Mass Effect BioWare Montreal's Mass Effect: Andromeda - where element zero meets trisomy 21

[Infinitron]

lol

 

[Doktor Best]

BioWare: 'Mass Effect is certainly not dead'

Gamble says that despite the criticism levied at Mass Effect: Andromeda, BioWare has learned from its perceived mistakes—"some specific tactical things like faces, for example, that was one of the hot-button rallying items for Andromeda..."

some specific tactical things like faces, for example

tactical things like faces

tactical things like faces

tactical

faces

It could be that it was a freudian slip and he wanted to write "technical" instead of "tactical" or the guy saying it had that slip. One cannot be sure of course since a lot of these guys are just plain retarded.

Dont you guys see those faces were deliberately implemented after Bioware realized what a giant turd andromeda is? They did this in order to steer the public outcry away from the deeper lingering problems with the narrative and gameplay towards a more superfluous problem one can easily put blame on some intern scapegoat. It was a tactical decision, hence the term tactical faces.

 

[cvv]

lol

Seems he has no friends to tell him to stop posting.
Can't decide if it's more sad or pathetic.

 

[fantadomat]

The faces and the glitches were the only good thing about the game. Without them the game is even worst.

 

[RNGsus]

I always did say the Reapers were the good guys.

 

[Padzi]

Andromeda was really bad. The best example of how bad it was... that museum thing (?) were you could talk to a bunch VI's of different Milky Way races that were designed as introduction to the lore for the aliens from Andromeda and obviosly new players. Krogan VI brags about having 4 testicles and the Human VI insist on aliens trying ice cream. I hope the Angara choked on both of them...

 

[Atlantico]

Andromeda was really bad. The best example of how bad it was... that museum thing (?) were you could talk to a bunch VI's of different Milky Way races that were designed as introduction to the lore for the aliens from Andromeda and obviosly new players. Krogan VI brags about having 4 testicles and the Human VI insist on aliens trying ice cream. I hope the Angara choked on both of them...

I thought the museum thing was actually awesomely funny. It was just full of lies, propaganda and half-truths on the history and culture of all the Milky Way races.

Knowing the entire ME history and listening to those VIs, you know they're full of it. You know its propaganda. You know its lies.

It was kind of like listening to Kwan "history" about themselves, freedom and democracy lol

IMO, like a lot of things in MEA, they're quite edgy and under the radar.

 

[Falksi]

It LIVES.......

 

[unfairlight]

God I fucking hate that gook

 

[Lacrymas]

Oh, it's definitely dead, Jim. How much corpse juice they can squeeze out of the cadaver to pollute the world is another matter.

 

[aweigh]

inb4 bioware sees the success of MMO FPS genre and copies it with their ultra-advanced entry into the burgeoning genre except they make it on a shit engine and due to corporate mismanagement spend over-budget and fail to meet deadlines while making it so that when it finally does launch the bubble has already burst on the genre they want to cash-in with and the normies are already inside the next bubble that happens to be dumbed down arena shooters thus leaving their overcooked turkey of a game with no customers or appreciable market and certainly with no good-will from former fans

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

i can totally see a mass effect battleground where the last two players have to romance each other. bonus points if you take it in the ass.

 

[Yosharian]

I think he was saying the over-reliance on their face scanning tech instead of proper animators was a tactical mistake. Granted that was an ordered from on high by people who didn't even see it in action hence why we got all those great my face is tired memes.

I think it had more to do with lazy/inexperienced animators/texture designers hired for their social justice cred and not their skills.

Andromeda was really bad. The best example of how bad it was... that museum thing (?) were you could talk to a bunch VI's of different Milky Way races that were designed as introduction to the lore for the aliens from Andromeda and obviosly new players. Krogan VI brags about having 4 testicles and the Human VI insist on aliens trying ice cream. I hope the Angara choked on both of them...

I thought the museum thing was actually awesomely funny. It was just full of lies, propaganda and half-truths on the history and culture of all the Milky Way races.

Knowing the entire ME history and listening to those VIs, you know they're full of it. You know its propaganda. You know its lies.

It was kind of like listening to Kwan "history" about themselves, freedom and democracy lol

IMO, like a lot of things in MEA, they're quite edgy and under the radar.

....

Wow, dude.

 

[RepHope]

It LIVES.......

EA said Dead Space wasn’t dead. Nobody is going to come out and say shit like “Yep the franchise is kill, sorry fucktards, you’ll have to go elsewhere for your gf/bf simulator distraction from your pathetic existence”. Anthem is Mass Effect’s replacement.

 

[Reinhardt]

It LIVES.......

It's not dead, it's just smell.

 

[Correct_Carlo]

Playing this for the first time. I loved the original Mass Effect trilogy and played through them all 3 times, so this has been a disappointment so far. On the plus side, I think the gameplay is well done. Combat is possibly the best of the series, while I actually like the open worlds. The only problem is the plot and characters. This game has a brilliant premise. They could have made a really great game out of colonists attempting to survive in a hostile, alien, world. The only problem is that it never seems like they are in an alien world. They immediately encounter an alien race who basically looks human and they have no problem communicating with them or interfacing with their technology. All the new alien races are dull. I also can't bring myelf to care about any of the companions, who all just seem like reduxes of older companions. I hear it gets better after the 3rd planet, but there's nothing really that's grabbed me thus far. I don't know if I'll finish it or not.

 

[Correct_Carlo]

So I've played a bit more, or more than a bit more actually, and I legit hate this game now. Biggest issues:

1. The side-quests are largely dull. And not only that, but there are scores of them, each duller than the last. Despite this, you really can't ignore them because they are everywhere. This is the absolute worst game to play if you suffer from gaming OCD. My impulse is to mop up all the quests on a given planet before moving to the next, and holy hell does that ruin the game.

2. The companions start out dull and never get interesting. What made the original Mass Effect trilogy's characters so great is that you weren't just getting to know the characters, but you were getting to know their alien species as well. In Andromeda, you already know who the alien species are and how they work. Likewise, each species no longer has its unique problems that were tied into the overall plot of the original trilogy (i.e. the genophage, the geth, etc, etc), which ends up just making them all interchangeable and loses sight of what makes them all unique. If you think of the original Mass Effect, it had more strange and interesting alien species than it knew what to do with, given that many ended up just being random NPCs on the citadel. Andromeda has none of that.

3. TERRIBLE QUEST DESIGN! I put that in all caps because so many of the main quests in this game have you running from planet system to planet system, returning to the tempest to check your e-mail, or running all over the fucking map just to advance the quest in entirely inconsequential ways. Given that transitioning between planets is a total clusterfuck of unskippable cut-scenes, with transitions often taking up to 2 minutes including loading times, this gets old incredibly fast. The companion quests are the worst offenders. The Krogan's quest, for example, has almost 10 completely dull and inconsequential tasks you have to check off on myriad number of planets before you even get to the meat of what his story is about. The original trilogy's method of just talking to NPC's between missions before finally getting their mission was so much more elegant. I find that I'm so frustrated with all the bullshit of finally getting to the meat of the companion missions, that once I do I no longer care and just want to get it over with.

4. Awful level design. This ties into the flaws in quest design, but the designers really made some fucking stupid decisions when designing the levels. You have to go through so many hubs and loading screens just to get to where you are going that it seems like 90% of your play time is traveling to quests, rather than actually playing the quests. This is one thing about Andromeda that really makes me appreciate ME2 and ME3. Both of those games were very mission based, with a few easily navigable hubs in between, which allowed you to cover tons of story and character development in a very small amount of playtime.

5. Boring main plot. The main plot is just dull and has zero of the urgency that the original trilogy had. The main villains are a dull retread of the collector's, assimilating alien species to create their race. And the need to establish colonies on planets never seems particularly pressing or urgent either. I will probably finish the game, because I'm so far in, but I don't give 2 fucks about what will happen. Which is a shame as the original trilogy had one of the more engaging plots of any RPG I've ever played.

 

[J1M]

I strongly disagree about one point. A Mass Effect game without a sense of urgency caused by a galaxy-level threat would be great. When everything's an extinction-level event it is difficult to deliver on the fantasy of Space Cop or write a coherent sequel. The universe is big enough that things can matter for other reasons.

 

[Correct_Carlo]

J1M That's a good point, actually. I've heard it said that "Mass Effect" was "Star Wars," while "Andromeda" is "Star Trek." I think that's definitely true in terms of the types of stories they tell. All of the side quests in the original trilogy were very much tied into the main quest, while the side quests in ME:A are allowed to do their own things more. I do think Mass Effect as Star Trek would be a cool idea for an RPG, I just don't think this game had good enough writing or new enough ideas to make that concept interesting.

Anyhow, I finished the game. I didn't really want to, but I'd invested so many hours into it I felt obligated. The plot does pick up slightly toward the end, but I was never particularly taken with the main plot. I did end up enjoying a few of the companion quests, especially Peebee's, who I think is the most interesting of the characters.

All in all, it's a 2 out of 5 star game, which could possible rise to a 2.5 star game depending on how you play it. There are a few things that are enjoyable about it, but I think the trick to enjoying it is only playing the main quest and the companion quests, and leaving most other stuff untouched. The only problem with this is that you get quite a few rewards from doing the settlement quests, so they are very difficult to avoid, but they are also the most tedious and repetitive part of the entire game (drive all over to solve puzzles and turn on 3 pylons per planet, then descend into the vault to turn on the atmosphere processor, solving even more puzzles, many of which are just tedious bits of hitting the switches in the right order). I did enjoy combat much more once I had done all those quests, as I had the skill points and research necessary to get the guns and skills I needed to make the game fun.

If anyone does decide to play this for the first time, I'd highly recommend getting two mods. There's one mod that fixes some major game killing bugs that Bioware never bothered to fix (I only downloaded it after basically getting stuck in the middle of a quest due to a well known bug that locks you in a room forever and doesn't let you advance). There's also another mod that shortens the unskippable planet "take-off/landing" cutscenes which I discovered far too late, as it would have saved me tons of time.

 

[Reinhardt]

If anyone does decide to play this for the first time, I'd highly recommend

- don't. Better spend your time on something productive. Like writing PoE review for codex.

 

[Falksi]

So I got this on the cheap and decided to give it a go before indulging in the wonderous world of E-L-E-X.

Got to say, I really, really enjoyed the early game. Combat was dumb-fun, the story moved along swiftly enough, and it did enough well with the "Space explorer" vibe to set things up so that I'd plenty to look forward to.

However, after returning to it about 6 or 7 times and sinking a further 10-15 hours into it the whole things is really starting to drag. The only real fun power is "charge", with the rest being fairly similar or mundane, and there's no other powers which I've found so far which really compliment charge either.

The team-mates are fairly shite & bland, the "RPG" hubs are lauaghble sparse and just too big for their own good, as you wander round groups of none-interactive folk looking for a rare person to talk to (this really highlights how much better the old JRPGs did this) but worst of all the quests are SO fucking bland it's unreal. I mean I know DA:I was shite with "fetch X goods" but I think ME:A tops it for quests which are even less memorable tbh.

This really isn't a bad game, it's just another example of spreading things way too thin and trying to make things so realsitic that they become boring.

 

[Zarniwoop]

P. Much.

It has none of the soul of the old Mass Effects, and that's saying a lot.

However the most powerful ability is Concussive Shot, or whatever they call it. Very useful against squiddies, or those floating fucks with their shield orbs, the only things that ever killed me on medium difficulty. Drops them to the ground for a few seconds and your KKKrazy KKKrogan friend can take them out.

Also new to Andromederp: companions actually worth a shit in combat.

Also, spolier alert: The hottest girl is a lesbo.

 

[Correct_Carlo]

I had great fun playing a stealth combat build. Shotgun + Turbocharge + Invisible + any passives that increase damage while hovering. I'd jump into combat and take everyone out with my shotgun on turbocharge while hovering, then activate invisibility and wait for my skills to reset before doing it again. By the end of the game, with tech tree passives, you can have skills reset almost instantly, provided you keep you weight low. Which means that you can go in invisible and get the added cloaking damage on top of all the other damage buffs. This made fighting architects super easy as you can destroy their legs on a single clip of ammo by just hovering next to them with a shotgun and turbocharge activated.

I'd definitely say that ME:A has the funnest combat of the series, although I missed ME3's slow down effect when aiming the sniper rifle. Its absence made the sniper way less fun.

 

[Falksi]

I had great fun playing a stealth combat build. Shotgun + Turbocharge + Invisible + any passives that increase damage while hovering. I'd jump into combat and take everyone out with my shotgun on turbocharge while hovering, then activate invisibility and wait for my skills to reset before doing it again. By the end of the game, with tech tree passives, you can have skills reset almost instantly, provided you keep you weight low. Which means that you can go in invisible and get the added cloaking damage on top of all the other damage buffs. This made fighting architects super easy as you can destroy their legs on a single clip of ammo by just hovering next to them with a shotgun and turbocharge activated.

I'd definitely say that ME:A has the funnest combat of the series, although I missed ME3's slow down effect when aiming the sniper rifle. Its absence made the sniper way less fun.

That's pretty much how I aim to play combat-wise, but I don't know if I can be arsed to continue to a point where I've enough skill points to enable me to do so tbh.

 

[Drax]

I played it drunk.