"Electronics Skill"? What the **** is that supposed to mean?

Exercising and playing RPG's are two activities I tend to quit because they eventually become boring. I realize that many people enjoy RPG's and/or exercising and do not find them boring at all. But these people probably have some disease of which I happily remain unafflicted.

So I figure : why not combine them?

We got my wife a recumbent exercise bike recently and I decided it to give it a shot with a little help of Our Favorite Drug, the video game. It seemed most suited to a more relaxed type of game so I picked up Mass Effect, which I had briefly played (and enjoyed) previously.

So the introduction is over and I'm presented with three possible missions. I pick the first one on the list, and after some (un-tutorialed) control fidgeting I manage to pick one of the mission places and try to go there.

Only I'm stopped.

Evidently there is some mission that is way too important for me to miss, and I'm told to get down to some planet and pick up some drone, right the **** away. And why not? Why should that be hard?

So after some more frustrating (un-tutorialed) control fidgeting I land on the planet.

And I'm in a car.

It's not really a car, it's more like an APC. But I seriously had no idea that I'd ever be driving in this game. The game must as been as surprised as I was because it didn't instruct me on the controls or how I was supposed to find that bloody drone. But I managed to drive the space bus around until I found the drone. On the way I accidentally ran over some robot monkeys and became Notorious or something. Whatever. I get to the drone, and keep pressing buttons (most of which shoot the drone I'm trying to recover) until my guys get out of the car.

So I walk over to the drone, press the little button to examine it ... and the game informs me that my "Electronics Skill" is too low. I did not know I even had something called an "Electronics Skill", but evidently I do, and it is totally inadequate for drone examination.

Now, I'm hoping -- Hoping -- that somehow I got off the beaten track, and when I do the **correct** mission first I'll get all sorts of helpful tutorials on how to drive and find mission objectives, an act which will be no doubt rendered useless by a wide variety of inadequate skills.

But regardless, Bioware : Come On. If you're going to make an MMORPG you need to do way better than this.