LaughingTarget

@Pasha Humans have trouble identifying genders that don't maintain a large visual sexual dimorphism. We're visual creatures and indentify one another by sight. Species that interact with their world with different senses tend to not have this easily identifiable difference. Pandas are difficult to determine gender from a quick glance, as are other non-sight species like dogs and lizards.

To place them into our frame of thought, they're anthropomorphized with a pair of breasts, softer features, and wide hips identifiable by our own species. Otherwise, we couldn't identify with them and no one would play the pandas, lizards, cats, or any other bipedal animal hybrids.

The vile racism against the ghouls bridges well beyond the Fallout universe. Why is he trying to stab sweet, lovable Harold in the face? His baby tree hasn't even grown in yet.

Metacritic would do well with a separate "creme of the crop" type system where the most reliable and long-lived sites have their own separate aggregate along with the universe at large.

@BombProofGIJoe

The Mass Relay destruction doesn't necessarily wipe out the system. That was the case in ME2, but this was a different circumstance. The energy required to produce your blue/green/red beam had to have been drawn from somewhere. I suspect that energy was siphoned out of the relay power source itself, depleting it. That would mean the explosion was local enough it didn't harm any of the planets in the system.

Though with my game, I did wish there was a fourth option. "My fleet of 7,500 assets is pretty much beating the Reapers stupid in space, let them duke it out and we ignore this Crucible thing."

****BEWARE, THERE BE SPOILERS HERE***
****BEWARE, THERE BE SPOILERS HERE***
****BEWARE, THERE BE SPOILERS HERE***

I didn't have a problem with the ending, but how it was paced to that ending. The best way I could describe Mass Effect 3 is "a 40 hour sugar rush". It was a long string of ever escalating bad-assery of exponential magnitude. Thought the opening Earth invasion scene was awesome? Watch the thresher maw eat a Reaper Destroyer. Thought that was awesome? The game throws you the battle between the Quarians and the Geth. Thought it couldn't get crazier? The final invasion with THOUSANDS of freaking ships pouring through the Sol gate just about stunned me with the sheer awesomeness. That battle was beyond crazy. This was on top of easily the tightest and funniest dialogue in the entire series, probably in BioWare's portfolio. It was a whole gigantic pile of awesome. Until...

Some 15 minutes later (after a really intense battle against a half dozen banshees as you defended the missiles), the game just crashes into the credits. I get it, this isn't the last game in the Mass Effect universe, just Shepard's story. There needs to be some open ended-ness. I get that the next story is likely going to take place centuries later as the civilizations re-build the relays and re-establish connection with one another. The best guess I can make is that the legend of Shepard will be passed down on the countless planets he impacted, creating a variety of different forms of God worship in many of them, and that would drive the plot of the re-discovery of the universe. But at least give us SOME closure on the life of Shepard, especially with the Destruction ending with 5,000+ war assets (which I'm assuming is the canon ending given control leaves open the Reapers as villains and synthesis wipes out major realms of conflict) leaving us hanging on Shepard's fate (the guy in N7 armor taking a breath). The game could have given us a couple hours to wind down, possibly taking part in missions to take out pockets of indoctrinated sentients, or an epilogue of the Normandy crew trying to piece together where they ended up. Couldn't be too far from Earth, it was reached there on Normandy FTL alone. What happened to Hackett? Wrex? Or are these just secrets to reveal in the next game?

There were a few niggling problems in the interim, not major though. I'm a Tali fan (don't know how many of us are out there) and thought the appearance reveal was a bit weak. It smacked of the original intent on never revealing her appearance with the late realization that this would piss a few people off.

A story this intense, this exciting, needs a cool-off period. Going from the gigantic space stand off battle to Grandpa Shepard telling a kid a story while staring at a planet (which my best guess is the one the Normandy crashed on) in such a short time span just doesn't work too well.

ME3 was ALMOST perfect. BioWare cleanly closed up many plot points, brought back events from clear back to minor points in the original (I was surprised to be able to have a final conversation with the brother and sister on the child and that the guy finally got his 15 credit refund for his toaster), but kinda dropped the ball at the very end.

I'd personally prefer a Tali film, showing the events leading up to the fated meeting with Shepard during the pilgrimage. It would make up to this Tali fan the half-hearted reveal of what was under that face mask with the bedside photo.

@iceytoa1

Which makes zero sense given the story in the DLC.

@Truant

The suicide rate of Foxconn employees is identical to that of Indianapolis, a city about the same size as the Foxconn employee base. There's nothing out of the ordinary going on there. A huge volume of people are going to generate suicides.

@Zimmy

On the flip side, you can't blame the customer for failing to understand the product. The onus is on the producer to ensure the customer can utilize, enjoy, and otherwise benefit from the product. If not, someone else will and those customers will go there instead. We can't expect the guy paying the bills to make the concessions for you. Time and money is limited, and no one wants to waste either trying to understand your vision or decipher your control scheme. Giving it a chance is just not on the table. If you can't get your customer into the game and enjoying it mostly immediately, don't expect them to go much further and continue buying your product.

Kinect developers need to take note on how Dance Central became such a success. Ease of use, simple and intuitive controls, and plenty of ramp-up difficulty to keep the player rewarded.

@nanowerx

There aren't millions of retailers though. Even a company like GameStop, which seems to be on every street corner and strip mall, only has 6,450 stores - world wide. The other major retailers are Wal-Mart (8,970), Target (1,767), and Best Buy (1,200) - all worldwide numbers - which make up the bulk of the sales. Those three have, using the 5 unit per store average, 91k unsold units. Hardly an astounding number. Even if we take an extreme high end estimate of 80,000 retailers (factoring in online outlets and their different stock structure) averaging 5 units apiece, that's a measly 400,000 unsold units.

We can probably extrapolate that 10 million of those 10.5 are in the hands of customers - as a conservative estimate.