My mother bought me Mass Effect 3 yesterday, and yesterday I also finished Mass Effect 2. I have very mixed feelings about the game. On the one hand, I felt very easily connected to all of my party members. BioWare does a consistently great job creating characters to whom you are instantly drawn, and each character is so unique and wonderful, it adds a great deal to the entire experience. 

However, I found the game entirely too short. I completed as many side missions as I could find, but the majority of the game seemed devoted to the loyalty missions, and then the three "core" missions, and that fell flat. There also was a lack of party dialogue. In the Dragon Age series, I've always felt that there was enough party dialogue to keep me happy, and to make me feel like I really knew my companions. But in Mass Effect, I was only able to have one or two conversations to get to know my teammates, and the romance was pathetic (I chose to romance Garrus). I got so tired of waiting for each level of the Normandy to load just to end up hearing "I'm busy, can we talk later?" 

Overall, BioWare is still a company I admire a great deal, and I will finish out the series. It just isn't my favorite, and I'm surprised that ME2 got as much praise as it did. 

I need to finish reading The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents today. I also bought Dan Brown's new book (Inferno), and I am reading more Terry Pratchett for fun.