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Mass Effect: Andromeda


hogso

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I despised Dragon Age: Inquisition... Hearing that several complaints are similar to complaints levelled at Dragon Age: Inquisition doesn't fill me with hope. My issues with DA:I were that it felt like they wanted to make an MMO but canned the plan half way through. The game was a series of hub worlds full of quests that felt more World of Warcraft than Dragon Age: Origins. I get that all RPG's have places of interest where quests can be attained, but DA:I was literally segmented hubs containing several hundred quests in each and they were all dull quests as well, it was standard MMO shit.

I will be getting Mass Effect: Andromeda at some point. I won't be getting it at launch because I have too many games to play through right now. I mean I need to complete Resident Evil 7, Nioh, NieR: Automata and Horizon: Zero Dawn before Persona 5 in 4 weeks and then Prey in like 7 weeks. Too many god damn games and no time to play any of them. So Mass Effect will get played, but not just yet. 

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42 minutes ago, Davkaus said:

John Walker (The guy who wrote the RPS piece) is usually pretty spot on, for me, there haven't been many times I've read his article on a game I've played and disagreed with him.

Having said that, a lot of his complaints would hold water against Dragon age: Inquisition, which he's never played (and which I thought was a piece of shit, I'll probably skip this one..),  so if you enjoyed that, I wouldn't be too concerned.

I liked DA:I, but I liked it more or less despite the MMO stylings, and could quite happily never play another game like it. The concern always was they'd use DA:I as a template and more or less skin it with Mass Effect stuff. For a while it looked like they might swerve that, but increasingly it looks like they haven't at all.

That won't be bad for some people of course. But talk of the characters being dull and the dialogue being quite that poor... That ain't good. If it does stick to that standard throughout, it's shite.

I've gone from Day One, accepting it'll not be what I want it to be, to picking it up eventually unless it truly is shire. Of course it helps that Zelda is out and awesome ;)

 

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2 hours ago, Chindie said:

Rock Paper Shotgun have released impressions of the first few hours of this.

They mauled it.

Eurogamer have been more positive.

I believe they're releasing a demo of sorts Thursday (possibly only on EA Access?) so we should hear more... But I've got even greater concerns this is going to be a crushing disappointment than before, and I wasn't exactly positive before.

EA access/Origin access 10 hour trial is out tomorrow (likely to be afternoon UK time). Single player progress is limited to the tutorial/first mission during the trial but you can either replay to explore etc or play multiplayer for the remainder of the time

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Feel bad for the voice actors, that dialogue is trash. In fact pretty much everything I just saw fulfilled every awful expectation I had. Really hope that it opens up and turns into a compelling story but man... that was rough.

See what the reviewers I look out for have to say I guess. As it stands I'll be skipping this one entirely, save myself the disappointment.

:(

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This was my most anticipated game of the year... 

What the **** have they done to it? I've got the trial ready for tonight but I've seen some animations/dialogue that are plain embarrassing. I'm 50/50 on whether I'll buy this now :(

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Is anyone really surprised? It's been a steady decline since the talent slowly started to leave Bioware. Bioware basically shut down a few years ago and now there's just a bunch of hacks pumping out shit under the same brand name.

Bad animations, bad writing, bad voice acting, poor performance. What a shitshow. I look forward to it getting 9/10 across the board.

Edited by Davkaus
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I hoping it's a bit rubbish in a similar way ME1 was a bit rubbish. Cos I still enjoyed that despite it's many issues.

Although that did have a glourious FemShep VA, and if the voices really grate over long periods of time in this, it's going to be tough for me to push on.

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4 hours ago, Davkaus said:

Is anyone really surprised? It's been a steady decline since the talent slowly started to leave Bioware. Bioware basically shut down a few years ago and now there's just a bunch of hacks pumping out shit under the same brand name.

Bad animations, bad writing, bad voice acting, poor performance. What a shitshow. I look forward to it getting 9/10 across the board.

True. But I think this is the first title that has truly lost connection to the old Bioware with staff changes. DA:I was divisive but still had good writing and characters, ME3 fluffed the ending but was decent, DA2 is rushed and weak but still written well, ME2 is a masterpiece, DA:O is a fantastic speaking epic, ME1 is a flawed gem... Those games from EAs involvement all had at least some hallmarks of Bioware, but Andromeda is the first I believe with none of the old faces involved.

And unsurprisingly it appears to be shit. With Bioware at worst you knew you'd get recent writing and characters. This has even jettisoned that. And the rest of it? Phoned in or outright bad - the animation is horrific, the awful dialogue is delivered by horrible voice actors, the gameplay looks tired and infuriating (do Sudoku right or we punish you? Sod off). There was a moment in the GB footage last night where a character in a cutscene literally disappeared as they walked away, like the programmer just said 'that'll do' and deleted the model when he somehow thought nobody was looking.

At best, some of the graphics look decent, sometimes. Otherwise, it doesn't just look disappointing, it looks bad.

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It's worth pointing out that this is being developed by Bioware Montreal, a reasonably new studio that have never made a game before.

They did work on the ME3 multiplayer though. :lol:

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Wow.

That is so bad I almost thought it was a parody. I wouldn't touch this POS for free.

What happened with %PATHFINDER%. Object Not recognised. Sentence does not compute.

Edited by Davkaus
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There are things I enjoy about Mass Effect: Andromeda after sinking about 5 hours into it and there are things I don't like at all.

I am impressed by the visual fidelity of this game as everything looks great, the environments, the ships, the foliage all looks phenomenal, my only real issue visually is the incredibly jarring facial animations which will derail this game for most players.

The combat is standard Mass Effect, it has more in common with Mass Effect 2 and 3 than the original but it's serviceable. The movement does make combat a bit harder as it is very floaty as the character has momentum which is realistic, but it's slightly annoying trying to get the game to snap into cover when you walk past it because the character took 4 more extra steps for no reason.

The voice acting is terrible. FemRyder is the better choice if you want a main character with a better voice actress, but then you have the worst facial animation in the game to deal with. I get that this game has more dialogue in it than almost any game ever released, but that said Mass Effect 1, 2 and 3 also had tons of dialogue and it was all presented incredibly well and professionally. 

All in all this is solid 6/10 kind of experience. If you can see past the amateur voice work and facial animation there is a good game here, but I'm not sure many will be able to and that's not factoring in other potential annoyances. This game is very very very pretty when everything comes together, but bad voice work, facial animation and floaty inconsistent movement could mean that those that do play it don't play it for long.  

Edited by Daweii
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From the first 3-4 hours, I'm not even sure it's a decent game if you disregard the shit animations and voice acting. The missions are awful.

They've taken DA:I's "single-player MMO" quest style and ran with it. There's a hell of a lot of time-wasting grindy shite that doesn't move the story forward at all, which was understandable years ago for a subscription based online RPG, but is just appalling in a single player game.

Come here, run there, scan this planet. **** planet scanning, jesus christ that's appalling. It was pretty bad in old Mass Effects, but that's not an excuse in 2017. 

The combat...."Serviceable" is fair. The entire experience isn't just incredibly underwhelming. It's bad. But this is what happens when you take a B team that's only ever had a support role, pretend they're a proper Bioware studio, and ask them to develop the next game in a major IP, it was only ever going to be a flop.

Crap voice acting, crap animations, a boring story, serviceable (but certainly not good) combat. There's a lot of very promising RPGs being released this year. Why would anyone buy this one?

Edited by Davkaus
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