Yeah, nostalgia aside, KOTORs story and atmosphere was excellent, but the engine was...er, less than ideal. And that's being kind. I didn't have any major problems with it on my old gaming machine, but I knew a lot of people that did.
That being said, we gamers tend to be much more forgiving of buggy gameplay than we are with bad writing/design/aesthetics. Gamebryo engine. Enough said. Despite the exploded gib people, floating heads, bouncing radscorpions, and all the wading in the ground, Fallout: New Vegas is still one of my favorite games.
Comparatively, all of the ME games have been pretty polished, besides the galaxy map bug in the first game. Like I said, I don't utterly despise the ending of ME3. Sure, it could have been better, but after the frankly superb entries of ME1/ME2, the expectations were superhuman. I think it's more likely that instead of just being "bad," it was probably rushed and the devs didn't get to flesh out all the things they wanted to. It's pretty common in development - it was just that the bar was set high. I fear the same will happen to future installments of Half-Life. We've all been waiting so long...well, heck, it's gotta be sublime, right? It'll turn computers into servant androids that will dispense vodka, chocolate chip cookies, and funding for a new season of
Firefly.
On a completely unrelated note that doesn't deserve its own topic: I keep wondering what my title means. 375 K...it's 20% cooler, but 20% cooler than what? 468.75 K seems an arbitrary number. I was expecting 218.52, derived from STP.