The Impact of Returning Mass Effect 3

It appears the hate mail and outrage over the ending to Bioware’s legendary series has reached a fevered pitch. As more and more gamers tweet, write emails, and grumble, a few retailers have decided to lend a sympathetic ear and let gamers return their opened copies. But what impact will that have on the industry?

[young7yang]

just fix the PS3 version of the game.. its really unplayable... i have not even experienced the ending because i wont play beyond the mars mission due to the supper lag and choppiness in the frame-rate... all those reviewrs out there who over look these flaws should be fired.. how on earth can you give a game such a high praise in the graphics department on the ps3 when its clearly broken and buggy.. games like uncharted 3, final fantasy XIII-2, gundam extreme vs and killzone 3 all look far better then mass effect 3 and they all run at about 30-60 frames per second without the fear of crashing my system. only after i finish the game will i be able to complain about the ending like everybody els

[SageHonor]

Pff you havent even touched on the freezing, bad animation, buggyness when doing side questions, glitching clipping, inconsistent textures, and all those other tech issues many reviewers didnt point out..

[young7yang]

your right.. but I stoped playing after the mars mission... my system ended up doing a hard freeze.. i wont touch the game again untill a new update is available... but good point!

[AusRogo]

My ps3 has frozen so many times on mass effect 3. Mass effect 2 was fine. And this is the only game that does it. Froze in multiplayer the other day and wiped my stats progression. The frame rate didnt ruin my experience, the freezing did. Fuck bioware.

[Nimblest-Assassin]

The only time the game has had problems for me is rarely during conversations

and occasionally in MP where I must perform a hard reset, other than that it runs well for me on PS3.

[Godmars290]

It teaches a game dev who's put up the appearance of being clever not to try and be especially - stupidly - clever with a Lost-like ending of their game? Especially when they said they wouldn't.

[SlowBurn]

It isn't ' unplayable' by any stretch but it does have noticeable frame rate,quality issues.Even a bandwagon kid could see that.

[tigertron]

The only issue I've experienced is one freeze and the frame rate. Nothing unplayable though and an improvement to the PS3 version of ME2.

[listenkids]

I'm blinded by facts? Ok, I didn't finish the game nor did I attempt to play it because it was that unplayable. Oh wait, I'm going from what the recent trends are indicating, I also hate the ending for what reason? I don't know, I can't form my own opinion.

Where was this with KOTOR2, an unfinished, buggy game.
Alpha Protocol, unifinished buggy game.
Fallout 3, Skyrim, Oblivion.

It's the Bioware hate bandwagon and it doesn't make you cool to jump on it.

The hating and demands for change is by the minority, 20,000 signed petition opposed to almost 2 million sales.

Fuck you all.

[Baka-akaB]

What are you even going on about ?

Kotor 2 was vastly criticized for that reason .

And Alpha Protocol was a big flop .

The rest of your list doesnt even feature a story worth remembering to begin with , as it aint their focus , and was quite criticised enough for their bugs .

Not even hating on ME3 or Biwoare btw , i just dont see your point there .

PS : saw your "erased" post up there . I'll only agree that the game is more than playable for most .

[Godmars290]

From what I hear Alpha flopped because of its controls and game mechanics. Otherwise the story and RP elements are good.

[Baka-akaB]

yeah but it's now far too common with Obsidian . It's totally their fault , as they could have done better and be held in greater esteem than Bioware (not deserving it totally imo) or the deus ex HR eidos team .

[Pintheshadows]

Blame Sega for Alpha Protocol, not Obsidian. They clearly had excellent ideas but Sega just messed them about constantly throughout development.

This has been a comment from the solitary member of the Alpha Protocol fanclub.

Yeah, I liked it.

[Baka-akaB]

I can't blame sega when they have the same developement issues every game since Kotor 2 . And when Sega could have just kept the alien game and cancelled that

hell i also especially remember this bit from an ex staff member , around the time of release :

"The Executive Producer for the game, Chris Parker (also an owner of the company), seemed to think he was the world's greatest designer ever, and created all these absolutely shitty systems and wouldn't listen to any of the real designers or devs about things that just didn't work," the post states. "And you can't exactly argue with one of the owners of the company when he doesn't want to listen." He says Parker's micromanagement made other producers step back from the project.

No company should so consistently poor at finalising their product, like obsidian for a while seemed to do , everywhere they went .

I dont hate them mind you , i vastly prefer their take on fallout over the imo insipide FA3 , but they have too many tech issues and blame to pass around .

[Robotronfiend]

It's not unheard of at all. Amazon.com took returns of Naughty bear (for the progress blocking technical glitches) Rage as well. Amazon is customer service done right. I returned Rage and they even paid for the return shipping and refunded the money, instead of giving me amazon.com credit.

[Double_O_Revan]

Its just a shame that Amazon is the one that has to refund the cash when the game is returned, and not EA.

[PooEgg]

The impact??? Perhaps game companies will start thinking twice before releasing their games and do better.

Myself, I won't return ME3, because I enjoyed all but the last 10 minutes of it, but I still think that the option should be available for people who are truly dissatisfied with their purchase.

I honestly think that the return policies for games - in general - are totally unfair. I do understand that some gamers are sneaky jerks and if they could get away with it they would buy a game, finish it, love it, but still return it, and so things are what they are. Yet I still wish games had a 24 hour window in which you could return a game you hated (or found too buggy) without question. Or course those short games could still be played and returned within that window, but if you create a game that can be played that quickly perhaps you deserve to have your games returned.