@Shams Don't worry about what Andy says, he has had dificulty dealing with change for the last three years he's been on staff. I've disagreed with his reviews more than any other reviewer at GI, because he seems to like games that fall with in his niche (RTS, RPG, MMO) and others not from that grouping tend to get balked if they change the formula from what he is used to. That being said and him being such a huge massive world fan (ie. RPG MMO) it's not suprising that he knocks the game for not having a huge gigantic world like the previous two.
Also, I have been playing the game for over 7 hours now and I can safely say that the exploration aspect of the game is emmense. I won't speculate if the formula has changed because I've never played the first two. There is however, plenty of backtracking, especially if you want to get all the pick-ups.
The best thing about the streamlined exploaration is that you use your ship to go to the different areas which IMHO makes way more sense than a bunch of elevators.
Anyways, I could go on for hours talking about what I like about this game, but I'd rather be playing it.
