I used to be a massive Bioware fan and can you blame me? Baldur's Gate, Neverwinter Nights, Jade Empire, Dragon Age and Mass Effect were all amazing series; well apart from Dragon Age 2, that was just downright terrible. My point is they made good games and were well known for having good stories in their games. Now I know a lot of fans had mixed feelings about the ending for Mass Effect 3 but I personally enjoyed the ending and you have to give some points to Bioware for actually listening to their fans and adding some more meat to the ending. They did anger a few more people by stating that Mass Effect 4 would not feature Commander Shepard, but who knows what they'll do with the next instalment in the series? All that being said, Bioware have managed to lower my opinion of them with their latest DLC for Mass Effect 3 - Citadel. I personally hate DLC with a passion so fierce it makes EA employees wet themselves, but I guess I can work my head around DLC that's released a few months after the game's release. The game's been selling well, the fans what more things to do in the game and the developers and publishers want to line their pockets with more paper. From Ashes was an insult to people that didn't purchase the special editions of the game, but as I bought the super shiny edition twice it didn't bother me that much. Leviathan didn't exactly improve the situation giving us barely an hour or two's worth of gameplay. Sure it added an actual functioning Reaper to your forces, but by then I'd pretty much recruited every single person in the galaxy and forced myself through enough multiplayer missions to have this Reaper not make a difference. The Omega DLC actually improved the situation for me, I rather enjoyed playing through it and seeing the good old sarcastic ego-driven Shepard back in action. That seemed to be the end of Mass Effect 3 though, bar a few more play-throughs over the next few years it was time to let the dust settle on my Origin account (not like I'm going to be using it to play Sim City, I'm still trying to connect). It came as somewhat of a surprise that when I was trawling my way though YouTube I saw that there was going to be one last DLC to pop out from between the bosoms of EA. Actually that's a lie, there was no surprise at all. It's EA, I'm surprised we haven't got ten more pieces of DLC popping out daily from them. In fact, wouldn't it be a fair shout to have them re-release Mass Effect 3 next year with perhaps a few different costumes and some new squad mates? I'm sure James Vega could be sent on a 4 month loan to Cerberus, perhaps a controversial showdown between the Reapers and the Geth? Perhaps on a pre-determined battleground? Maybe around 130 yards in length with two nets at either end? No, let's not be silly now. I digress though, this isn't going to be an article about how EA have ruined gaming for everyone and have ensured that any game they get their hands on will be ruined. No, this is an article about how Citadel DLC has made me lose any respect for Bioware. As I've mentioned, I've always put Bioware up on this pedestal purely because of how intriguing the story is in all of their games. Bar Dragon Age 2, I've enjoyed every game that Bioware has pushed out but this latest DLC for Mass Effect 3 felt...well...it felt dry. I'm all up for continuing Shepard's story through different DLC and whilst the new features they added were pretty fun at first, the novelty wore off and made me remember what they had done with the story. It wasn't the slapstick comedy, or the cheesy one-liners; no sir. It was the fact that they took their fans to be idiots. Whilst I'll agree that quite a few Call of Duty players are two shakes short of being institutionalised (I'd say the vast majority, but I guess a few of you would get a tad angry about that) (I also want to say the vast majority of you would get angry again here but it's time to pop out of these brackets) I believe, or hope that Mass Effect players are on a different level. Shepard's first one-liner brought a smirk to my face and the playful banter with the squadmates, whilst causing said smirk to diminish, at least kept the smirk on my face. The plot twist didn't catch me off-guard and whilst being a novel idea, for the ME universe at least, I felt that Bioware could have put a lot more effort into it. A small part of me wants to put the blame completely on EA and pretend they were rushing Bioware because their gold jaguars needed their caviar topped up, but sadly I need to wake up and smell the bacon burning. Having a party for the ME characters was a good idea, especially as I was at the final stage of the ME3 game, and having your romance option turn up a bit more somewhat improved the ending for me. Actually let me go off on a tangent here for a second, you see in ME1 I romanced Ashley and when she gave me the whole "Oh....don't have enough time to call me, but you can die and be brought back to life by Cerberus" skit I decided to go with Miranda. Being able to see Miranda again in ME3 was great and meeting in the citadel made me feel as if she was going to be involved more, evidently I haven't been paying my EA subscription. Do you get to see her before you head off to tackle the Reapers and quite possibly die? Nope, you have a quick two minute phone call an awkward goodbye and then you die. I don't know about you Bioware, or whether EA employees can express an emotion like love; but if there's a good chance I'm going to die, I'd ring up my other half, seal the apartment for as long as I have shore leave and emerge days later with a sever protein deficiency. Anyway, my point is that Bioware get some points for involving your romance option a bit more, but that's it no more points. I really don't want to ruin the DLC for you anymore if you haven't played, Bioware have done that enough. If they had released this DLC first, perhaps given us Omega afterwards or cooked up something better then I wouldn't be complaining. Yet, for a DLC that is effectively the end of a five year series it's nothing short of an insult to the fans. The plot is at best mediocre, the jokes miss the target completely and aren't funny, the character's lines are just downright bland (When Tali gets drunk she spends 5 minutes talking about cheese) and the added mini-games and options aren't nearly enough to cover up this blunder. It seems Bioware had no idea what they were doing with this DLC and it lacks the "je ne sais quoi" that they usually have in their games. It's as if they're happy with the money they've made, don't care enough about the fans to keep them around for Mass Effect 4 and rolled out a dribbling mess because they had to. I have one thing to say to you Bioware, if you're happy dropping your fans like that then we're happy dropping you. Besides, I still have Square Enix they're going to be releasing FF Versus.....someday....