Mass effect articles

As you've undoubtedly heard, the third installment of BioWare's Mass Effect trilogy hit shelves last Tuesday. Being one of the year's most anticipated launches, it's no surprise to see it with an aggregate review score of over 90.

We've benchmarked Mass Effect 3 across three different resolutions with two dozen GPU configurations – including AMD's new Radeon HD 7000 series. We'll also see how the performance scales when overclocking an eight-core FX-8150, along with benching a handful of other Intel and AMD processors.

Here are the real questions everyone has: did my favorite feature from Mass Effect come back? Does my favorite skill from Mass Effect 2 carry over? And what about the romantic relationship I chose, or my favorite companion, or that great gun? Is it my Normandy, my Citadel, my galaxy? Do my choices matter?

Is this, in short, truly the Mass Effect title for which we have all been waiting for so very many interminable months? Yes. Yes it is.

Like a rollercoaster, 2011 was full of transient highs and enduring lows – mostly the latter for PC gamers. The year began with a promising lineup, but title after title fell flat. Determined to redeem themselves, developers have readied yet another tantalizing roster.

In fact, many of last year's most anticipated titles have spilled over into 2012, including Diablo III, Guild Wars 2, Mass Effect 3 and Max Payne 3. As usual, we've assembled a list of the hottest PC games expected to hit shelves over the next 12 months.