July review of a game I played in March. Good pacing, Chris.
As we all know, I generally have a pretty hate/hate relationship with the majority of science fiction. There are a handful of shining examples through various media that will grab and in some cases even hold my attention, but they tend to be pretty few and far between. With games that is just as relevant. If it has star or space in its title I'd say 70% of the time I don't even bother giving it a second glance. I don't care what color Spock's beamsaber is in Battlestar.
As we all know, I generally have a pretty hate/hate relationship with the majority of science fiction. There are a handful of shining examples through various media that will grab and in some cases even hold my attention, but they tend to be pretty few and far between. With games that is just as relevant. If it has star or space in its title I'd say 70% of the time I don't even bother giving it a second glance. I don't care what color Spock's beamsaber is in Battlestar.
Which is what made it so surprising that this series managed to actually engross me to the point of being a fan of it. Because to be totally honest I don't think I actually even really liked the first one, I didn't think it was a great game. I had just bought a XB360 at the time and was told this was a game worth getting. But once I actually got into it I'll be damned if I didn't fall for this universe. I still feel the second one was the best in this series and it sure felt like the book was closed on the third one, but here we are with a new game in this franchise. After the lukewarm ending of the third, I'm ready to see how Bioware writes themselves out of this one.
MASS EFFECT: ANDROMEDA(PS4)
In between the events of Mass Effect 2 and Mass Effect 3, in a joint initiative between the Quarians and 4 races of the Milky Way galaxy have collaborated on an expansion initiative to the Andromeda galaxy. Over 20,000 of the collected races partook in a 600 year journey across space in search of "golden worlds" on massive ships called Arcs. Each race's Arc is lead by a Soldier with an embedded AI unit called a SAM, and they are tasked to find suitable planets for colonization. In this case, the human pathfinder, Alec Ryder.
You control either one of Alec's children, Scott or Sara Ryder (Sara in my case), and unfortunately after being awakened from cryo-sleep to find out that their targeted golden world isn't quite golden.... or even habitable, as it surrounded by this harmful dark energy being called the scourge. The scourge knocks out the ships power, and renders one Ryder sibling comatose. A scout team goes down planet-side to confirm if they planet is habitable or not, and they are met with resistance from a hostile alien race called the Kett.
While investigating the remains of a previous alien race, Ryder and Alec find an alien monolith and activate it. The explosion from it sends them reeling, smashing Ryder's helmet. Alec sacrifices himself to save his child, and makes them the new pathfinder by transferring the SAM AI to them. With the pathfinder lost, all that's left is to return to the centralized space station for the Andromeda Operation called the Nexus and continue the mission. But the Nexus is in shambles, none of the other arcs made it, and it's barely functional. So it's up to Ryder's team to figure out what happened, and get the Andromeda initiative underway.
So as you can tell from the plot synopsis here, we are getting no resolution on the events of the previous Mass Effect Trilogy. It's essentially so far down the timeline that the majority of the characters from original series would have died from conflict or age. They essentially wipe the slate clean sans from a handful of messages from Liara T'soni warning about the impending purge of the Reapers.
Anyways, Andromeda. I'm going to be a little hard pressed to review this one because I'm months behind writing this, they've already patched a bunch, and honestly I can't really think of a lot that has changed in this one in comparisons to the rest of the series.
First off, let's talk character models. Bioware, I'm willing to give you a pass because the majority of the cast are aliens, but some how a significant portion of them seem to look more humans than the actual humans. It was a pretty significant issue with how poor an number of the characters looked that they had to patch in design upgrades to make the humans (specifically women) look less tired and more detailed. Every character with a humanoid form still looks like their eyes are trying to pop from their heads.
The character creator is still a plate of hot garbage. I spent hours try make Velfir Ryder appealing for me to look at only to have it look like she has neon face paint the moment she left the creator, because shit looks differently in different lighting engine. Despite the incredible amount of customization to this game, you really only get one crack to make your characters so you better be confident in them when you finish up. Or, you can do what a significant number of people did and just try to make the shittiest looking characters they can come up with.
Thankfully, when it comes to abilities you don't really get locked into what kind of character you have this time around. Andromeda lets you play around with all the aspects of your characters pretty fast and loose, and it makes incredibly cheap to reboot and make adjustments. So if you are playing the game as silent stealthy sniper and decide mid-way through the game you'd like to be a heavy wielding thicky with biotic powers? A quick trip to you ship and a couple of credits and you can respec however you like. I ended up liking what I was rolling with and didn't end up doing this.
Andromeda has kept the somewhat cover-based 3rd person shooter engine it laid down in Mass Effect 2 pretty much intact. If you've ever played a Mass Effect game before or even any modern 3rd person shooter, the controls should feel natural at this point its been around for well over a decade. The combat really on changes up depending on what traits you've taken and will dictate what kind of attack you will use.
In my case, I was a technician with effective sniping ability, so I would basically rain down headshot fire target after target from hundreds of yards away, and if they were foolish enough to get closer they would be burned with a incinerate fireball, then exploded with an electric overcharge. If they were dumb enough to push closer, they were ripped down with a laser assault rifle. I could clear out entire bases without ever needed to step foot in them till it was totally safe. I've seen some pretty interesting high damage builds, but I never really needed to explore them.
The only real thing different about the combat that I can think of is now there is an addition of a rocket jump and a dodge. The dodge I found useful for whipping around a cover for tense firefights. The jump is really only about as useful as the games platforming segments require them. Sure you can jump and then dodge to dash, and it helps with exploration a little bit but otherwise the game could have not had it and it probably wouldn't have affected things much.
The cast? Ehh, cast is alright I guess. As is with most Mass Effect games there are characters I really liked like Peebee and Drack (the Asari and Krogan, go figure), and ones that I didn't like Cora. But because of your ability to overhaul your skills team composition never really felt like it was a real determining factor. From my build, it seemed like I wouldn't have needed a character like Ja'al because of the same skill set, but I rarely noticed any impact if he was on my team or not.
It feels like Andromeda tried to mix various elements of the previous games that worked in the hope of a vastly improved experience. It's better for it but I don't know how much. Maps for example are big and explorable again. It feels like they have taken a page out of the build of Dragon Age: Inquisition and set up the maps for individual questing areas. As much as I hate to say it, Skyrim really set a precedent for open world questing that's probably going to continue to be a staple for years to come. Thankfully, In addition to the return of being able to drive around the maps, it also implements a fast travel for landmarks you have already hit to save time. But it's still viable to drive since you are able to mine resources from the car as well.
Which makes me wonder why the hell we still have to scan every single planet still. Either for meager resources or map completion there very rarely is any functional reason to do it. There are handful of areas where you scan that adds areas of interest to the map. These should be the only things we need to scan for, the rest is just pointless fluff.
It was especially bad before the initial patch where every time you wanted to transition from planet to planet or from galaxy to galaxy you had to watch this extended interspace travel sequence. Prior to the patch, there was no way to skip these sequences that basically slowed down planet exploration to a crawl. I'm sure this had to do something with load times but there are only so many planets you actually set foot on. Thankfully, this got quickly adjusted and once you are in a new galaxy, you are able to skip most of these flight sequences.
Speaking of patches, I found this one to be especially bad when it came to glitching in general. I would have tons of problems of animations bugging out, interactions messing up, falling through floors mid fight, things bugging out that wouldn't allow me to finish off the quests, and one situation where backing my PS4 to a new drive almost ruined my progress. Thankfully the majority of these were able to be fixed by simply restarting the game, but it gave the entire game a very unpolished feeling to me.
There really isn't much to add about the multiplayer. If you played it on Mass Effect 2 or 3, it's basically more of the same. There is a new companion app for you phone that you can use to earn more research points to unlock more weapons or equipment, more characters of the online mode, but I only really dabbled with it a few times and it destroyed me on the easiest setting, so I didn't really bother with it.
I'll give Bioware this, they always manage to leave me totally confused at the start of a Mass Effect game as they drown me in terminology, backstory, and massive opening map locations, but by the time I get rolling in the game I am completely dialed in. The story in this one is pretty straight forward for the most part, and while there aren't a terribly bountiful amount of boss fights (a handful of architect fights really), it does still get pretty exciting by the end of it.
But the one thing they got very right is that they finally did away with the stupid Paragon/Renegade system. Typically when you play this series you pretty much make the decision in your head at the onset if you are going to play this game good or evil, since there is generally no real benefit to play things neutral. You generally needed to be all good or all bad to make certain decisions, and the game suffered for it.
Now instead of those options, you have conversational choices of formal, logical, emotional, or casual. I like these options better because while they aren't exactly clear what that logical response could be, it allows me to better play to the character I am talking to. Most of the time I just went with casual because I tend to be a bit of a smart ass, but in more harrowing moments I could shift to emotional and it made sense. Or meeting a new race of aliens, formal made more sense to me. Conversational trees felt better in this one, more natural.
But the biggest thing I applaud them on this front is not the conversation trees, but the decisions. Again in older Mass Effects it was: Do you want to save the box of adorable kittens? or do you want to light the box on fire. I always hated that there was no middle ground or if there was it was not worth picking. Not so in this one. In a large number of critical moments during the game you are presented with two opposing, but equally viable options. No good or evil, paragon or renegade. Just two varied grey possible options. And they fucking killed me to the point where I would sit and agonize over what selection I was going to make. It made it truly feel like my decisions mattered, and would leave me with consequences of those decisions. It really was the best aspect of this game.
So did I like the game? Yeah I guess so. When the narrative got going I was able to see it through to the finish. There were certainly enough characters I liked to want to see their story through, and even the ones that I didn't care for I cared enough about the story to do their missions as well. But ultimately, when the final credits rolled I was with the distinct feeling of "Whelp, this certainly was a Mass Effect game." It's certainly not a game I felt I needed to keep playing the moment I had finished it.
Mass Effect: Andromeda feels like a cash in to try to draw back a fan base that felt scorned by the ending of Mass Effect 3. I enjoyed that it took the story back in a new direction and honestly I didn't mind a return visit to this universe. It was met with somewhat lack luster reviews and similar sales. It's certainly not the greatest one in its series, but it's certainly playable. It pushes no boundaries and breaks no molds. It simply was just a another game of the series. If you are a fan of the franchise you certainly will find yourself enjoying your time with it. I don't think it's a must have or can't miss, not sure if it's a hard sell for new fans, but I wasn't unhappy with it.
Seriously, how long does it take to set up a goddamn movie night?
You control either one of Alec's children, Scott or Sara Ryder (Sara in my case), and unfortunately after being awakened from cryo-sleep to find out that their targeted golden world isn't quite golden.... or even habitable, as it surrounded by this harmful dark energy being called the scourge. The scourge knocks out the ships power, and renders one Ryder sibling comatose. A scout team goes down planet-side to confirm if they planet is habitable or not, and they are met with resistance from a hostile alien race called the Kett.
While investigating the remains of a previous alien race, Ryder and Alec find an alien monolith and activate it. The explosion from it sends them reeling, smashing Ryder's helmet. Alec sacrifices himself to save his child, and makes them the new pathfinder by transferring the SAM AI to them. With the pathfinder lost, all that's left is to return to the centralized space station for the Andromeda Operation called the Nexus and continue the mission. But the Nexus is in shambles, none of the other arcs made it, and it's barely functional. So it's up to Ryder's team to figure out what happened, and get the Andromeda initiative underway.
So as you can tell from the plot synopsis here, we are getting no resolution on the events of the previous Mass Effect Trilogy. It's essentially so far down the timeline that the majority of the characters from original series would have died from conflict or age. They essentially wipe the slate clean sans from a handful of messages from Liara T'soni warning about the impending purge of the Reapers.
Anyways, Andromeda. I'm going to be a little hard pressed to review this one because I'm months behind writing this, they've already patched a bunch, and honestly I can't really think of a lot that has changed in this one in comparisons to the rest of the series.
First off, let's talk character models. Bioware, I'm willing to give you a pass because the majority of the cast are aliens, but some how a significant portion of them seem to look more humans than the actual humans. It was a pretty significant issue with how poor an number of the characters looked that they had to patch in design upgrades to make the humans (specifically women) look less tired and more detailed. Every character with a humanoid form still looks like their eyes are trying to pop from their heads.
The character creator is still a plate of hot garbage. I spent hours try make Velfir Ryder appealing for me to look at only to have it look like she has neon face paint the moment she left the creator, because shit looks differently in different lighting engine. Despite the incredible amount of customization to this game, you really only get one crack to make your characters so you better be confident in them when you finish up. Or, you can do what a significant number of people did and just try to make the shittiest looking characters they can come up with.
 |
| Kotaku had people send in their bad character screens, and some of them are horrifying. |
Thankfully, when it comes to abilities you don't really get locked into what kind of character you have this time around. Andromeda lets you play around with all the aspects of your characters pretty fast and loose, and it makes incredibly cheap to reboot and make adjustments. So if you are playing the game as silent stealthy sniper and decide mid-way through the game you'd like to be a heavy wielding thicky with biotic powers? A quick trip to you ship and a couple of credits and you can respec however you like. I ended up liking what I was rolling with and didn't end up doing this.
Andromeda has kept the somewhat cover-based 3rd person shooter engine it laid down in Mass Effect 2 pretty much intact. If you've ever played a Mass Effect game before or even any modern 3rd person shooter, the controls should feel natural at this point its been around for well over a decade. The combat really on changes up depending on what traits you've taken and will dictate what kind of attack you will use.
 |
| Andromeda gives you lots of freedom with your specs, so play around. |
In my case, I was a technician with effective sniping ability, so I would basically rain down headshot fire target after target from hundreds of yards away, and if they were foolish enough to get closer they would be burned with a incinerate fireball, then exploded with an electric overcharge. If they were dumb enough to push closer, they were ripped down with a laser assault rifle. I could clear out entire bases without ever needed to step foot in them till it was totally safe. I've seen some pretty interesting high damage builds, but I never really needed to explore them.
The only real thing different about the combat that I can think of is now there is an addition of a rocket jump and a dodge. The dodge I found useful for whipping around a cover for tense firefights. The jump is really only about as useful as the games platforming segments require them. Sure you can jump and then dodge to dash, and it helps with exploration a little bit but otherwise the game could have not had it and it probably wouldn't have affected things much.
 |
| Paw Rifle: unlimited ammo, perfect accuracy, shreds shields. Yes please. |
The cast? Ehh, cast is alright I guess. As is with most Mass Effect games there are characters I really liked like Peebee and Drack (the Asari and Krogan, go figure), and ones that I didn't like Cora. But because of your ability to overhaul your skills team composition never really felt like it was a real determining factor. From my build, it seemed like I wouldn't have needed a character like Ja'al because of the same skill set, but I rarely noticed any impact if he was on my team or not.
It feels like Andromeda tried to mix various elements of the previous games that worked in the hope of a vastly improved experience. It's better for it but I don't know how much. Maps for example are big and explorable again. It feels like they have taken a page out of the build of Dragon Age: Inquisition and set up the maps for individual questing areas. As much as I hate to say it, Skyrim really set a precedent for open world questing that's probably going to continue to be a staple for years to come. Thankfully, In addition to the return of being able to drive around the maps, it also implements a fast travel for landmarks you have already hit to save time. But it's still viable to drive since you are able to mine resources from the car as well.
 |
| Dem Duke boys is crazy |
Which makes me wonder why the hell we still have to scan every single planet still. Either for meager resources or map completion there very rarely is any functional reason to do it. There are handful of areas where you scan that adds areas of interest to the map. These should be the only things we need to scan for, the rest is just pointless fluff.
It was especially bad before the initial patch where every time you wanted to transition from planet to planet or from galaxy to galaxy you had to watch this extended interspace travel sequence. Prior to the patch, there was no way to skip these sequences that basically slowed down planet exploration to a crawl. I'm sure this had to do something with load times but there are only so many planets you actually set foot on. Thankfully, this got quickly adjusted and once you are in a new galaxy, you are able to skip most of these flight sequences.
 |
| The transitions are so long that 15 seconds of gif isn't enough to show a whole one. |
Speaking of patches, I found this one to be especially bad when it came to glitching in general. I would have tons of problems of animations bugging out, interactions messing up, falling through floors mid fight, things bugging out that wouldn't allow me to finish off the quests, and one situation where backing my PS4 to a new drive almost ruined my progress. Thankfully the majority of these were able to be fixed by simply restarting the game, but it gave the entire game a very unpolished feeling to me.
There really isn't much to add about the multiplayer. If you played it on Mass Effect 2 or 3, it's basically more of the same. There is a new companion app for you phone that you can use to earn more research points to unlock more weapons or equipment, more characters of the online mode, but I only really dabbled with it a few times and it destroyed me on the easiest setting, so I didn't really bother with it.
I'll give Bioware this, they always manage to leave me totally confused at the start of a Mass Effect game as they drown me in terminology, backstory, and massive opening map locations, but by the time I get rolling in the game I am completely dialed in. The story in this one is pretty straight forward for the most part, and while there aren't a terribly bountiful amount of boss fights (a handful of architect fights really), it does still get pretty exciting by the end of it.
But the one thing they got very right is that they finally did away with the stupid Paragon/Renegade system. Typically when you play this series you pretty much make the decision in your head at the onset if you are going to play this game good or evil, since there is generally no real benefit to play things neutral. You generally needed to be all good or all bad to make certain decisions, and the game suffered for it.
 |
| I liked Peebee a lot. Lived in an escape pod in the event the other shoe dropped. Kept everyone at arm length. Behaviors I could certainly relate to. |
Now instead of those options, you have conversational choices of formal, logical, emotional, or casual. I like these options better because while they aren't exactly clear what that logical response could be, it allows me to better play to the character I am talking to. Most of the time I just went with casual because I tend to be a bit of a smart ass, but in more harrowing moments I could shift to emotional and it made sense. Or meeting a new race of aliens, formal made more sense to me. Conversational trees felt better in this one, more natural.
But the biggest thing I applaud them on this front is not the conversation trees, but the decisions. Again in older Mass Effects it was: Do you want to save the box of adorable kittens? or do you want to light the box on fire. I always hated that there was no middle ground or if there was it was not worth picking. Not so in this one. In a large number of critical moments during the game you are presented with two opposing, but equally viable options. No good or evil, paragon or renegade. Just two varied grey possible options. And they fucking killed me to the point where I would sit and agonize over what selection I was going to make. It made it truly feel like my decisions mattered, and would leave me with consequences of those decisions. It really was the best aspect of this game.
So did I like the game? Yeah I guess so. When the narrative got going I was able to see it through to the finish. There were certainly enough characters I liked to want to see their story through, and even the ones that I didn't care for I cared enough about the story to do their missions as well. But ultimately, when the final credits rolled I was with the distinct feeling of "Whelp, this certainly was a Mass Effect game." It's certainly not a game I felt I needed to keep playing the moment I had finished it.
Mass Effect: Andromeda feels like a cash in to try to draw back a fan base that felt scorned by the ending of Mass Effect 3. I enjoyed that it took the story back in a new direction and honestly I didn't mind a return visit to this universe. It was met with somewhat lack luster reviews and similar sales. It's certainly not the greatest one in its series, but it's certainly playable. It pushes no boundaries and breaks no molds. It simply was just a another game of the series. If you are a fan of the franchise you certainly will find yourself enjoying your time with it. I don't think it's a must have or can't miss, not sure if it's a hard sell for new fans, but I wasn't unhappy with it.
