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I mean, I'm still getting Andromeda no matter what. I may just wait a bit til a) it's cheaper and patches have been released.
Briar King's PhotoBriar King

Yeah. Me too. Who am i kidding? Will play it anyway.

[Obdigore]

 Apt, on 20 March 2017 - 10:36 AM, said:

The reviews for Mass Effect: Andromeda are looking luke warm. Not terrible but not the brilliance of the first titles:

https://www.reddit.c..._review_thread/

I mean, so far only ME:2 is a better game than Andromeda, and that had it's problems as well, at least in my book.

Some of the crew members are just as awesome, and some are just uninteresting.

I'm really enjoying the much more open-world portion of it, but then I liked DA:I a lot as well.

[Morgoth]

I don't know, I found ME3 to be an excellent game right up to the return to Earth for the finale, at which point it all collapsed. It was far weaker than 2 for sure, but there were many amazing moments there too. Like the conclusion to the Genophage storyline(s), especially as a renegade, holy shit.

Making Cerebus the big bad was a rather moronic choice though. Kai Leng, the super cool cyberpunk ninja, makes me cringe still.

[Maark Abbott]

 Morgoth, on 24 March 2017 - 07:05 AM, said:

Making Cerebus the big bad was a rather moronic choice though. Kai Leng, the super cool cyberpunk ninja, makes me cringe still.

YOSH!

[Cause]

 Maark Abbott, on 24 March 2017 - 08:15 AM, said:

 Morgoth, on 24 March 2017 - 07:05 AM, said:

Making Cerebus the big bad was a rather moronic choice though. Kai Leng, the super cool cyberpunk ninja, makes me cringe still.

YOSH!

I liked cerberus. Was a cool idea. Making them the big bad was a little bit of stretch though it was partly alleviated by the idea that by using indoctrination technology they were recruiting on a massive scale. I guess they were actually only the secondary antagonist actually.

Speaking of, I only recently played the Citadel DLC for ME3. Now that was epic!

[Slow Ben]

 Morgoth, on 24 March 2017 - 07:05 AM, said:

I don't know, I found ME3 to be an excellent game right up to the return to Earth for the finale, at which point it all collapsed. It was far weaker than 2 for sure, but there were many amazing moments there too. Like the conclusion to the Genophage storyline(s), especially as a renegade, holy shit.

Making Cerebus the big bad was a rather moronic choice though. Kai Leng, the super cool cyberpunk ninja, makes me cringe still.

100%



I'm at the point in my life where i'll just wait for the Game of the Year that comes with all the DLC's. And then take 2 years to finish it.

[Avatar]

I still think ME1 was brilliant as well.

What worries me the most about is ME-A is that reviews say it is often boring and tedious.

This post has been edited by Avatar: 25 March 2017 - 07:44 AM

[WinterPhoenix]

Andromeda arrived yesterday - literally just as I was finishing HZD actually - played for about an hour or so, so far, probably get some more time tomorrow, but I decided to finish the Ashes of Ariandel dlc for DS3 first in anticipation for the last dlc next week. Haven't really made it far enough to say much of anything about characters and story (though I have a feeling the human squadmates will be bland as they always have been for me, with few exceptions), but I can say that the criticisms surrounding the animations are absolutely spot on. I hadn't seen very much video and I genuinely thought that the furore was hyperbole, but by god a game in 2017 with 5 years of development should not look this bad, there's no excuse. The humans in particular look awful. The voice acting thus far hasn't been exactly stellar either :/

Combat seems pretty similar to the previous titles, it was never my favourite part of the series, but it isn't bad at all - seems to be a good few more skills as well. I'll be very interested to see how the story expands as I move forward, the branching narrative and interesting characters were always my favourite things about the original trilogy. Hopefully they can emulate these somewhat as it expands and then I can at least try and ignore the animations!

[Cause]

The more I play Mass effect Andromeda the more I find to dislike. I have seen the bad facial animations and the scene that involves a character using her fun backwards, it was wierd and jarring but I laughed and moved on.

No, what I dislike is the gameplay itself. It's like the design team refused to say no to any idea. The game is DA inquisition in space in the worst ways. They brought back the mako! Ignoring that it was first removed for a reason! It's boring. Now though you also have to switch between 4 and 6 wheel drive. No skill is required. Just more announce. You need the mako/nomad because the environment of every planet is hostile. This adds no Tactical gameplay or fun. It just means you can't go fat from the mako or a colony base before you die. Using ice weapons on a planet that's already 50 degrres below don't do any more damage etc. Instead just don't go too far from the truck!

Researching and gear development requirea no less than 3 types of rewsearxh points, 8 types of materials and for some reason you also have to be above a certain xp level. Instead of a streamlined system, or a complex but rewarding system you just get a really consulated, confusing mess. Research also just involves pressing buttons on a computer. No salarian mordin to talk to or discuss research with.

Last but not least. I like many others have run into a bug that blocks progress in a primary story mission.

[Avatar]

Told myself that I have to finish Torment, Pillars of Eternity and the last level of Legacy of the Void before I allow myself to upgrade my GPU and buy ME Andromeda. In the meantime, patches will probably remove most of the bugs.

Still, I feel like playing it. It's stupid, because I already know that grindy missions and awkward conversations will turn me off.

[Aptorian]

It's unlikely that the big issues with the game can be fixed in any meaningful way. A bunch of code monkeys in an office aren't going to fix facial animations, writing, dialogue, etc. in a month or two. One of the game leads on the game himself said something to the effect of "That boat has sailed".

The studio had roughly 5 years to make the game. Most likely there was a meeting where the executives asked how long will it take to fix the games issues or even is it possible to fix the games issues at all. To which they got an answer that didn't make sense financially, at which point the only choice is to polish the turd as much as possible and ship it.

This isn't an issue of greed but a question of fiscal responsibility.

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It's unlikely that the big issues with the game can be fixed in any meaningful way. A bunch of code monkeys in an office aren't going to fix facial animations, writing, dialogue, etc. in a month or two. One of the game leads on the game himself said something to the effect of "That boat has sailed".

The studio had roughly 5 years to make the game. Most likely there was a meeting where the executives asked how long will it take to fix the games issues or even is it possible to fix the games issues at all. To which they got an answer that didn't make sense financially, at which point the only choice is to polish the turd as much as possible and ship it.

This isn't an issue of greed but a question of fiscal responsibility.

I expected as much, I meant patching bugs and glitches as far as possible. Have no hope they will improve dialogue or anything like that.

This post has been edited by Avatar: 27 March 2017 - 05:30 PM

[Cause]

I think they tried to do too much and misallocated their development time. Writing and story and characters are pillars of mass effect. Not rock collecting side missions.

Mass effect has never been an open world game. It's been a carefully managed series of rooms and levels that don't have to be approached linearly.

Andromeda has huge planets that are essentially lifeless. The remnant caves are huge open corridors with nothing in them. They went for size and volume at the expense of quality.

[Aptorian]

There's probably some truth in the notion that they overreached. Especially considering they were a "new" studio, taking over a franchise they weren't comfortable with yet. There was an article last week, where an animator commented on the animation issues. His guess was that they were using algorithims or what ever you call it to auto-create the characters fascial animations in conversations to save time. At which point the animators come in after wards and adjusts or tweaks the characters so that they don't look like robots speaking. Apparently ME 4 has as much dialogue as the past 3 games combined. The project probably completely overwhelmed them.

[Tiste Simeon]

So ME Andromeda is basically this year's No Man's Sky?

[Aptorian]

No where close to No Man's Sky.

MEA had a pretty transparent and free access to information about the game. Lots of preview coverage, EA 10 hour access, early review embargos, a great return policy, etc. Similarly, the developers haven't promised or shown anything that doesn't exist or doesn't function like it did in preview coverage or trailers.

More importantly, while the game is buggy, the game works and the game is massive. It's a very big, very ambitious project that can't fairly be compared to a small indie title. None of the issues I've seen with MEA couldn't probably be levelled at a Bethesda game.

Personally I am beginning to look forward to playing it. All the coverage has lowered my expectations drastically, which in turn means I will probably enjoy it when I buy it mid-April

This post has been edited by Apt: 28 March 2017 - 03:21 AM

[Mentalist]

teaser for Total Warhammer 2 has High v Dark Elves, with Lizardmen crashing the party.

And a rat with red glowing eyes in the very end.


Coming 2017.


I am planning to get the original for the winter holiday when there's a good bundle on all the DLC, but this sounds promising.

[Cause]

I finished mass effect. Left 2 out of 5 planets essentially unexplored. Did 2 out 0f 5 loyalty missions. I said enough is enough and I just forced through the main story so I could finish and move on.

This game is just so much empty space! So much time wasting! One of the final story missions requires me to leave one galaxy, visit three others to launch probes and then return to the original galaxy just to get permission to proceed! For the love Of God why!

Another random side mission tasked me with finding a crashed ship. Die to interference I could only narrow down its location to 5 possible locations across the entire planets map. So i just had to drive to to each of them one after the other. Added nothing to the story of the mission. Just dragged it out by ten to 15 min for nothing.

The plot holes! You drive a. Blackhole through them!

[JPK]

 Cause, on 31 March 2017 - 11:44 PM, said:

I finished mass effect. Left 2 out of 5 planets essentially unexplored. Did 2 out 0f 5 loyalty missions. I said enough is enough and I just forced through the main story so I could finish and move on.

This game is just so much empty space! So much time wasting! One of the final story missions requires me to leave one galaxy, visit three others to launch probes and then return to the original galaxy just to get permission to proceed! For the love Of God why!

Another random side mission tasked me with finding a crashed ship. Die to interference I could only narrow down its location to 5 possible locations across the entire planets map. So i just had to drive to to each of them one after the other. Added nothing to the story of the mission. Just dragged it out by ten to 15 min for nothing.

The plot holes! You drive a. Blackhole through them!

Yeah, the first game was seriously guilty of sacrificing gameplay for storytelling. A lot of it succeeds if you're the type that likes digging into every side mission and exploring every spot on every map to find every last artifact. If you don't though, it comes across as a 3/5 at best.

If you enjoyed the first game enough to at least give it a 3/5, keep going. The second game has some of the best gameplay to storytelling ratio that I've ever had the pleasure to enjoy.

[Avatar]

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I finished mass effect. Left 2 out of 5 planets essentially unexplored. Did 2 out 0f 5 loyalty missions. I said enough is enough and I just forced through the main story so I could finish and move on.

This game is just so much empty space! So much time wasting! One of the final story missions requires me to leave one galaxy, visit three others to launch probes and then return to the original galaxy just to get permission to proceed! For the love Of God why!

Another random side mission tasked me with finding a crashed ship. Die to interference I could only narrow down its location to 5 possible locations across the entire planets map. So i just had to drive to to each of them one after the other. Added nothing to the story of the mission. Just dragged it out by ten to 15 min for nothing.

The plot holes! You drive a. Blackhole through them!


Yeah, the first game was seriously guilty of sacrificing gameplay for storytelling. A lot of it succeeds if you're the type that likes digging into every side mission and exploring every spot on every map to find every last artifact. If you don't though, it comes across as a 3/5 at best.

If you enjoyed the first game enough to at least give it a 3/5, keep going. The second game has some of the best gameplay to storytelling ratio that I've ever had the pleasure to enjoy.

Cause was talking about MEA right?