Mass Effect Andromeda (2016)

[simas]

"
It's completely ridiculous, especially as it seems that if what I am reading here is true, that the games are becoming more multiplayer focused with thinner and thinner SP games. IF that is the case with Andromeda, I will never buy it. I can't fathom why any ME game would ever have multiplayer. It sounds ridiculous.
"
+ many times that. my question to those who are playing is whether this is still an RPG or the trend of CODing everything with MP junk have destroyed yet another good franchise. never understood why turn every game into stupid action shooter. hated the galactic readiness and other force tie in in ME3 'suggesting' to play MP where the only thing I care about is story and SP experience. so wish this 'lets turn everything into e-sports' trend would just die...

 

[Artorias]

Half Life 2 to this day still has better facial animations than games coming out now. Wow.

 

[PlanetJosh]

If anyone wants to turn off the Hud completely in the trial for exploring or screenshots you can in game on a pc. Bring up the pc console command line with the tilde key. Then key in "UI.DrawEnable 0" (without the quotes) and hit enter and it will remove that permanent compass from the top. And no more Hud messages or Hud components will appear anywhere else, however menus disappear too.

It even removes all pop up objective icons and all UI icons period. But it also removes all game menus including inventory menu and even the menu to exit the game. But I can put up with that so I can roam around in a Hud free environment. Of course when I return to mission gameplay I turn the Hud back on most of the time. To bring back the Hud and all menus use a "1" in place of the 0 in the command.

 

[v0id]

The embargoed reviews are starting to come out and the game is getting brutalized: http://www.metacritic.com/game/playstation-4/mass-effect-andromeda/critic-reviews. Most of them think the story and dialogue aren't very good, and that the game itself isn't especially fun to play even if the worlds are pretty and the combat is decent. Most also include some variation of the phrase "giant disappointment" in the review summary. Heck, even GameSpot, which seems to me to be one of the biggest, most conservative and industry-friendly sites out there gave it a 6. I haven't played the game yet at all but I thought the EuroGamer review (http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2017-03-19-mass-effect-andromeda) did a good job at getting at the problems the game seems to have, and it was funny as well.

What an absolute shame and a disappointing lost opportunity. I'm a sucker for space opera stuff with a "hard sci-fi" tone and absolutely loved the original trilogy, even if the ME3 ending sucked. I'll probably play this eventually but wait until it's on sale for $20 or less.

 

[KentState]

"
It's completely ridiculous, especially as it seems that if what I am reading here is true, that the games are becoming more multiplayer focused with thinner and thinner SP games. IF that is the case with Andromeda, I will never buy it. I can't fathom why any ME game would ever have multiplayer. It sounds ridiculous.
"
+ many times that. my question to those who are playing is whether this is still an RPG or the trend of CODing everything with MP junk have destroyed yet another good franchise. never understood why turn every game into stupid action shooter. hated the galactic readiness and other force tie in in ME3 'suggesting' to play MP where the only thing I care about is story and SP experience. so wish this 'lets turn everything into e-sports' trend would just die...

Multiplayer can pretty much be ignored. No impact on the game. I found it fun but it was very buggy.

 

[cmdrdredd]

Yeah it's horrible, not sure what's going on over there.

The damage is done anyway, first impressions and all this animations mess (and other negatives like the dialogue quality) is what most of us will remember Andromeda for, regardless of how (and if) they "improve" it over the next year of support. The franchise is gone, so is BioWare. They have attained a new low with this... and I honestly, genuinely thought that it was simply impossible to do something like that after ME3, considering how terrible that one was; I thought that to make something worse you'd actually have to try to do it on purpose. Looks like they've surpassed themselves again at BioWare.

Anyway, I must say I wanted to buy it for the multiplayer but since I cannot support a "company" trying to sell a 'triple A' game that's clearly unfinished (despite how they've supposedly been working on it since 2012... which I cannot feasibly believe at this point; clearly there's no way there's any signs of FIVE years of work into that turd) anymore I've canceled my purchase. I did have genuine hope for both the franchise and BioWare as a company with this. I truly thought that they would do the franchise justice and that Andromeda would literally be talked about (positively) for the decade to come. Apparently we can't even have hope anymore in this industry. All we can do now, really, is to actually expect the worst possible and THEN, just maybe, be surprised of the opposite.

I'll keep playing Breath of the Wild, return to my newly-started Fallout 4 game with new mods and I'll give a try to Nier Automata next week. I'll wait for Andromeda to be forgotten about and for its price to go down the drain in about two months max. Since EA and BioWare want to sell us an unfinished, glitchy game I'm saying "fine", but I'm not gonna give you more than $20 for it (and that's Canadian dollars for me).

I started playing nier automata on pc yesterday and if you can get past its issues (make sure you check the various threads on steam forums and Reddit for these things which include full screen not working at the proper resolution, white screen errors, poor performance. You can find them via google) it's really a very good game with lots of depth. It's probably a bit more stable on PS4 if that's an option for you but I got it at a discount on pc and even with it requiring me to run a 3rd party program for full screen window to fix the resolution issues, disabling scaling in the nvidia control panel, and performance that drops from 60fps down to 45fps at times (60fps lock and 30fps cut scenes) I am enjoying it thus far.

 

[BlitzPuppet]

Only played for an hour but it was pretty boring....didn't capture me like the original did.

That and it didn't help that I hate the look of my char, the character creation toolset SUCKS.

 

[cmdrdredd]

Only played for an hour but it was pretty boring....didn't capture me like the original did.

That and it didn't help that I hate the look of my char, the character creation toolset SUCKS.

I did see someone on neogaf say the character creation is terrible. You can't even adjust the size of the facial features like before, just choose generic options. Is that right?

 

[ImpulsE69]

damn gamers being over critical again! get off your 4k big screens and play on a 13" b&w CRT and you won't have any of those issues.

 

[BlitzPuppet]

I did see someone on neogaf say the character creation is terrible. You can't even adjust the size of the facial features like before, just choose generic options. Is that right?

Basically there are a series of faces you have to choose from, then you have sliders for everything...but that all felt like they had minimal effect. The hairstyles suck (So I have a fro choice, but no good military cut?), eye selection/coloring was cool but everything else felt like MMO style character creation with preset faces. I couldn't shake that I felt like I was just adjusting the default/premade faces.

The original trilogy had a much better Sims Game type creator.

 

[AznAnarchy99]

Damn. Wondering if I should keep my pre-order. I have high expectations since I loved the original trilogy so much.

 

[Yakk]

I cancelled, can't get over how bad it's shaping up to be. Really, really disappointed and I'm not paying top dollar for this train wreck.

 

[[DHT]Osiris]

Wow, this stuff is shockingly bad. How the hell did any of this get through any level of QA/playtesting without someone throwing a flag out?

 

[cmdrdredd]

Damn. Wondering if I should keep my pre-order. I have high expectations since I loved the original trilogy so much.

The way the reviews read is the game falls way short of what the series is known for and it feels lower quality but isn't a bad game underneath. So maybe fans will like it? I mean one review basically says this would pass for good on PS3 or 360 a few years ago but when you have other titles doing action/rpg/open world way better it's hard to ignore it.

From gamesbeat

Games have to fit into our lives, and that's not always fair. Mass Effect: Andromeda might've worked a decade ago on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, but it doesn't work in a world that is delivering games like Horizon: Zero Dawn, Nier: Automata, and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. In this reality, BioWare's latest role-playing game is old, broken, and often boring. Worst of all, it's going to disappoint fans of the Mass Effect series.

 

[moonbogg]

Ouch. Sounds like the game is getting wrecked. I was pretty excited about it too. It looked like a cool exploration game but I guess its just not.

 

[Yakk]

Wow, this stuff is shockingly bad. How the hell did any of this get through any level of QA/playtesting without someone throwing a flag out?

Hint : it does get flagged, and someone does have to sign off on any code going out the door for any corporation the size of EA.

To their credit, EA actually has one of the best QA testing departments of any game studio. But now weather they are listened to is another issue...

 

[AznAnarchy99]

The way the reviews read is the game falls way short of what the series is known for and it feels lower quality but isn't a bad game underneath. So maybe fans will like it? I mean one review basically says this would pass for good on PS3 or 360 a few years ago but when you have other titles doing action/rpg/open world way better it's hard to ignore it.

From gamesbeat

I mean, the games I've played in the last 10 years have basically been Mass Effect, WoW, CS:GO, and Overwatch.

 

[EXCellR8]

Glad I didn't preorder this... not that I had a bad feeling or anything but for me, Mass Effect 1 & 2 (especially 2) won't be topped.

I hate seeing games getting beat up for details, but with all the fresh talent out there looking for work every AAA title should be as polished as possible within reason.

I'll play it in 9 months

 

[AznAnarchy99]

Actually, I'll be keeping my pre-order. I got the game for like $25 with an Amazon/Amex deal so at that price it's worth it.

 

[DaveSimmons]

Hmm, I've only played through ME 1-2 once and never 3, so I guess I should replay/play those instead.

Is any of the ME 3 DLC worth paying for since those sleazy puffins refuse to give us a Trilogy Complete Pack or ME3 GOTY after 5 years? I know for ME 2 I should get Shadow Broker.

 

[cbrunny]

Wooow this game is getting power owned in reviews. I'll wait, if I buy it at all. Maybe in the fall it will be patched enough that it won't suck.

 

[Stuka87]

Hmm, I've only played through ME 1-2 once and never 3, so I guess I should replay/play those instead.

Is any of the ME 3 DLC worth paying for since those sleazy puffins refuse to give us a Trilogy Complete Pack or ME3 GOTY after 5 years? I know for ME 2 I should get Shadow Broker.

I liked the ME3 DLC's. Some are shorter than others, the last one was by far my favorite, as it gives you a way to say goodby to all the characters you came to love over the three games. Overall I really liked ME3, even before they changed the ending.

 

[frozentundra123456]

RIP Bioware. After being blindsided by ME3 , I vowed that the Mass Effect series would never get another cent of my money or minute of my time. At the end of that game, I just sat there dumbfounded, speechless at how awful and disappointing the ending was after investing over a hundred hours into the franchise.

Looking like nothing in this game will make me regret that. In fact, I seriously considered boycotting Bioware altogether after they turned KOTOR into an MMO and screwed the pooch with ME3. I did buy DA:I, but I wish I had waited for it to go to the bargin bin. It was not terrible, but certainly not up to the Bioware standards of old (Baldur's gate, NWN, KOTOR, the first Dragon Age).

 

[thejunglegod]

Some of the in game cutscenes in the gamespot review video are cringeworthy to the max. I don't know how you can play a game in the present with those kind of facial animations. And that too considering that it is an AAA title. I agree that even ME1,2 and 3 never had excellent facial animations but this is definitely the worst I've seen in a current gen AAA title and that is considering Fallout 4's facial animations.

 

[escrow4]

Still picking this up on release Day 1 over here. I barely play 2 or 3 AAA PC titles now (not much each year anyway) and I will be playing this.