Mercury News Apologizes for Negative Mass Effect Review

In a surprising turn of events, Mercury News’ Dean Takahashi has renounced the negative Mass Effect review he posted a few days ago and has apologized to both BioWare and Microsoft.

When so many readers wrote in to tell me that I messed up my review of Mass Effect, I had to take a second look. It turns out, you were right. I was wrong. I owe an apology to you for writing a bad review. I also apologize to BioWare, which made a better game than I thought, and gulp, to Microsoft. The game play is not as flawed as I thought. I’ll leave the earlier review up for everyone to ridicule as they like, but I’ll add some new thoughts here that acknowledge the mistakes in it. My new take should help gamers who might make the same mistakes. It has taken me a while to admit this because I haven’t been free to replay the game during the holidays. But I have to fess up because blaming the developers for my own shortcomings isn’t something a respectable and professional reviewer, as I pretend to be, should do. In fact, I am a very part-time game reviewer, as it is a small but fun part of my responsibilities at the Merc. As Cassius said, (The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars but in ourselves.) I really thought that my experience must be the same mainstream Mass Effect experience as everyone else’s, but it seems I may be off in the weeds.

This is as good a way to start the new year as any. Mea culpa. This is as colossal a correction as I’ve ever had to do. I tried out the suggestions for replaying the mission on Feros. And I found that I was playing the game without exploiting some of the fundamental keys to the game. The suggestions from NJ Mom, Mark, DontMakeMeLaugh, Maximus, Blaze Lord, Brian C., Ryan, Menarek, and others were all very helpful. Thank you for those recommendations. The only thing left to debate is my level of stupidity as a gamer who didn’t pay attention to the rules. Thanks to Slippy for coming to my defense but I over-reached with my criticism here. I still have beefs, but we’ll save that for later on.

Nothing like sticking to your guns.