Plus, I still have Mass Effect 2 (virtually untouched) and Assassin's Creed 2 (totally untouched) on my shelf this very second. I'm so engaged in my second playthrough of the two year old Mass Effect that I'm in no rush to get to those two games.
As for why some games get a free pass? I dunno. Pixies, I guess.
But if my guess were more grounded in reality, I'd say people like different things. If Mass Effect were Halo 3 with those same problems, it would definitely have gotten hammered. Being an RPG, issues like frame rate (which I didn't notice) and such were a whole lot less important. We blasted the game for it's loading during elevator rides, its driving sequences, its inventory system, and its texture pop-ins. What more do you want? The game was/is still great to me!
