Creature Design in Mass Effect

Hey folks, I am working my way through the Mass Effect series (finally) and I believe it to be an excellent series of games.

I am interested to hear your thoughts on the creature designs in this game? It ranged in my view from excellent to very weak (though I don't think that detracts from the game much).

My reviews are only my opinions so feel free to disagree

Asari - Archetype 'Sexy Blue Lady's' in the mold of Na'vi, Twi'ilek etc. They are appealing and interesting to interact with but they are almost entirely human. I like the head tentacles but surely it doesn't really count as creature design, more reskinning a human.

Elcor - I like these guys. The reason for their ponderous nature and alien speech patterns are excellent, being from a high gravity world where falling could be fatal. They are still tetrapod-like, but seem plausible.

Hanar - My favourite, although they don't seem to do much. I enjoy creatures based of invertebrates generally and their method of speech using bioluminescence is cool. However the translated human voice seems a mismatch as they appear more feminine, and the game lacks for female aliens generally, apart from the Asari

Keepers - (SPOILERS) As they are possibly engineered its hard to criticise them design wise. They look quite cool, but the four equally space walking legs would seem to make moving about rather slow and clumsy.

Salarians - While they appear to be 'Greys', with a human body shape and such, their personalities and hyperactive characterisation is most entertaining and compensates for the uninteresting external designs.

Turians - Although their body plan is implausibly human, they certainly look COOL, so I quite like them. And the character of Garrus is compelling further elevating the species in my eyes.

Volus - I like the suit design, although once again they follow a human body plan. Its hard to know what they look like under those suits.

Batarians - It looks like someone experienced an error in their 3D program and just accepted it. I hate this design personally as it is both aesthetically ugly, and unimaginative. Like a pug with some kind of facial disease.

Geth - A race of AIs, I like them however apart from the fast geth troopers they seem too primitive. With snaking cables and awkward joints, they don't look like a hyperadvanced AI race which I would imagine having synthetic muscles and appearing more organic perhaps.

Krogan - Tetrapod again, however their face design and voice acting is excellent, making them compelling. I do like that head shield and those reptilian eyes.

Quarians - They are human in body form, but the character Tali is interesting and attractive, as is their species history so I approve of them.

Vorcha - I guess elements of the face look cool, however their idiotic cartoonish Jar Jar Binks level voice performances irritate me and lower the material.

Reapers - One of the best evil voices I have heard, the reapers are a lot of fun. They have an alien body plan suited for space. Though they have what appear to be... windows in their armor seams. Seems weird for an AI to have rooms inside, but perhaps they are sensors or something. They also seems very clunky and mechanical for beings that claim to be beyond our understanding.

Those are all the species I have encountered so far.

I believe the main reason for so many human like aliens to be a simple one - It takes time and money to develop non-human animation rigs that the studio probably simply didn't have.

What do you folks think yourselves?

As a closing note, how do you feel gender is handled in the game?