Also ... SPOLIERS ... the *sex scene* shows a bare butt for a second or two. You can tell from the motions what's going on - and there are two sex scenes, really - one with the Courant - that chick that has dudes and aliens sprung over here. You see a hand and the motion - you know they are getting busy.

Really, it's nada - but I wouldn't play that in front of my wife and son.

1. There is no/minimal blood. Most combat takes place at a distance to where if there is any, you can't see it. The weapons typically are doing damage to the armor/shields, so you don't see much.

2. Dialogue has a few bad words in it, but they never dropped the F-Bomb as far as I can remember.

3. The sex scene (if you actually initiate proper discussions) is very, very late in the game, and you can easily avoid it entirely. You can have sex with the consort very early on, but it shows nothing in terms of skin...Just insinuations and empty dreams.

Lol, thanks. I fired it up a bit last night and I like the game so far. I had to turn film grain off. The graphics are pretty good but I'm disappointed with the framerate as it makes the game feel sluggish during combat.

I chose a sniper-dude and was looking forward to lots of long distance action but damn, that sniper gun is all over the place. I've shot 300M rifles and it isn't like that! Does it get better when you spend more of your exp. points training it?

Yes. What class did you select? If you selected a class that has a horrible proficiency rate, you'll never improve. Other classes - I think soldier and Vanguard - can earn XP points and it gets easier. Also, you should consider the weapon upgrades too. They help stabilize recoil, handling - you know?

It's no joke at first, but just wait until leveling up - it gets mad easy. And after you finish the game, replay the game with your previous profile and keep all your attributes from the earlier game. Dude ... it's hella sweet.

As far as what I wrote later - Mr. Stickball was on point.

The game has VERY strong RPG elements despite the action elements - give it time (in terms of accuracy/damage).

As you progress, you will get HUGE damage and accuracy modifiers. You can get rail extentions (increase damage and heat generation), weapon stabilizers (accuracy), bullet modifiers (cryo, inferno, toxic), and various grade of it.

Trust me - Master Assassination + Level X Rail Extention + Level X Cooldown Coil = thousands of damage points per shot. I went through the 2nd-to-last level with those mods + a shotgun, and was litterally hip shooting all enemies.

I've chosen the Long Range class -- vanguard? I love to shoot stuff from a distance. I just kind of figured out the points and stuff... I guess I should read the manual, lol.

And disable the automatic leveling. I was getting leveling in throwing folks ... what the devil? I leveled up where I wanted to - and just let the other stuff come as I progressed.

I'm starting to really dig the game at this point. I'm now on the ship exploring the Tau planets. Aside from the technical glitches, this is an amazing game. Man, PS3 fans have missed out on a big one here.

Mass Effect is indeed amazing. I'm nearly finished my third playthrough, and fully expect to do a fourth. I don't think I've played a game that much since Ocarina of Time, and probably never in such a short period of time (except perhaps Eternal Darkness?).

Ok, I'm 20 hours in and it seems I getting fairly close to the end.  I have been exploring a little and haven't "rushed" into any battles.  I try to snipe all I can before I blast in with gun's 'ablazin.

A few positives:

-Liara is hot. (for an alien and yes, I know it is a game.  I get laid in real life BTW)
-The story is exceptionally well put together.  Best I've ever played.
-The graphics are very good.   The environments are amazing.  I'm an amatuer astronomer and I found the amount of detail put into the universe is simply astounding.
-The level up system is very cool
-The list of weapons, armor, and upgrades is very large
-Liara's "specials" are freaking amazing.  She is a one-alien-army.  I drag her into battle and just watch sometimes.  If I don't move quickly, she will torch everything in the room before I can even get a shot off. Did I mention she is hot while wasting bad guys?
-I'm almost done with the game and can't wait to play it again and take some different "turns" in the story's branches next time.
-It can be played in a number of roles -- fighter, sniper, "magic" user, etc. -- so it can fill the needs of the FPS Junkie or the guy who likes to plan and direct the battle as you can order your troops and control the battle from a distance...

A few negatives, too:

-Liara isn't real and I don't get to hit it in real life.
-The graphics are great but framerate takes a hit fairly regularly.  It's only really bad in a couple of places but they really should have polished this part of the game as it should have at least been locked at 30fps.
-Occasionally, the dialogue can get a bit tedious when trying to get information.  Most of the time the amount of dialog is just right, though.
-the sniper rifle is impossible to use in the early game.  once you get an upgrade to stabilize it, all is good, but at first it's very, very hard as it moves all over the damn screen.  This is probably my single biggest gripe as I've shot rifles scoped and unscoped all the way out to 500 meters and I can keep the crosshairs on my target.  I certainly don't have crosshairs that go to the point where my target is out of the scope!

The bottom line is this game is better than the other "hyped" games out this fall.  Far, far better than Halo.  Equally as good as COD4 from an overall game standpoint, but much, much, much deeper and longer!  Better than Bioshock.  Better, period.  If you don't buy this game and play it on your 360, you are missing out on arguably one of the top 5 games to have hit the xbox/xbox360 consoles.  I can only assume that the higher scores for Halo 3 and Bioshock are due to the few technical glitches in Mass Effect that are pretty much not there in ME.  Gamerankings has ME at 90% composite.  That's ridiculously low for a masterpiece of a game.