Whether it's down to our own hubris, the disastrous effects of unbridled wealth accumulation and social division, war, the climate crisis, plague, a space rock or perhaps unfriendly aliens – we'll one day be dust caught in cosmic winds, lost to an indifferent universe. On our pale blue dot, the remnants of once-great civilisations and vanished peoples that we unearth already show us that advanced development is no guarantee of perpetuity. In sci-fi, humanity's naive yearning to fight on despite this realisation often proves a point of curiosity – and sometimes inspiration – for alien species. This is front and centre of the Mass Effect trilogy of video games, in which our imminent annihilation is given form in the tendrils of creatures called Reapers: ancient, building-sized, alien-robot hybrids that wipe out most life in the Milky Way every 50,000 years. Originally released between 2007 and 2012, the games were reissued this year as Mass Effect Legendary Edition, an updated complete trilogy, and there's a compelling case that they are among the best sci-fi ever made.

When a video game is remastered, the expectation is that it will look better, perform better, and generally fix the mistakes of its original incarnation. BioWare's Mass Effect: Legendary Edition, released last week, is no exception to the rule--the compilation features remasters of the entire Mass Effect trilogy, and by all accounts, the changes made to the science-fiction action role-playing games are improvements. But let's be honest--for anyone who's played the games before, the appeal of returning to the series doesn't lie in shinier graphics or faster loading times. Rather, the point of going back is to revisit your old crush. Or, if we're being really honest, crushes, plural.

March is already a jam-packed month in video games, between the arrivals of epics like The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Nier: Automata, and players still prowling the hit open-world adventure Horizon: Zero Dawn. Andromeda follows up the popular Mass Effect trilogy, where players served as Commander Shepard, tasked with saving the galaxy from a purge of organic life from an advanced race of machines called Reapers. Players were drawn to the trilogy by an incredibly robust story with an encyclopedia-like Codex and the ability to make decisions through dialogue changing the course of the game's events. It also allowed players to explore countless planets and galaxies, discovering various races such as the Krogan and Quarians. Now, we've arrived at Andromeda, which takes place 600 years after the original Mass Effect trilogy.