I just finished Mass Effect 3 yesterday.  I didn't want to believe all the bad hype over the ending and thought "all these fan boys are over-reacting" but now I understand their feelings.  The last 10 mins of the game ruins the entire trilogy.

Going back and reading some of the metacritic individual reviews, it's obvious that for majority of the 1st day reviews, the reviewers did not finish the game.  Mass Effect 3 rates in mid 90s on metacritics.   I agree the first 98% of the game is rated somewhere in the high 90's.  But the ending unravels everything. After finishing the game, there is no way I can give this game a review in the 90s.   I won't go crazy-angry or crazy-sad and would review this game to a 0 or 1 like some of the user ratings on metacritics.  I would review Mass Effect 3 in the 70s (or user rating 7 or 8). 

The ending is pretty bad, but you seriously shouldn't let the last ten minutes ruin your otherwise fun time.

One of my favourite things about this whole ordeal is the amount of people saying the exact same thing. Where originally they believed people were over-reacting, then they experience it and realise... oh.

I was the same. I was busy and it took me a little longer to finish the game than most people and just kept thinking ''There is no way it can be THAT bad''. Then I'm playing the last level thinking ''Well this is a great last level, there is no way this great level can suddenly be ruined'' .....then I hit the ending and ....oh.

The best was someone on Neogaf had been in the threads saying how people were overreacting and so forth, getting really defensive. Then a few days later posted an apology to everyone and started making the same points they had lol.

As for the reviews... well on the one hand 98% of the game is utterly sublime so I mean I can kinda understand it. However what you do have a point about is of the reviews I read a very small number mentioned the ending.

I suspect many didn't finish the game. However it's nothing new. Just recently with RE:ORC and NG3 it was incredibly clear that a lot of reviewers hadn't played the online at all. Been going on a LONG time. I remember when gamespot put up a review for Metroid Prime Hunters and the review was FULL of mistakes and errors. People worked out the reviewer had only played into the game a small percentage. Gamespot apologised, took the review down and put up a new one but didn't bother to change the scores or anything lol.

Who cares what its Metascore is, Metacritic is a dodgy corrupt business with bribed averages covered up as 'weighted averages' and every game is based on a different number of reviews and different cherry-picked publications, some of which have such poorly written reviews it's astonishing how their scores are even being used by Metacritic.

Comparing games Metascores is useless like for example God of War III based on 101 reviews averaged 92.71% and was rounded down to 92% even though it got no average or bad scores and most reviews were 92+ so there was no reason to round down, whereas Zelda: SS got a 3 average reviews and more lower scores which according to Metacritic should weigh down the average but in this case they rounded 92.68 based on 81 reviews up to 93%. COD: MW2 (360) also was bizarrely rounded up from 93.19 based on 100 reviews to a Metascore of 94. So you see in my example, all three games average 93% (based on Metacritics chosen publications), but the vast majority of people wouldn't bother calculate actual averages like me and would assume the other two games scored higher than God of War III.

Metacritic is total shit, I wish people stopped checking out that site and never mentioned it again, sorry for my little rant I just think people should either read reviews from publications you like or play the game and form your own opinion without having to consult Metashitic or anyone else for that matter.

I think you people need to accept the fact that critics adore Mass Effect 3. The last 10 minutes were horrible, but that doesn't change the fact that the ~30 hours preceding it were phenomenal. Unlike so many of you, critics aren't dropping the game from a perfect 10 to a 0 because of the ending.

And JustThatGamer, it's funny how you're bringing up God of War III. Personally, I think its ending was almost as awful as Mass Effect 3's, but that doesn't change the fact that I think it's one of the best games of this console generation.

^You may say it's only 10 bad minutes compared to 30 awesome hours but the nature of the game is that you were working those 30 hours to be awarded an awesome 10 minutes. Those 10 minutes were critical.

As someone who only played the 3rd ME I can tell you it's the last 10 minutes that made me think maybe its just an ok game, a 7 tops out of ten.

 So yeah, i do agree with the thread poster that a lot of the reviews were written in an enthusiastic frenzy not having finished the game and certainly are grossly misleading (& mislead).

I see that was time well spent, adding up all those numbers..

Kinda sad I must say, so you butthurt because in some cases they round up and in others - like your most favourite game evaaa they round down makes them a rotten publication? Wow...

User has been moderated for this post - Kantor

So the 100+ hours of fun you had before that ending automatically didn't happen simply because you didn't like the ending? All that fun just went away and you were actually hating every second of ME1, ME2 and most of ME3 whilst playing them right?

Lol actually they put different weight on different reviews. A review from IGN has more weight than say a random no-name review. His whole rant is pretty ridiculous though.

For me, the ending only drops the game from a 10 to a 9.5.