So the 360 eked out a victory over the supply-constrained Wii and is now 'only' 10 million behind in the US. *golf clap* 40 more months like this and they might actually catch up in unit sales, not that they'll ever catch up in profits LOL.

Wow, the Mac announcement and now this? R.I.P. Games for Windholes Live.

Sure, I own and have played the following.

Huge Fan
Shadow Complex
The Orange Box (and Portal: Still Alive)
Trials HD
Pac-Man Championship Edition

Decent Games
Crackdown
Dead Rising
Geometry Wars
Braid

Just OK
Gears of War (both)
Mass Effect (both)

It's also worth noting that I put a ridiculous number of hours into both GTA IV and Fallout 3 and all their respective DLCs on 360, along with Far Cry 2 and Bully: Championship Edition.

Even though I finished Halo:CE (twice?) and played most of Halo 2 on XboxFat, I didn't get more than an hour or two into Halo 3 before putting it aside. Same with Lost Planet: Colonies Edition.

Multiplatform games that I tried on 360 but ended up putting aside include Bioshock, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare and Oblivion.

Any other questions?

Wow, what a coup for the 360.

Even though I don't like Microsoft I am more than happy to praise a good game that comes out on its system. In this case, however, I really meant everything I said in my post.

The repetitive, barely-disguised-corridor level design was bad, most of the changes/tweaks to the play mechanics were bad (especially the idiotic new 'clip' system), and the mind-numbing planet-scanning minigame managed the seemingly impossible by making me long for the klutzy Mako missions from ME1.

But the part that really made me feel sort of dirty for even finishing the game was the writing, which elicited no end of groans and eye-rolling with its relentless cliché-edness. (And I must say I find it telling that the 'real sci-fi author' you mentioned seems to have written nothing but videogame novelizations.)

Believe me, I feel the same sort of 'did we play the same game?' incredulity when I read the reviews (not just Edge's), which is why I started my post the way I did. Maybe I don't like western RPGS or maybe I just don't (any longer) like BioWare RPGs, but either way I genuinely thought this game was mediocre, platform preferences notwithstanding.