Ah yes, the notorious shamer of trilogies with which every gamer and their dog is no-doubt already intimately familiar with, if only through the disgruntled rantings of their friends. Well-known or not, Mass Effect 3 is guilty of such egregious oversight that it deserves a spot here. The Mass Effect series is about choice. You craft your own story upon a network of decisions that collectively form a vast array of outcomes to which few games can hold a candle. You aren't just Commander Shepard; you're the Shepard you chose to be, and you reside in the universe you sculpted, complete with supporting allies and dynamic conflicts. Everything is cumulative, variable, and most importantly, decided by you. Mass Effect 3 follows this structure until the game's end, at which point it elects to trivialize everything the player has spent dozens of hours working toward by forcing them into one of three cookie-cutter options. Virtually every choice made up until that point is discredited because things would have wound up the same regardless. It sucked when the game released, it still stings now, but we can't just forget about it lest it happen again in the next game.
A freelance games writer, you say? Typically battling his current RPG addiction and ceaseless perfectionism? A fan of horror but too big a sissy to play for more than a couple of hours? Spends far too much time on JRPGs and gets way too angry with card games?
Well that doesn't sound anything like me.
