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.

...

All this negativity stems entirely from the fact that Mass Effect has been bundled out the door with an ill-fitting RPG cloak pulled halfway over its head. It only really begins to make sense when considered as an adventure game with RPG trappings. So let's do that.​