Halo 3 suffered from long development times. Bungie stated that they started working on it even before Halo 2 ever launched. Still, I was very very impressed with levels like Sierra 117, Tsavo Highway, and the final Halo level.

I don't have the game myself, but from what I've seen I would call Mass Effect the first RPG with a good enough combat system to be fun even if there were no RPG elements, and good enough RPG elements that it would be a great game even with Final Fantasy-style menu combat.

I LOVE this game. I beat as an sob and now going to be a good guy. Did I mentione I LOVE this game?

Parokki is right. The combat controls aren't quite to Gears of War standards, but they're better than pretty much any RPG that has ever had any sort of shooting in it.

Likewise, the game has as much RPG in it as you want. You can pretty much auto-level everyone, and never, ever touch the equipment, squad, journal, or codex in the game and beat it like a really long story-drive TPS game

Or, you can make almost everything turn based, and use the tactical combat screens for 80% of the battles, and only issue biotic/squad commands, and almost never really engage in much real-time combat, sans the Mako areas.

And finally, you can do both, and get the most of the game. For about 10hrs, I never used much biotic and techs in battle. Once I started getting tired of getting my rear handed to me, I started really using the biotic/tech "wheel" for menu-based playing...After that, I started wrecking everything in my path.

Mass Effect is what you want to make of it. It's probably the first game that actually incorporates 2 genres so flawlessly that you can play it how you want. Bioshock isn't that way. It's still a FPS, but you get an inventory, and such.

Mass Effect is to Third Person Shooters, as Oblivion is to First Person Shooters.

The DLC for this game can't come soon enough.

I'm about 6 hours into the game, and I'm enjoying the hell out of it. The story is great and pulls you in. The Combat is also unique and keeps me involved. I also need to start playing with my biotics a little more, but only once I get into more battles.