the form of new weapons and armour, plus new missions. Rumour at the time of writing has it that the first download will be a whole new chapter filling in the gap between the end of the first game and the start of the planned sequel.

However, provided you've got the time and loving patience to do it full justice, plus a penchant for all things sci-fi, Mass Effect also happens to be one of the best-scripted, most ambitious, most epic and most cinematically satisfying games you'll ever play.