His whole rant AND the fact that he has probably spent a good portion of an hour to tally up all those numbers is ridiculous.

Whiny fans think the score should change.

Objective reviewers stick by their guns. The game is a masterpiece.

lol is the ending so bad?

Sure BUT as the thread starter said, it is more than reasonable to point out that a lot of the reviewers did NOT finish the entire game at the time they wrote the review.

I have a really hard time believing that. I could see a few reviewers doing that but the majority couldn't have not finished the game.

What seperates a user score from a real review is that a userscore is typically emotionaly based.

A real review takes in sound, voice acting, textures, polygon models, pacing, action sequences, enemy AI, shooting mechanics, dialogue choices, side missions, replayability, and overall plot.

The ending would only hurt the plot score, but not by much since it doesnt hurt the plot during the rest of the game. Replayability could also suffer due to the ending being similar in nature.

But even then your looking at a game in the low 90's because your SUPPOSED to review everything (see above checklist). To say the ending negates all the hard work Bioware put into the game only further proves to me that user scores shouldnt exist unless they are purely objective

Let's take a random day one review for closer examination.

"Its a solid game for me, with minor flaws. The flaws thats in the game is overshadowed by the great story. The game I think has more RPG elements than the 2:nd instalment but not as much as the first one. But it enough i think."

As i said I am not a Mass Effect expert but i just cannot call a story that ends with generic sci fy vagueness great !

Im not saying it deserves a 0 /10 or that it negates all the hard work put by Bioware either but when it comes to a story and decision driven game it's a big point minus.

Post became kind of long, but bear with me ...

You are all fixating way too much on the terrible ending which is blinding everyone to the fact that the entirety of Mass Effect 3 was awful (at least when compared to the second and especially to the first game).

The way I see it is that Mass Effect 1 was a near masterpiece that had a game-play style divided into 2/3 RPG and 1/ 3 shooter. This worked quite well, and nearly all the elements of the game worked perfectly to make a spectacular experience.

At some point (after Bioware was scooped up by EA), the series was pushed into a totally new direction, and the previous 2/3 rpg and 1/3 shooter ratio was flipped on its head, and cover based shooting became the new focus of the franchise as was seen with the arrival of Mass Effect 2.

In fairness, Mass Effect 2 did have some compelling characters and story elements, but it remains a vastly inferior effort to Mass Effect 1 precisely because it moved away from what made the first game so special, a great sci-fi adventure story mixed with a fun RPG shooter hybrid gameplay style.  No longer were players hunting down rogue specters, learning about the history of the Mass Effect Universe, and experiencing revelations about other great threats to galactic peace, but instead Mass Effect 2 foced Shephard into the role of recruiting and doing favors and errands for his rogue’s gallery of supporting characters in order to go on a suicide mission which, in hindsight, was ultimately pointless when one considers the ending of Mass Effect 3.

We went from a fun and rich universe in Mass Effect 1 that players wanted to explore to errand boy duty in Mass Effect 2, and, lastly, errand boy duty 2.0 in Mass Effect 3 where Shephard has to prostrate him/herself in order to please a bunch of random aliens to fight against the formerly mysterious, and now totally generic Reaper threat.

Even more dramatic than the dumbing down of the plot was the transformation of the series from RPG/shooter hybrid to a Gears of War knock-off. While Mass Effect 2 effectively lobotomized the game play of one by removing armor customization, weapon customization, and 90% of the abilities and talents, Mass Effect 3 finished what Mass Effect 2 started by including a boring multiplayer mode that plays like Gears of War horde mode minus the fun, and further stripping the series of its RPG roots by adding in new game mode that let you entirely skip dialogue choices (not that the choices effect much anymore) while also removing player choice from virtually every aspect of the game. The player no longer plays a "role" as they would in an RPG, as Commander Shephard has effectively become the silent protagonist from every Call of Duty game that can simply watch while having no impact on the story taking place around them. RPGs were always about player choice, and Mass Effect has pretty much done away with that. It wasn't just the ending of that nullified the events of the previous games as pretty much every choice made in the previous Mass Effect games had no impact on any part of Mass Effect 3. 

At this point, I really don’t see any reason left to play Mass Effect anymore. The series had an identity crisis, and it was decided by the powers that be at EA that the series was going to become an ultra-casual third person shooter. The sad part is that the guys in charge of this franchise never seemed to realize that it was the story and RPG portion that made Mass Effect 1 so memorable, and since that is now gone we are just left with a boring and lifeless third person shooter. As much as I hate Gears of War and Uncharted, I would much rather play either one of those games over Mass Effect at this point. Neither Gears nor Uncharted are all that fun, but at least they are not in denial about being mindless third person shooters, and they do what they do better than Mass Effect does.

In closing, don’t trust reviewers that gave this game its undeserved 93/100 metacritic score since they are all actually less qualified than me and you when it comes to writing reviews of videogames. We don’t get gift baskets, add revenue, and free copies of games from video game publishers so at the very least we are going to be far more impartial than the reviews of videogame “journalists.” Trust your own opinion, and the opinions of reputable people who don’t have relationships with video game publishers that would lead them to bias. I would put more faith in the user reviews on metacritic than I ever would in the so called professional reviews. Don't trust the professional reviewers in regards to this (and really any other game), and don't put so much emphasis on the crap ending as nothing in Mass Effect 3 deserves your admiration.

It's really not that bad, people are making a mountain out of a molehill.

You're right but when it comes to a story driven and decision driven game it is at least a solid point lost.

I doubt anyone really regards metacritic highly but it is an eye poping example of how fanboystic enthusiasm dominated the reviews and ratings of the first days.