You're 100% right:

When Bioware designed the original ending to Mass Effect 3, they didn't care very much about what they were saying or doing with that design decision.

Thank you for pointing out the obvious.

Let me add to your observation by pointing out that there's a difference between controversial design decisions and decisions which blatantly capitulate to either time constraints due to release deadlines or to demands from the corporate HQ.

@mrdrx Oh great, someone else talking out of their pants-hole.

Considering the hype, the promise, and the hope, anything less than a 9.0 score is damning with (relatively) faint praise.

That's not to say that an 8.5 is a bad score. On the contrary, it's a very good score indicating a well-made game that most fans of the series, as well as most players new to the Diablo franchise, will enjoy playing. It's simply less... than expected.

What probably tipped the score to 8.5 rather than 9.0 is the mandatory online mode. It does dramatically affect gameplay, making hardcore mode basically completely untenable for instance. Simply a sudden spike in latency, not even a full disconnect, is a guaranteed death.

@Aeondeity ...let alone all the spoilers in the comments complaining about spoilers :p

@Dieuserpent MMOs are online only precisely because they occur in a persistent world inhabited by other players. Even single player MMO content is presented in this persistent, shared world. That's not the case with Diablo III or any other similar game.

You fail to recognize that the vast, vast majority of games with single player and multiplayer components allow their single player component to be played without an internet connection.

The entire Diablo III experience can be enjoyed alone because it was designed to allow for solo play. Just because it can also be played with multiple players as well doesn't change this.

@dwringer No, that's just silly. No developer would develop their game to alienate people on purpose just to throw a bone to a competitor.

It's actually sort of an amusing little game. I've only played a few minutes of it, but the style options for player made characters are pretty funny, the aesthetic is true to the show, and show characters plus amusing props and gags are scattered throughout the landscape. Plus, the quests are mostly based on moments from the show or are otherwise what you'd expect from particular characters. The abilities are amusing as well. The equipment looks amusing on your character, but I think that's all it does. Likewise, a class of "social abilities" do nothing more than make your character make crude noises.

I mean look: many of SWTOR's fans play the game SOLELY because of the story elements, which are really an overlay on top of the bland, run-of-the-mill MMO gameplay. Granted, this game is much, much lighter than SWTOR, but it is also free, and in bursts of a few minutes it's fairly funny.

I'm not familiar enough with either the micropayment scheme nor the scope of the game to judge whether the cash market is fair or not.

The in-game advertisement is perhaps a little excessive, with Axe body spray logo bumper stickers slapped onto all the signposts and prominent advertisements for the products in locations like Goldman's Pharmacy. But the thing that really annoys me which is probably linked to advertisers' demands is the chat censor. Family Guy makes unapologetic references to Jesus Christ and feature songs like "I need a Jew," but both the words "Jesus" and "Jew" are censored. No, I'm not anti-semitic nor a Christian-baiter, but this is more than a little ironic, especially given how the show's fans had to fight against pricks at Fox to get that show's sort of humor back on the air.

@DannyBoy2k No, I'm afraid your comment is utter nonsense.

If you'd rather Take Two didn't publish games because they aren't punctual, rather than wait a little longer for very well-polished, engrossing, and fun games to come out, then I'm just plain confused. Are you the dean of a manners school who doesn't actually play games?

Games aren't simple. Sometimes shit happens during their development that takes longer to resolve than expected. It could happen on one of a number of levels, anywhere from gameplay and ultimate player experience to the nuts and bolts of code.

But once a game is out there, it better make a good first impression or it goes belly-up. It doesn't matter that patches may fix them, or that free post-release DLC may complete the game: if it gets bad reviews on release, that game is marked for death.

As the history of game development has repeatedly shown, impatience often enough leads to crappy games. Of course, there is a limit to this, as illustrated by the most extreme case of Duke Nukem Forever (which was delayed many, many times LONG before Take Two took that hot potato). But often enough delays are necessary to make well-received, well-made games.

Frankly, I think publishers should just stop announcing release dates altogether. People are too immature and impatient.

*sploosh*

I haven't played it, but considering what's I've seen and heard, I'm surprised it scored only 7.5.