A couple of us in the office are going back through Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2 to prepare ourselves for the finale when the third game comes out in March. The first game is four and a bit years old now and the textures are starting to look a little runny. Thankfully, Duncan Harris presents a solution via the excellent Dead End Thrills with a link to a massive texture pack that adds masses of detail to all of the main characters of Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2.

JeanLuc761′s hi-res character textures is the mod you need. You'll need to install TextMod first, and then choose between the optimised version of the mod, which doubles texture resolutions, and the ULTRA version, which quadruples them. The mod's author warns that the ultra version of the mod can result in 10-15 minute loading times when you first boot up the game, but you'll be getting the very highest resolutions once the wait is done.

Full installation instructions and mod download links can be found in JeanLuc's forum post . It's been around for a while now, but with so many people playing through the first two games it's worth a shout. Check out the screenshots below to get a sense of the massive improvements the mod makes. Click to see them full size.