An Old-School Adventure Masquerading as a Role-Playing Game

If Halo 3 was Microsoft's star performance, BioWare's Mass Effect is this holiday season's encore. Mass Effect is probably the most anticipated role-playing game of the year by anyone who dug the company's Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and/or Jade Empire. In any case, I expect the Xbox 360 to take the silver in hardware sales (though by a relatively narrow margin over Sony) and the gold by a handsome margin in holiday software sales. Mass Effect--Platform: Xbox 360; Developer: BioWare; Publisher: Microsoft; ESRB Rating: Mature; PCW Score: 60. --Matt Peckham