Sins of a Solar Empire mod recreates Mass Effect, minus the magic starchild

While we wait for a dedicated team of modders to recreate the epic space battles of Buck Rogers in the 25th Century , we'll have to make do with this ambitious, and very likely cease-and-desistable, Sins of a Solar Empire mod , based on the space operatics of Mass Effect. As briefly mentioned yesterday , Mass Effect: Dawn of the Reapers will feature three factions - the Council, Cerberus, and the Reapers - with "asymmetrical gameplay unique to each race." That presumably means the robotic death-gods will be as all-powerful as they were in BioWare's original trilogy.

Cerberus Skunkworks, the aptly named team behind it, are obviously adding a bunch of new models and weapons to the game, including - rather amazingly - the Crucible, the doomsday weapon from Mass Effect 3. Befitting its awesome power, the team reassure that it will be a "tough research" and "the very last thing on the tech tree". If it's not capable of wiping out every last unit on the map, they've missed a trick.

Though this stupidly exciting mod hasn't matured to the point of a beta version, there are several videos, a metric ton of concept images, and frequent updates on its moddb page . We'll let you know as soon as it's released - or as soon as it's been squashed under the steel-capped boots of EA's legal team. Whatever the case, we'll always have this moderately awesome trailer.

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Tom loves exploring in games, whether it’s going the wrong way in a platformer or burgling an apartment in Deus Ex. His favourite game worlds—Stalker, Dark Souls, Thief—have an atmosphere you could wallop with a blackjack. He enjoys horror, adventure, puzzle games and RPGs, and played the Japanese version of Final Fantasy VIII with a translated script he printed off from the internet. Tom has been writing about free games for PC Gamer since 2012. If he were packing for a desert island, he’d take his giant Columbo boxset and a laptop stuffed with PuzzleScript games.