PETER HOSKIN reviews Mass Effect Legendary Edition and Famicon Detective Club 

Mass Effect Legendary Edition (PlayStation, Xbox, PC, £59.99)

Verdict: Reach for the stars

Rating:

Can you be nostalgic about the future? That’s certainly how I’ve felt recently — thanks to Mass Effect Legendary Edition.

The first Mass Effect came out in 2007. It was a formative experience: a shimmering vision of humanity in the stars, circa 2183, in which you, a chiselled space soldier, collected a crew of aliens and alpha humans to take down a new evil in the universe.

You shot some stuff. You drove around a bit. But mostly you conversed with galactic weirdos — affecting not just their opinions of you but also the whole story. It was, ahem, a laser blast. A trilogy followed over the next five years.

Mass Effect 2 is the best of the lot. Mass Effect 3 was controversial but mostly because it quite cleverly upended expectations about how a space opera should end.

And now the Legendary Edition updates all three games for today’s tech and standards. Refined gunplay, better graphics, smoother all round.

There are so many remastered games nowadays that it’s easy to be suspicious: are they just an attempt to get new cash for the same old material?

But with Mass Effect — even with some creaky, original design still showing — it’s an important act of preservation. A hundred more hours with Commander Shephard and her buddies? I’ll do it all over again. 

Famicon Detective Club (Nintendo Switch, £49.99)

Verdict: Unthrilling thrillers

Rating:

Oh, look, it’s another remastered game — or, rather, a pair of them.

Famicon Detective Club actually contains two titles, The Missing Heir and The Girl Who Stands Behind, that were released in Japan in the 1980s and never made it westwards. Until now.

These updates for Switch have new animations and new voiceovers for the characters you meet — and you’ll certainly meet plenty, as you figure out a series of strange deaths.

It all feels much like an average mystery novel: an easy time on the sofa, but not quite a page-turner.