Essentially what I entered in the vote comments which have yet to be reviewed / seen on the main page:

quote:

One must ask what systems the reviewers used to play the game, or if it was even supplied by Bioware or EA. Why? Because the game is highly UNSTABLE, with a plethora of bugs including FPS crawl, GPF's, unexpected system reboots, termination of other background processes, and in one attempt to run it, potential filesystem corruption as Fdisk had to repair my primary HD. Of course "your mileage may vary" but the huge number of game killing (and possibly system killing) bugs abound in is premiere release.

Gave it a ZERO (0) rating until I can actually get far enough into the game to sample the gameplay . . . .

I usually wait 3-6 months (or longer) to purchase any new game, software, or allow OS/software patches or drivers. However, I bought the game on the strength of the reviews here at Metacritic.

Unfortunately, the game runs like a blind drunken hippo in a glassware shop. In other words, its incredibly unstable, and bugs, both gamekillers and system affecting are being experienced by nearly everyone, Intel or AMD, Nvidia or ATI.

Of course it must be said my system deviates from the current "standard" (if such exists) since I'm running Quad SLI with a 7000 series Nvidia board:

Hardware
ASUS P5N32-SLI Premium - Intel E6600 2.4 Ghz C2D
2GB Corsair DDR2 XMS2 Extreme
2x Nvidia 7950GX2-1GB (Quad SLI)
Seagate 320GBx2 Barracuda's (RAID0)
Creative X-FI XtremeGamer
Logitech G15 Keyboard + Z550 5.1 Speakers
CM Stacker 830 w/Aquagate R80 CPU Liquid Cooling

Software
Windows XP Professional SP2
Online Armor Firewall
Nvidia Display Driver(s) V175.16.

Desktop resolution is 1280x1024 32bit @ 60Hz

DirectX 9.0c (4.09.0000.0904)
CL Xtreme Gamer driver v.6.0.1.1304 (2/22/2008)
Drivers for the Logitech G-15 Gaming Keyboard / LCD Display

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The game looks fantastic, but I can't even get into it far enough to experience the gameplay. If you decide to "roll the dice" in purchasing it, all I can say is, good luck!

Eh, the fault lies not with ME but with Win XP/DirectX 9.0 and my SLI.

And with Nvidia, who yet again suckered me into believing their hype. "Oh, sure, it's SLI ready!".

Finally, due to being unable to run ME, or GOW anymore, removed my 2nd video card. Upgrading to Vista is not an option for me (won't go there until kicked & dragged). ME now runs okay, at least far enough to get into the game.

I really like a good story, and a game that is really wide open and allows me to explore new worlds and whatnot. I don't know much about Mass Effect. How open ended is the gameplay?

A good story often requires fairly linear play (or seems to). Can't make any kind of definitive judgment as I'm still in the early chapters. There are a lot of places to explore, and it would seem at one point you can select your ship's destinations (probably similar to using mass transit or elevators at space stations and the like).

Graphics are pretty stellar (pun intended) even on one card. As far as the story goes, I like it so far, its interesting and filled with intrigue and drama.

I think that the game has good idea but it was too soon released.

Game rally sucks me in and enjoyed the game untill I became Spectre and was able to start Exploring the Galaxy. After that point game is disapointment.

Game developer should have added more content to it before publishing it.There is only one big landable base where you can get equipment and do minor quests in whole huge Galaxy.

And this game also have very annoying (causes those slowdowns)copyprotection systen which constantly checks that I don't have carcked game. This is really stupid because this only causes problems to buyed game owners.