It may not have won many end-of-year awards, but BioWare's Mass Effect has at least received an apology from San Jose Mercury News writer Dean Takahashi following his poor review of the sprawling sci-fi RPG.

Here is his original review.
Here is his apology.

Following a wave of reader reaction helpfully outlining exactly where he had gone wrong during his review, Takahashi has duly offered up a lengthy apology to his readers (and creators BioWare) regarding the initial damning assessment of Mass Effect.

Some of Takahashi’s readers have applauded the critical retraction, while some have suggested he should have ignored criticism and remained true to his subjective viewpoint. The bottom line in this case, however, is that professional reviewers offering opinion based on casual assessment that doesn’t take into account all of a given game’s attributes is damaging the credibility of ‘real’ reviewers.

quote Takahashi

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.

mistermostyn via gaming.monstersandcritics.com »