a5c7b9f00b The Andromeda Initiative sets a course for a new galaxy, hoping to find a new home for the species of the Milky Way. In the distant future, a team of interstellar colonists enter the galaxy "Andromeda" with the hope of adventure, but as they encounter perilous conditions, as an unknown threat lurks in the darkness, things do not go according to plan for these colonists. Regardless of your thoughts relating to the ending of Mass Effect 3 back in 2012, at least the Bioware team making that game had the excuse of being under the gun to create something in 18 months that was not only new, but also to build upon technical advancements made in Mass Effect 2. Such a limited timescale no matter your resources, leaves little time to explore the creative aspects that often need much input and refining to really make the material into something that will be interesting, and impactful to the gamer playing it.<br/><br/>I do not however, have such sympathy for the team that made this mess. Who not only had over 5 years, a budget of over $40million, but most crucially a free creative pass to make almost any sort of Mass Effect game they wanted to. The drip-feed releases of screenshots and game footage showed promise, especially with Mass Effect now transitioning to the Frostbite engine. The changing of the November 2016 release date to March 2017 again showed promise, that Bioware & EA were actually going to take real care with Mass Effect after they damage they took in 2012. I myself was quite hopeful that this was going to be a great game to put things back on track.<br/><br/>Then we got to play the game for the 10 hour trial, and oh my. If it wasn't a matter of public knowledge they spent 5 years on this, I'd have thought they cobbled this together in a year, and then didn't bother to QA or beta test it. If there wasn't such a thing as a 5 year rush job for a production of this nature, then Mass Effect Andromeda is the first. Graphically the game is nice, and some of the scenery can even be breath-taking, but now we get to what really brings it down. The animations, specifically character face ones. I've never seen backwards progress on such a thing until now, the ones from the original Mass Effect back in 2007 are better than these ones, and they weren't the best to begin with! With this being a game you spend hours talking to people, this is a key basic you need to get right. When characters greet the news that they've lost a friend or family member with their eyes darting around, and producing a goofy, vacuous smile like they have mental issues, then you have a fundamental problem with your game. Serious stuff ends up inducing laughter, and the actual comedy just becomes slapstick comedy since even punches characters make don't connect as if you were watching WWE.<br/><br/>Enemies glitch out of nowhere, your party members glitch all around you in combat, NPCs appear/vanish from thin air, some cutscenes don't trigger, some quests don't advance, dialogue in hub areas all cut one another off, so you can't listen in to any of it. Heck, there was even a bug where my character turned into something like the liquid metal T-1000 from Terminator 2!<br/><br/>It ends up being death by a thousand cuts, a few of those issues you could live with, but being so many of them that directly impede or taint your experience, it goes beyond farce and definitely beyond unacceptable. It's not worth talking about the story or lore, which have their own issues.<br/><br/>At the most basic level, Mass Effect Andromeda fails to be a good, solid game first and a Mass Effect game second. There is undoubted potential here, but it's all ruined by the awful work made of putting it together. There's so much wrong that if you couldn't laugh at it, you'd cry instead.<br/><br/>Don't bother getting this for at least a year, when they've hopefully fixed it or you can get it at bargain bucket prices. It's not worth your time or money in its current state, more importantly a purchase for this game now, is telling Bioware & EA that it's okay to release games in this state, and it simply isn't! Where do I begin? To say we waited five years for this mess would be to admit we hoped it would be good. The Mass Effect games are noted for epic story lines, larger-than-life characters and some pulse pounding action sequences. Even ME3, with its lousy ending, was good for 95% of its playtime. Andromeda, however, has none of those things.<br/><br/>It's a game that espouses width over quality. Huge open worlds to explore (providing that you don't go too near the "edge" and get warned to go back) and hundreds of people to talk to (providing you don't want any of that dialogue to be meaningful in any way). There is an abundance of shooty-bang-bang sequences (so long as you don't mind it all feeling like you've done it a thousand times before - because, by the end, you will have).<br/><br/>In all things, Mass Effect Andromeda (ME:A) is a stellar example of why devs should adhere to the old comment "less is more". Here, of course, they did the exact opposite.<br/><br/>Huge open planetary worlds filled with the same four or five types of animals in a variety of colour shades. Let's go to another planet! Yep, the same dinosaur and lizard monsters to shoot.<br/><br/>Then there are the faces. Oh God! The faces! I hope someone does a comparison with side by sides of this, and the first Mass Effect game, because the animation here is laughably bad in places. It's all done by an algorithm, you see, and not facial capture. Accordingly, the NPC's eyes dart about manically during conversations. Their faces are all rigid with the digital equivalent of Botox and when they blink, it is with their entire forehead/brow, not just the eyes. Benny Hill blinking, manic eyes and frozen faces. For a game whose pedigree relies on the interactions between the PC and the many NPC's in the game, this is unforgivably bad.<br/><br/>But if the animations were the worst of it, that could be overlooked. But the writing… man the writing. It is bad in the same way that SyFy channel original movies are bad. Lame dialogue and a flimsy plot, with not even a vestige of pacing. It plods along, tasking you with endless boring side quests that accomplish little except to gain your character experience. There is no satisfaction to completing any of it.<br/><br/>Did I mention the combat yet? Recall how you used to be able to control your squad-mates in the earlier ME games? Yeah, me too! But not here, because….progress! So you start a fight and your squad-mates just do their own thing, which is usually not very helpful, all the while dropping awful clangers of dialogue that are meant to be witty quips. In some cases they even say entirely inappropriate things during combat.<br/><br/>You squad-mates also have developed the ability - a la Aliens: Colonial Marines - to teleport about the battlefield. This often result in one of them teleporting on top of flying enemies, only to fall down and carry on as if that were the most natural thing in the world.<br/><br/>The voice actors mostly sound bored reading their lines, as if they had no actual direction when they were in the recording studio. The end result, along with the lack of animated faces, is to make any conversation seem like one between two heavily sedated (or stoned) people.<br/><br/>And the ending… I won't spoil it, but you end up in a boss fight with an enemy you have fought before and playing, essentially, an extended horde mode battle that goes on far too long. It is not a moment of exultation and delight when you complete it, just one of relief that it is over.<br/><br/>And that last sums up ME:A pretty much. It is dull and repetitive with mind-numbing side quests and some unbelievable dialogue (e.g. "My face is tired"), poor animations, facial and otherwise (I didn't mention the Ministry of Silly Walks, did I?) and an overall feeling that you could be spending your time playing a number of better games.<br/><br/>So what went wrong? My money is on over ambition. They tried to run before they could walk. This game was made by a B-string team from Bioware and they tried to get too much in, and end up with doing none of it justice. Too many conversation with NPC's probably led to them deciding they could not afford facial capture, so they went with the hilariously awful algorithm for animation. Not enough time to make enough variety of enemies (in addition to the few animals, there are about the same number of Remnant creatures and then a couple of generic alien baddies. Too many voice actors recording too many lines with no one giving proper direction led to all the flat deliveries you get in-game.<br/><br/>It wasn't ready for release. That is the bottom line. A Triple-A game rushed out the door to meet the financial year-end, full of bugs and glitches, unpolished and with no sign that any QA team even looked at it.<br/><br/>Bioware should be ashamed of this. No wonder they closed down the Bioware forums last year. It's almost as if they knew the fallout would hit them hard, just as it did with the ME3 ending and decided not to have to deal with people "impugning their artistic integrity" again.<br/><br/>Either way, the game is an embarrassing mess that seems like it was created by people who had never seen Mass Effect before and had only had it described (badly) to them. Bioware? Buyer-Beware, more like.<br/><br/>SUMMARY: Unfinished mess. Terrible facial animation, lousy dialogue, MMO-style busywork side quests. Poor writing, buggy, glitchy and utterly charmless. Not worthy of the Mass Effect name and not worthy of your money.
cenhalpdikon Admin replied
352 weeks ago