Mass Effect 3 'gay romance' slammed by Metacritics

Despite positive initial feedback to Mass Effect 3, users of review aggregator site Metacritic gave the hugely-anticipated game a sour score of 3/10. Over 70 percent of the nearly 1,000 reviews on the site gave negative remarks, as of the afternoon of March 8 (Philippine time).

 

Players cited the “dumbing down” of the third installment as the reason for their dismissal of the game, highlighting that the inclusion of “homosexual romances” was detrimental to the story built up from the first two titles of the series.  

 

“This game is a slap in the face to those who have been there since day 1,” said FrostWolf11. “Homosexuality is all fine and dandy, but not when 2 games are suddenly thrown out the window just so a niche of fans can feel like special snowflakes,” he added.

 

“What the hell were they thinking? Putting gay scenes into video games? If I wanted political messages, I’d watch the news. I do NOT want games becoming yet another medium for propaganda,” said ilovegaben, who gave the game a dreaded 0 score.

 

ME3’s multiplayer platform was also an area of concern, as most of the fans thought that the strength of the ME series was its single-player story. One fan called the multiplayer gameplay “complete garbage,” while others thought it was just a way to “attract some of the Call of Duty kiddies to play it.”

 

The Day 1 downloadable content (DLC) entitled “From the Ashes”, which required an extra $10 of payment to unlock an important portion of the game, also miffed the fans. The DLC adds an extra Prothean party member and reveals more about the believed-to-be-extinct Prothean race, which is central to the ME storyline. However, according to a report on Kotaku.com, the unusually low rating on Metacritic might simply have been the result of a concerted mass action by some Metacritic users. "Many of the [Metacritic] users appear to have reviewed no other games, apparently creating accounts specifically to give poor marks to the latest Mass Effect," Kotaku.com pointed out. For its part, Metacritic has said that it is looking closely into the matter, having gone so far as to delete some reviews that have violated the site's terms of use. "We will continue to monitor user reviews and take the steps needed to ensure our users both comply with [our terms of use] and do not have to read other reviews which break [our rules]," Metacritic editor in chief Marc Doyle told Kotaku.com in a statement.

 

Meanwhile, mainstream reviews still hold ME3’s score at around 9.0 to 9.5 out of 10, giving merit to the multiplayer feature; the game’s improved graphics engine; and the refurbished combat system. 

 

ME3 is also still reportedly a strong contender for Game of the Year. — TJD, GMA News