Just finished Mass Effect 3 this morning. To put it simply, it was the most dissatisfying, ham-fisted, phoned-in ending to a videogame I've ever seen. Given how much I enjoyed the franchise (including ME3, right up until the last few minutes), it really is hard to overstate the extent of my disappointment.

If you want avoid spoilers, stop reading now, because I'm not interested in wording this carefully to avoid it.

After playing through the series, carefully considering the choices I made, on the promise that my choices will affect the final outcome of the whole series, the end is nothing short of atrocious. There's no indication of any of your big choices in the previous games really mattering by this point and, after spending the whole of this game playing politics to forge an alliance against the Reapers, writing wrongs, mending fences, curing pandemics, and reclaiming lost homeworlds, there's really nothing in the final mission or even after it to reflect your efforts. Oh sure, the geth are mentioned during the final battle and the krogan are there too, but you never see either of them in action. I would guess that the Star Wars-esque space battle over Earth looks identical, no matter what you do. (Talking of which, so much for all the realistic space combat touted in the game's codex.) You get to talk to Wrex before charging into battle, but do you get see him leading his krogan against the Reapers? No. It's just you and whatever squadmates you picked, alone, against endless waves of Reaper forces.

The final mission involves getting aboard the Citadel, which has been parked in orbit above London (they never explain how the Reapers moved it from the Widow system to the Sol system, however), so the Crucible, the super weapon that your allies have spent the game building can be connected to it in order to wipe out the Reapers for good. After a Gears of War style charge through ruined city streets, fighting endless waves of Reaper brutes and banshees (even on the easiest setting, you'll go through several clips before you can kill those things--even a rocket launcher doesn't do them much damage), followed by taking down a Reaper with a missile strike, you have to make a suicidal glory charge (and it IS suicidal for whichever two squadmates you picked, so, in my case, goodbye, Garrus and Tali!) towards the Reaper's magical space elevator to get onto the Citadel. But you end up taking a near-direct hit from another Reaper's death ray and, when you come to, your armour's practically been melted off you, you have one lame pistol, and, in true Metal Gear Solid 4 style, you have to go through the tedium of stumbling forward and shooting the occasional husks as they lumber towards you. Once you're on the Citadel, the Illusive Man is there doing a half-arsed impersonation of Saren from the end of the first game; but when the Illusive Man is convinced to shoot himself in the head, he actually stays dead.

Then comes the crowning moment of fail for the whole series. Throughout the game, Shepard is occasionally haunted by a recurring nightmare of a child she/he failed to save on Earth when the Reapers first attacked. Well, turns out this child is actually some kind of artificial intelligence housed inside the Citadel who controls the Reapers. The whole explanation for why the Reapers wipe out all advanced organic life every few thousand years is, apparently, to stop organics from... doing it to themselves... Yeah... saving organic life by destroying it... I think ideas like that are what the phrase "yeah, sure..." was invented for. Oh, but this AI reckons organics will inevitably create synthetics eventually and the synthetics will wipe them out, so it's better for the Reapers to do it every so often, because at least that way, they... preserve organic life... somehow... by melting them down into a liquid to pump into new Reapers... That... makes sense, right...? Right...?

Oh, but wait! Now you have a chance to break the cycle. You're presented with three choices, each one more lame than the last. 1: Take control of the Reapers, like the Illusive Man wanted to do, and... I guess, become like this annoying child AI, but without wiping out all advanced organic life...? 2: Destroy the Reapers, like you always intended to, but doing so will result in destroying the geth and destroying every single mass relay, thereby flinging the galaxy into a dark age without galaxy-wide interstellar travel (conventional FTL still takes years to cover very large distances). 3: Fundamentally alter the nature of life itself by merging organics and synthetics to create a new, utopian future, free from the threat of mass extinction at the hands of rogue synthetics. I chose that option... It sucked so hard, but then, all three choices seemed pretty lame and I'm fairly sure they all meant effective death for Shepard and wouldn't be any more satisfying.

The game ended with a cutscene of the Normandy trying to outrun the blast from the Crucible and failing. Then the crew emerges from the wreck on some idyllic world where all life is partially organic, partially synthetic... and now so are Normandy's crew... Doesn't seem to have fixed Joker's brittle bones, however. Oh yes, and this option ALSO destroyed all the mass relays. So, goodbye galactic civilization as we know it!

I feel completely cheated. After spending three games trying to save galactic civilization, this ending (and any of the endings) was a slap in the face to fans of the series. A lot of folks have already compared with the original ending to Fallout 3 (you die), and some have expressed hope that, like what Bethesda did with Fallout 3, Bioware will release an expansion that gives us a more satisfying ending. Frankly though, the only way to make the ending more satisfying is to remove it and write something better. This was deus ex machina at its absolute lamest and it's actually ruined the entire Mass Effect series for me. I honestly can't see myself re-playing the series ever again at this point, knowing what I'm playing towards. If you want a game that really rewards you for the time spent playing it with a satisfying ending that answers all your questions and ties up all the loose ends, don't play Mass Effect 3. Hell, don't play Mass Effect, period. I probably won't be.