It was quite a long time before I played Mass Effect after its initial release – I refused to buy the games on PS3 until the trilogy was released, and I didn’t want to buy it on my 360 because of the infamous RROD, which I was getting intermittently at the time. I kept my head down through the ending controversy (although I found the vanilla cupcake prank absolutely hilarious) and when I finally DID play it, I actually didn’t see what all the fuss was about.

This time, though…well. There’s a lot to unpack here, but maybe it’d be better to just throw away the suitcase…

I’m Commander Shepard, and this is my favourite game in the Mass Effect series.

Mass Effect came out at a very weird time. I was unhappily stuck with an Xbox 360, because the PS3 was outrageously priced. It seemed like almost all the games I wanted were being released on that console, and I was struggling to justify having a 360 at all outside of using it as a DVD player. But I had one anyway, because I could afford it and I was going to be damned if I was going to be stuck with my last generation consoles. I wasn’t a very rational teenager, truth be told. In any event, I was fairly sure I wasn’t going to enjoy this – pretty much all I would play in those days were JRPGs – and I only played it to keep my friend quiet.

Fast-forward to now and I’m amazed I managed to wait until this long before firing up the PS4 remaster.