Another game joins the ridiculously overrated list.  BioWare is my favorite developer of all time so it saddens me greatly.  Don’t get me wrong, the story and setting are top-notch.  BioWare obviously went to great lengths to develop the entire universe in enormous depth and it shows.  Each major alien race is fleshed out with oodles of information about their history and their progression in the galaxy.  I was particularly taken by the depth of the background content.  The main quest is relatively short but it does take the time to develop some interesting characters.  For the most part, the writing is adept but many of the quests lead to what James Portnow would call “binary choices.”      

          Things really start to go awry in the optional content.  There are many optional planets to explore and quests to do.  Usually, I am a huge fan of extensive optional content but this was terrible and not worth the player’s time.  Once you’ve done one of these quests you’ve done them all.  Every planet and quest was ridiculously redundant.  The same two level designs were rehashed 50 times!  It pained me to complete it all.  Yes, there were very slight variations to some of the quests (mostly meaningless).  ………………….

          Let me walk you through it.  Basically, you are dropped on a planet in a land rover (with awful controls, made worse by the hideously mountainous terrain) and forced to search the planet for an enclosed ‘dungeon.’  Surprise!  It’s exactly like every other area you ever went into with a few random different enemies.  This might have been okay for a couple optional quests but seriously, who thought this would be fun?!  It was incredibly boring, and after 25+ hours of it, I was considering ripping my eyes out.    

          The only optional content that was worthwhile was strewn about the main quest in the mandatory areas.  These areas were actually unique and the quests usually not so laborious.  The graphics are decent and it shows on the more unique levels.  Sadly, much of it is lost on the monotonous planetoids and rehashed levels.  Worst of all, the game would crash randomly almost every hour that I played it.    

          However, the combat system is pretty sound and the controls tight but even the combat becomes completely boring in a few hours.  BioWare throws in a bunch of special abilities like biotics and electronics, yet they are basically indistinguishable and I never really felt like I needed to use any of them.  I just stacked all my skill points in the combat stats and ran through with assault rifles, which was much more efficient anyway.  Moreover, when I actually felt like it would be cool to use an ability; the options to do so were grayed out because the character was “blocked.”  This basically happened all the time and I lost interest after every enemy fell to my assault rifle without protest.  

          I am definitely looking forward to continuing the story in the sequels.  However, I sincerely hope they eliminate the redundancy and work on more engaging gameplay.  Then again, I must deeply praise BioWare for actually going out on a limb and releasing a game based on original IP.  That’s more than I can say for most current AAA developers.