I recently finished up Mass Effect. This Bioware game was originally developed for the console and later ported to the PC. While this is clearly evident in some places, they did make a strong effort to do a proper port. I've heard they did a lot of revision to the inventory system, which I can't comment too much on since I haven't seen the original.

The gameplay is singularly driven by a forceful main story. There are quite a few optional side missions available, though these suffer from being A) a tad repetitive after a while and B) entirely disconnected from the plot, so you need to make an effort to ignore the constant pressure of your primary goal in order to do them.

Combat is typically fast and frantic. You can pause to give orders to your squadmates, though for some reason there is a quite noticeable pause when hitting the spacebar to bring up the orders menu; long enough for the situation to change in certain instances. Squad members are generally useful, as their combat skills are decent and most will have effective powers that your character does not. I found the game's cover system to usually work really well. This is a model you don't see too often in PC games, except for console ports. Running up and pressing against a solid object (wall or battlefield obstacle) will put your back up against it. Strafing sideways to the edge of the wall will let you peek around it and when you fire or sight, your character will peer from around cover.

The main story is fleshed out effectively. Characters all have their motivations, no matter how misguided they may be. The one question never answered is the big "Why?", but the characters recognize this and at least bother to pose the question. I had a lot of fun with the dialog options. There's a system of player "paths" in place. Act like an angel (save innocents, be nice, pet kittens) and you receive Paragon points, which open up certain options. Performing your job ruthlessly, responding brusquely, ignoring orders, and demanding payment will earn you Renegade points. I played a female Renegade and really enjoyed what a bad ass she was. (Voice acting was also really good.) The drawback to the main story is that it felt so short. If you neglect the side missions, the game will go by pretty quickly it seems.

The inventory system, apparently the source of several complaints on the console version as well, definitely could use some improvement. There's a hard limit of 150 items, and with all the weapons, mods, and ammo types you come across, it's easy to hit this limit. The problem when that happens is that you're forced to scrap the new stuff and not given the option to do so with the older items (scrapping an item turns it into "Omnigel", generally useful only for opening locked containers). There's an overwhelming quantity of mods and ammo and weapons and the problem here is that the upgrade process is just uninteresting. I'm a gun guy; I drooled over the options available in the 1.13 fan patch for Jagged Alliance 2. Even with all the varieties of weapons you come across in Mass Effect, they're all just 3 stats. They don't even look any different, aside from color (you can't even see the items in the inventory screen itself). Worst of all, there's hardly any give and take with the weapons. Some seem just better than everything else you've found. So it hardly ever felt like a matter of prioritizing certain stats over others. Equipment modifications are a little better in that respect. They're more interesting, clearly useful, and force you to choose. There's so many though and spread across so many levels (some mod types change names while keeping the same effect at different levels, a real puzzler).

Overall a really good experience. There's clearly been a lot of serious thought put into the game (vastly fleshed out backstory and history are available for reading, though optional). I wish every game was this well constructed.