Edmonton-based BioWare's new sci-fi role-playing game, Mass Effect, combines some of the smartest writing ever to find its way into interactive entertainment with jaw dropping-ly gorgeous character models and animations to create what is inarguably one of the most engaging and cinematic narratives ever delivered through the video game medium.

And the best part is that, perhaps more than in any game to come before, players really feel like they have an active role in shaping the plot. Indeed, the complexity of the game's story dynamics, which involve tens of thousands of lines of dialogue and hundreds of branching narrative paths, is mind-bogglingly complex.

In conversation situations, you're provided a wide variety of replies that can affect how others perceive your character, open new quests or avenues of exploration in the galaxy, create or extinguish romantic interests, and even determine whether significant characters live or die. You can play the game as a ruthless soldier, placing mission objective ahead of the safety or interests of your followers, or a sympathetic leader who values the welfare and wishes of his companions. By the time you get a few hours into the game, the level of immersion becomes unparalleled. Other games -- including previous BioWare titles like Jade Empire and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic -- have offered similar open-endedness, but never to this degree.

Simply put, Mass Effect is the closest any developer has yet come to reaching the industry's tacit yet widely understood goal of creating an interactive movie.

It's just a shame that the firefights that punctuate the story aren't particularly fun. In fact, it might be the first instance in the history of games in which players wade through the action just so that they can get back to the game's rock solid exposition.

Essentially a tactical shooter, you fight with the help of a squad of companions. Your teammates can act on their own or follow your instructions to use various tactics, weapon types, and abilities, including the game's signature but underwhelming technologically advanced "biotic" powers (which, had the game been set in a fantasy rather than science fiction universe, likely would have been dubbed "magick"). Team commands are delivered via a pop-up radial menu that pauses the game to provide players a chance to evaluate the situation and create a plan of attack.

That sounds all Joefine and Jimdandy, but there are plenty of issues. For starters, your teammates are a bit too dense for you to want to leave them to fend for themselves, except during the most basic of battles. However, once you take control of them, fighting often become frustratingly counterintuitive, feeling like a disjointed mashup combining the turn-based sensibilities of role-playing games and the squad-based tactics of a military shooter. Players would have been better served had BioWare simply chosen one combat scheme or the other and stuck with it.

However, the action, second-rate as it may be, is well worth muddling through just to get to the next act in this interactive movie. Years from now gamers will have long forgotten Mass Effect's convoluted battle system, but they'll remember with perfect clarity how it was one of the first games to make them feel as though they were playing an CGI movie for grown-ups.