I’m kind of half and half on my response here as I don’t completely agree with Greg on the “overrated” status of the games he mentions, but with the exception of KOTOR, I ain’t exactly in love with ’em either, just for different reasons.

Now, when it comes to Knights of the Old Republic, I must respectfully ask Greg where he gets his drugs as this is, hands down one of the best Star Wars games ever made.  Sure the battles sometimes got wonky, but I have three words that makes any problems with the combat magically melt away: dual wielded lightsabers.  Yes, that’s right.  Long blade in the one hand, short in the off and away you went.  Not only could you dual wield lightsabers but you could customize your sabers based on the crystals you put in them to make your blades even more effective.  My on hand was a normal sized purple blade that buffed my light force power and had increased deflections as well as increased damage.  Off hand was a shorter yellow blade that did extra damage to droids and increased my defense.  I was a bad motherfucker.  Droids, soldiers, Sith, it didn’t matter.  I’d cut ’em or deflect a bold in their  face.  In the end they all died.  This was the first game to show you just how powerful the Jedi of old were supposed to be.  None of this “these aren’t the droids you’re looking for” bullshit and meditating for ten seconds to life a rock three feet off of the ground.  These were badass Jedi warriors who kicked ass and took names.  The awesome story twist was just gravy.  The only complaint I had about the game was that the final battle was way too tedious if you undertook it with a character that focused mostly on healing and defensive Force powers and way too easy if you went full on Dark Side.  Oh well, guess it pays to be evil.

Now I found BioShock to be a hell of a lot more immersive than you do, but I played it on the 360 and it ran smooth as silk which helped a great deal.  What I fell in love with about BioShock was Rapture.  The setting was, simply put, amazing.  The fact that they could flesh out this world so well using the audio logs made it even more endearing.  Unfortunately they fell short with the moral choices which didn’t really amount to much at all other than a choice between two equally unsatisfying endings.  I also found the boss batle surprisingly pedestrian for a game that had been doing some pretty innovative things up until that point.  So while I don’t think Greg is completley off the mark for not loving BioShock, I think it’s better than he does and I also thought it was better than Half-Life 2, even if Robert Guillaume wasn’t in it.

Finally we have Mass Effect.  This was a game that I would have loved a lot more had I not gone for the full thousand points.  If you just do one run through the game the combat can be annoying at times, but you can get over it.  By the third time however every time your squadmates spend ten minutes unloading into a wall, or worse, into their squadmate’s back you want to punch someone.  Plenty of games can stand the test of time and be enjoyable no matter how many times you go back to them however this game ain’t one of them.  The MAKO sucks even more when you have to drive it again, the texture pop is even shittier by the twelfth time you run down the same hallway in the Citadel and the long, tedious elevator rides make you want to gouge your eyes out.  Now, that being said, every time I’ve finished this game I have started a new game right up because the last hour is just that thrilling and this is even when I started my third run and knew exactly what was in store for me.  Something about that final trek up the side of the Citadel as a space battle rages around you to taking on Saren with your buffed up squad gets me all a flutter and makes me want to jump right back in.  It’s a shame that the DLC they dropped since the game’s initial release ranged from so-so for Bring Down the Sky to “can I please kick you in the nuts for wasting my time and money?” for Pinnacle Station because instead of getting me excited for ME2, it just made me mad that I had to spend the money on it so that I could keep my perfect score in the game.  Sure that’s just as much my OCD as anything else, but I’d like to know what genius decided that the best idea for DLC was to take the worst part of the game (the combat) and build DLC entirely around it.  What’s next, the Oblivion Conversation Generator?  Oh, you say you’ve seen a mudcrab?  Thrilling stuff.

So yeah, I think Greg is way off base on KOTOR, slightly off base on BioShock and on target with Mass Effect just for different reasons.  All in all it’s not exactly the fires of an epic internet flame war, but it’s a start.