Awhile back, Emma_UK, everybody's favourite newshound, wrote a feature on the worst promotional items ever sent to Gamespot UK staff by game publishers. I love Emma's artistic photo blogs (go check them out), but this was by far the funniest. I felt compelled, being the demented little mafia princess I am, to offer, tongue in cheek, to take what she felt was the worst one off her hands. I was kidding. Apparently, her sense of humor is drier than mine, and she called my bluff--and sent me The Finger. (Never try to out-British the British.) It was designed to promote (positively, one assumes) the recent Jericho game. She called it horrible. I call it inspired. It really is creepily realistic.

Emma asked only in return that she get photos of The Finger in its new habitat. I was not only happy to oblige, I did her one better: reaction shots of my colleagues. I am an editor, and we have one insane coworker (to use the noun loosely), a pathological liar incompetent moron supposed typesetter, who cannot spell and has recently taken to typing in all caps. I told everybody I'd finally had enough and had found another use for my red pen. Wacky hijinks ensued. Please note that three believed, for just a fraction of a second, thus cementing my reputation, if not anyone's kneecaps. Heh. I so win.

I offer my humble thanks to the delightful Emma Boyes and the staff of Gamespot UK for parting with this gem. I've gotten a lot of mileage out of it so far. If you guys have regrets and ever want it back, just let me know.

The Finger, complete with Jericho promo card and inexplicable sticky black goo in which it arrived.

The Finger action shot in its new home, surfing Gamespot.

Disclaimer: the mousepad was a gift, only because of The King.

My evil twin

Shares office with aforementioned moron

The chill one

The usually funny one

My ugly mug, giving you the finger!

Thank you, sir. We're trying.

1. Dr. Liara T'Soni. She's an archaeologist, she's sweet-natured and surprisingly funny ("I vote we go into the creepy underground bunker!"), she can throw aliens off space stations with biotic magic, and she's blue.

2. The breathtaking planetscapes. Sometimes I drive up to the top of a jagged mountain range just to see it juxtaposed with the atmosphere and moons. The colors, the terrains, even those weird little anteater, cow, and monkey things, all contribute to a stunning level of immersion. As for the frequent complaints of similar-looking bases, I figure some company makes those intergalactic trailers and drops them off wherever you need an impromptu base. If they program every one differently, it will take forever and go to multiple discs. Get over it and enjoy the scenery.

3. The Mako. That vehicle was just plain fun to drive. I loved watching the dirt or snow spit out from under the tires, I loved the rocket boost that got me over cliffs and dodged rockets and thresher spit, and I loved the gravitic stabilizers that meant even I couldn't flip it. (Except that once, but I think it was a glitch.) Some people complained about how "unrealistic" the Mako is--in a science fiction video game that takes place two centuries from now among six other species. You were expecting Forza? Tell you what, you don't like the Mako? Try driving that wretched Warthog, then call me.

4. The Normandy. What an awesome ship. It looks like a bird of prey, and not just the Klingon kind. She's sleek and graceful and angular, and I wish we could actually fly her in a firefight in the next game.

5. The most awesome baseball hat ever. Yes, I have it. Yes, I wear it everywhere and when I play. Yes, I am aware that I am a colossal nerd, but at least I am not stupid or useless like a celebutard debutante heiress.

6. The Trek-like ensemble cast. Much has been made of the balancing act their various combat abilities bring to the gameplay, but I was more impressed by the disparate personalities that drive the story. I have played various missions several times just to take along different characters to see how they react and hear their one-liners. I'm on my second run, and I'm going to make at least two more, maybe on the PC rather than the Xbox version, just to play more characters on the limited squad. I like these people (well, the aliens, anyway). Fearless Leader Shepard counts as two, paragon and renegade, depending on how (many times) you play. One character, however, merits a line item on its own, and for much different reason:

7. Ashley Williams's dreadful personality, which has already been well and thoroughly analyzed, but I'm going to do it again. Sure, she's a gung-ho, bigoted killing machine, but in a firefight against evil robotic aliens intent on destroying all organic life, that's a good thing. She serves another, crucial purpose: to remind us of our humanity. Now that (it's an RPG, work with me here) we're out among the stars, exploring the galaxy, meeting new life and new civilizations, everything's going to be just great, and we're all going to achieve enlightenment and live in peace and harmony. Right. We humans have a tendency to "other," "us" against "them," which in a sci-fi game or show generally means humans vs. the other species. While some, and hopefully most, folks are interested in meeting new cultures, we know here on planet Earth it doesn't always work that way, so it probably won't in space, either. So while you have Commander Shepard's merry interspecies band of intergalactic saviors, there's a discordant note in that harmony: Ashley Williams.

As evidenced by the exotic-looking Captain Anderson, Ambassador Udina, and Kaiden Alenko (in Drew Karpyshyn's backstory book, "Revelations," he happily notes that humans aren't really racially divided or pureblooded anymore, and most everyone is a healthy mix of many races), humanity in the late 22d century has apparently, thankfully, finally managed to get over itself and mostly get along at home...which means some apparently are looking for new people to hate. Ashley reminds us that, although we've worked some stuff out on Earth, human nature is what it is, and still has some final frontiers to cross. Despite her insistence that the turians are responsible for her family's blacklist in the Alliance military, it is subtly evident that her unrelenting anger towards the turians and knee-jerk distrust of every other species is incongruous enough in that day and age that even fellow humans have tried to keep her as physically isolated as her views are, so as not to cause diplomatic embarrassment to the whole species--or ignite another war. If you run through her dialogue options, you will discover her ironic juxtaposition to her own younger sister; the sister, whom Ash adores and protects, is a much more forgiving person, and the gunnery sergeant has failed to understand let alone learn from her example, clinging instead to the cherished illusion of martyrdom that the First Contact War ruined her family. She is blissfully un-self-aware as she relates the sister's story to Shepard, but we, the audience, quickly realize that Ashley's insistence on guns-blazing victimhood is not the way to advance humanity's interests (or the gameplay) if we hope to survive and expand throughout the galaxy. Ashley's presence is at once instructive and actually a nice touch to keep the storyline from descending into a vat of saccharine, which, given the hopeful stance of the game, it could easily have done. Ashley does get credit for minor growth when advising Shepard to check on Liara after Benezia dies; apparently, grief really is universal, even for bigots. Ashley serves as a nice counterpoint to Shepard and to Kaiden, who understand that we have to get along in order to survive. The best part about Ashley is that I have never before seen such a hateful bigot in a video game. We get murderous psychopaths, Nazis, and other crazies, but vocal racists? And game Nazis never spew their dogma, they're just there, we know they're evil, and we shoot at them, and they're never, ever on our team. It may be that she's not the absolute first, but it is, again, a nice touch of audacious realism that apparently only Bioware has the stones to pull off.

8. The character creation module prior to gameplay almost blows even The Sims 2 out of the water for sheer exponential customization options; Mass Effect would still win if users could mod and add options (like better hair). This is the happiest direction RPGs are going in. In shooters, it's less jarring because you only ever see a hand no matter what the name is, but in an RPG, customization is the new star of the show. I love being able to create my Shepard, make her--HER--look the way I envision the character, and not have to play as a guy for the umpteenth time because devs think "women don't play games" or "men don't want to play as a chick." It took me an hour. Usually, I don't waste a lot of time in game prep stuff because I just want to get in and play, but this time felt different, felt epic, and I took time and care and I'm just thrilled. I can identify more, and thus more easily get into the game, the role, than with some guy I definitely don't identify with. On the PC, I'm going to play a different Shepard, vanguard or sentinel, and maybe even a dude. But either way, I'm keeping the scar.

9. That red and black Colossus armor. I've scored it for four of my team, and it looks so awesome. I'd love to be able to slap that N7 on any armor, though.

10. The voice actors, particularly female Shepard. If you played the demo for Two Worlds and subsequently refused to play the whole thing, you know how truly bad voice acting can pull you right out of a game, make you unable to suspend your disbelief, and ruin the entire experience. The voiceovers were done by truly professional actors, and the animators did a bangup job of synchronizing the lip and facial movements. For voice and animation, this game is truly pioneering. They got some big names in for notoriety, but the lesser or unknowns were, frankly, better. I love Marina Sirtis, but her Benezia was a little campier than necessary, and Seth Green's voiceover of Joker, the pilot I otherwise liked, didn't fit the character. Shepard and the squad members, however, turn in flawless performances. Guinness weighed in Mass Effect at approximately 20,000 lines of dialogue in total for all possibilities; that's nearly 20 movies' worth of speech for the price of 6 movie tickets. Not only is this game a great play, it's a great watch, too.

BONUS: The Flux dance. Nothing else quite says Friday night like full body armor and guns strapped to your back.

edit 3/31: Bonus 2: Xbox achievements you can finally care about because they are actually useful and unlock abilities for future characters, thus adding to the replay value.

It's done. I have a vehicle. She's 8 months old, with only 13,000 miles on her, driven by 4 people. I got it at Enterprise, which gives the same certified guarantee as a Toyota dealer, but without the car salesmen, who ignored everything I said I wanted, like I'm too stupid to know what I want, and kept trying to push me into buying a 2009. So I bailed. I hate pushy. The guys at Enterprise are on salary. If they sell a bunch of cars, they probably get bonuses. If not, they sell them to other dealers or wholesalers. They are much, much nicer. And it's still under the 3-year factory warranty, too. Shazaam!

The best part is, it's silver inside and out--not a speck of beige anywhere...until I christened it appropriately this morning, when I spilled coffee all over the cupholders, which do not hold a standard coffee mug like my old gearwell did. Clearly, I need to rethink my morning coffee strategy. Luckily, I'd already installed the standard box of Kleenex.

Since I had the camera in the driveway, here's the view from my yard for your random enjoyment. Lake Tahoe is on the other side.

Tomorrow, the DMV. So concludes the Saga of The Car. The vanity tags are $36, which isn't awful, so I think I'll go for it. This little cow town could use a little more personality! (And Greek food, in case you know anyone who wants to open a restaurant.)