When Mass Effect debuted, I reviewed it for the San Jose Mercury News. After about eight hours with the sci-fi shooter, I gave up and wrote about how the three-way team play just didn’t work for me. My companions were just worthless, and I played it pretty much as a shooting game. Lots of readers piled in and explained that I was an idiot. I had played the game wrong, failing to realize that you could freeze the action and assign tasks to the companions that could easily change the outcome of combat. After they pointed that out, I went back to the game, completed it, and gave it a much better rating. I still argued that the game made it a little too easy for me to go down the wrong path. I was pilloried in the process on the Internet, and it was a humbling experience for a seasoned reviewer.
