Clearly, this amateur is on the outside looking in - and wants to generate hits for his site. Comeon - the review is a month late and gives few reasons why the game is horrible. Everyone has their own opinion, but this guy should actually buy the game instead of renting it and writing a review.

ouch.

Aaaah once again the actual written review is far more useful than the score.

@everyone bitching,

Actually read the written portion, his complaints are legit even if his score isn't.   

Mostly reflects a lot of my complaints about the game, albeit a little more strongly than I actually feel. I actually did kind of prefer the linear clichéd storyline, mostly because so many games are trying for “relevant” storylines loaded with idiotic plot twists that’s it’s actually nice to just get a normal damn story for entertainment sake, even if it wasn’t a particularly enticing one.

Definitely feel the same way about the characters. You could have left out Garrus, Tali and Liara out of the game entirely, and I wouldn’t have noticed. Wrex was the only one I thought was interesting, and doesn’t get to do a whole lot.

He focuses to much on the complaints, and they dont warrent the score he gave it. ITs just a site trying to draw attention to itself

I will keep bitching its score lowered ME from a 92 to a 91, you know how wii fanboys would do if someone handed SMG a 60 and lowered it to a 96

 If thier review or score are just a ploy to get attention, it's working beautifully. =)

@ Brainbox

Yeah, it is, but in the end, he won't be able to get any games sent his way for review. He'll just have to keep going to his local Blockbuster and rent and review. What's the point? He'll have a few folks that look at his site, but it will fade faster than Debbie Gibson's singing career.

Honest gripes, yeah. But he didn't even give real reasons behind the scores. Just a wanna-be journalist trying to make a name for himself the wrong way.

Bad rewiew. I started to play Mass Effect yesterday. Wow! Its damn awesome! Epic.
And i didnt play so much action rpg before. I want back to the galaxy :P

That review was biased $hit.

Not sure why you insist he rented the game or why that even be bad. He claims to played it through twice, and he comments on certain decisions literally have no effect on his conversation and general depth he goes into supports that claim. Also not sure why you also seem assert there's something wrong with him or his site actually paying (rental or otherwise) for the games to review as opposed to receiving them for free. I’m more inclined to trust actual paying customers over “professionals” who have free products personally delivered. I’ve long stop reading CNET’s worthless reviews as they never factor price in any of their overall reviews. (If anything they seem to inflate scores for high priced products.)

Your comments about him not receiving games because of a review like this is also troubling. Is that an admission of game reviewers scoring games favorably for the sake of continued sponsorship over actual objective writing? And in response to one of your eariler comments, is there something wrong with his review not being right at the game’s release? That it probably was written hastily in favor of meeting a deadline?

As for being unprofessional journalist wannabe and not justifying or explaining his scores. If you’re to hold that against him, you’d be inclined to do the same against pretty much the entire gaming media world. Constant accusations of bias and incompetence are common for big name gaming sites and magazines as well, and confusion of consistency scores has been a topic here plenty of times.

As for Mr. Murray’s review, from what he tells us, it’s generally an overly critical rant, probably stemming from his personal disappointment of being a long standing fan of BioWare’s games and finding this one lacking in comparison of their previous titles. Certainly unprofessional and possibly emotionally loaded criticism, which I’d still find more useful than your normal unprofessional lavish praise seen mostly elsewhere, especially when he goes into such depth with every qualm. Also interesting their second opinion, generally acknowledging and agreeing with the before mentioned criticism, but disagreeing with the extent of it effecting the rest of the game, and felt it was generally good mold for future titles, and good in it’s own right.

Overall I thought it was fairly well written even if rather unprofessional critical review, and it’s an additional counter point to that made for a far better read than most of the paid advertising on a lot of “professional” sites, a rather low bar admittedly. That’s my two cents and another ranting irate internet nerd.