Could have been a 10.....with another 6 months in the oven.
OK, we all know this game has some good stuff going on. It has a better story, voice acting, and dialog than most video games and that is really where the game shines. Aside from that the game is basically a buggy pile of beta. This is clearly a game where the developers spent lots of time and money on some aspects of the game and just had to wrap up the rest quickly to meet a release date.
Nobody can deny the bugs and crappy parts of this game and most professional reviewers do cover them in their reviews, which is informative and important. The problem is, after listing the huge amount of problems with the game, people still tend to score the game in the near-perfect to perfect range, which is not at all reflective of what is actually going on in the game.
You may think I am just nitpicking over numbers because I disagree with the reviews but that is not the case. I am against these praising reviews because they negatively affect us as consumers. Bioware made a pretty good game which has the POTENTIAL to be an amazing game, but released it before it was finished in a buggy incomplete state. When reviewers give this game a 10 and call it "game of the year" that is telling the developers and big companies like EA "We know your game is incomplete and buggy, but that's ok. We will accept this buggy released-too-early game and buy a million copies and give it a 10 anyway." Because of overpraise of games like Mass Effect, game companies know they can lower their production costs and release lower quality games and still make plenty of money. Why would Bioware spend an extra million to further improve their game when they can just meet a holiday deadline and everyone will buy it anyway?
I just want to remind you that I am not bashing this game as crap, but merely not ignoring and accepting it's huge flaws. Praising games like this with a constant flow of 9.5 and 10 scores will only hurt the quality of future games. Stop settling and let the companies know that you expect better for your money.