For anyone who has Origin Access, and decided to try the trial, what are your first impressions of Mass Effect: Andromeda.
Mass Effect Andromeda first impressions?
- Thread starter DarklordKyo
- Start date
From what I can tell, reviewer first impressions are rather mixed. Some like it, others hate it (Rock, Paper, Shotgun has almost nothing but bad things to say about it), but there's no consensus, and no indication that it gets better.
I didn't preorder this game, but I'm still looking at reviews with great interest. I want this game to be good, and I can forgive a slow start.
I didn't preorder this game, but I'm still looking at reviews with great interest. I want this game to be good, and I can forgive a slow start.
From the footage I've seen, this is one giant mess that gives Ubisoft a run for its money.
I haven't laughed this much in a while though. My face is actually tired.
It's like a thousand memes were suddenly born.
I haven't laughed this much in a while though. My face is actually tired.
It's like a thousand memes were suddenly born.
I like it and will probably pick it up on payday.
I haven't run into the vast majority of animation bugs that have been reported, only Cora's silly walk, and those bugs seem to be down to the default FemRyder face by the looks of it. I've had no awkward smirk when I informed Captain "My face is tired!" about Ryder Sr, nor any of the other gormless looks. Combat is fun, fast and allows for covered based or fairly aggressive play styles, which is nice. AI squadmates actually seem to be competent enough now to deal with small groups of enemies by themselves, which is a fucking god-send.
Class selection feels kinda pointless, because as you progress, you unlock 'profiles', which allow you to basically swap classes at will and they do only limit you to 3 active powers which is a shame. The removal of the Para/Rene system is actually a good choice, and each character I've spoken to so far has had a shit ton of dialogue choices. It also feels more ME1 than the rest, as there's a lot of loot to pick up and shift through for upgrades. The new MAKO thingy is, thankfully, a lot of fun to drive and is given to you fairly early on in the game, and is basically the best way to get anywhere fast.
I do agree, it does have what feels like a very slow start, although that may be because I'm not used to an open world ME game where I can just land somewhere and just fuck off across the planet to do something.
My only problem really with it so far is that the humans don't look anywhere near as detailed as some of the aliens do. There was an encounter I...well, encountered, and the krogan involved looked waaaaaaaaaay better than the humans. Oh, and Bioware still can't animate someone holding an assault rifle properly at times but hey, they couldn't fix across 2 or 3, so why now? Oh, and sometimes distant AI will derp out and not fight, but a round the noggin jerks them out of their daydream.
So...yeah. I like it, I'm enjoying the trial and I'll be picking it up end of the month.
I haven't run into the vast majority of animation bugs that have been reported, only Cora's silly walk, and those bugs seem to be down to the default FemRyder face by the looks of it. I've had no awkward smirk when I informed Captain "My face is tired!" about Ryder Sr, nor any of the other gormless looks. Combat is fun, fast and allows for covered based or fairly aggressive play styles, which is nice. AI squadmates actually seem to be competent enough now to deal with small groups of enemies by themselves, which is a fucking god-send.
Class selection feels kinda pointless, because as you progress, you unlock 'profiles', which allow you to basically swap classes at will and they do only limit you to 3 active powers which is a shame. The removal of the Para/Rene system is actually a good choice, and each character I've spoken to so far has had a shit ton of dialogue choices. It also feels more ME1 than the rest, as there's a lot of loot to pick up and shift through for upgrades. The new MAKO thingy is, thankfully, a lot of fun to drive and is given to you fairly early on in the game, and is basically the best way to get anywhere fast.
I do agree, it does have what feels like a very slow start, although that may be because I'm not used to an open world ME game where I can just land somewhere and just fuck off across the planet to do something.
My only problem really with it so far is that the humans don't look anywhere near as detailed as some of the aliens do. There was an encounter I...well, encountered, and the krogan involved looked waaaaaaaaaay better than the humans. Oh, and Bioware still can't animate someone holding an assault rifle properly at times but hey, they couldn't fix across 2 or 3, so why now? Oh, and sometimes distant AI will derp out and not fight, but a round the noggin jerks them out of their daydream.
So...yeah. I like it, I'm enjoying the trial and I'll be picking it up end of the month.
I played all the 10 hours the trial could offer and can't wait to play it all the way through once the game releases. It's exactly what I want out of a Mass Effect game from what I played. For some reason it's "cool" to hate on BioWare at the moment and somehow posting funny animation gifs is reason enough for the whole game to be declared garbage, but I don't play RPG's for Uncharted level facial animation. Still, dumb gifs aside, I was actually really impressed by the facial animation in the game. Yes, there is some occasional derpiness but your player character is way more expressive than really any modern RPG I've seen (weird, no one made gifs of Horizon's awful stiff animations), this is especially amazing considering you can customize your character.
Any way, I play Mass Effect and RPG's for the in-depth stories and great characters and so far Andromeda has been delivering. It feels a lot like Mass Effect 1 with its slower pace and I love it, feels like a real Star Trek type sci-fi game that I want. I enjoy just walking around and talking to as many people as I can and scanning weird new alien worlds. If you liked the past Mass Effect games then you'll probably like Andromeda, if not then I don't know.
Any way, I play Mass Effect and RPG's for the in-depth stories and great characters and so far Andromeda has been delivering. It feels a lot like Mass Effect 1 with its slower pace and I love it, feels like a real Star Trek type sci-fi game that I want. I enjoy just walking around and talking to as many people as I can and scanning weird new alien worlds. If you liked the past Mass Effect games then you'll probably like Andromeda, if not then I don't know.
Terrible Character Creator, terrible animations. Mediocre UI for PC. Some side characters written by retarded 5 year old. Pacing is bit odd. Interesting main plot, and characters. Good gameplay and customization. The locations look impressive. Multiplayer is fun. All in all from what i've played it's not contender to GOTY fight, not by a long shot, BUT it's just a decent video game.
What I want to know is how good is the questing, story, and characters. That's why I play a Bioware game. I'm sure the combat will be good enough, I enjoyed ME3's combat quite a bit. But if the Bioware "stuff" isn't up to snuff, then I could have more fun just continuing to play Horizon and fighting robot dinosaurs.
I don't have early access to the game, but I did watch a 1 hour and 40 minute gameplay video of it. So far, I'm not super thrilled.
Cons:
Mouth animations look...overly animated on human characters, and clearly not motion-capped, making them look awkward. And the eyes seem very expressionless. Some of the dialogue is pretty cringy. Like a smug teen tweeted something and thought he/she was oh so funny/clever. The side missions look similar to Inquisition. As in, very samey and clearly 'filler quests'. A lot of 'go there, press E on something, go there, press E on something', etc. I'm also wondering why they added straight up sudoku as a puzzle mechanic. UI looks horrible for PC, and mediocre at best for console, though ME 1/2/3 weren't much better. Flashy, but incredibly impractical. The planet scanning looks absolutely horrid. Worse then ME2. With basically a small cutscene for every scan you do. And finally the first baddies you encounter seem incredibly generic to me so far.
Pros:
The worlds look beautiful. You can definitely tell that a lot of work went into them and that they upgraded from DX9 to 11. The new class system actually looks wonderful. More skyrim than 'pick a class and you're stuck with it's limited set'. No more renegade/paragon and instead dialogue option determining your personality. No idea if this actually affects anything but it seems like a good change. The new land vehicle looks like it handles properly instead of the floaty, clunky mako. Apart from the humans the alien races look great so far. The more fast paced combat option with dashes and boosted jumps fit my playstyle perfectly. (vanguard, charge as much as possible and nova the hell out of everything)
That's what I can think of off the top of my head. Basically, I'll be waiting until a week or so after release when more reviews (user and proffessional) are out before deciding to buy or not.
TL
R
They made a lot of odd design choices to say the least, and some bad ones too. Character animations look way off at times. Especially human facial animation. But they did improve some gameplay systems over the previous trilogy. Most of the development seems to have gone into the aliens, combat and the worlds, less so into the humans, questing and UI.
Cons:
Mouth animations look...overly animated on human characters, and clearly not motion-capped, making them look awkward. And the eyes seem very expressionless. Some of the dialogue is pretty cringy. Like a smug teen tweeted something and thought he/she was oh so funny/clever. The side missions look similar to Inquisition. As in, very samey and clearly 'filler quests'. A lot of 'go there, press E on something, go there, press E on something', etc. I'm also wondering why they added straight up sudoku as a puzzle mechanic. UI looks horrible for PC, and mediocre at best for console, though ME 1/2/3 weren't much better. Flashy, but incredibly impractical. The planet scanning looks absolutely horrid. Worse then ME2. With basically a small cutscene for every scan you do. And finally the first baddies you encounter seem incredibly generic to me so far.
Pros:
The worlds look beautiful. You can definitely tell that a lot of work went into them and that they upgraded from DX9 to 11. The new class system actually looks wonderful. More skyrim than 'pick a class and you're stuck with it's limited set'. No more renegade/paragon and instead dialogue option determining your personality. No idea if this actually affects anything but it seems like a good change. The new land vehicle looks like it handles properly instead of the floaty, clunky mako. Apart from the humans the alien races look great so far. The more fast paced combat option with dashes and boosted jumps fit my playstyle perfectly. (vanguard, charge as much as possible and nova the hell out of everything)
That's what I can think of off the top of my head. Basically, I'll be waiting until a week or so after release when more reviews (user and proffessional) are out before deciding to buy or not.
TL
RThey made a lot of odd design choices to say the least, and some bad ones too. Character animations look way off at times. Especially human facial animation. But they did improve some gameplay systems over the previous trilogy. Most of the development seems to have gone into the aliens, combat and the worlds, less so into the humans, questing and UI.
Eh, less cool, and more "It's been seven years since your last audience acclaimed game as a company, and you've got your C team of fanboys designing it" more than anything.oRevanchisto said:
I mean, people just got sick of the exact same mistakes being made and with no attempt to fix them, instead opting for the "no, it is the audience that is in the wrong always" attitude. After a while, people just stop wanting to give them the benefit of the doubt.
ME2 had some questionable elements(weapon systems in the entire galaxy being shifted for no apparent reason to ammo, combat going more actiony with fewer pause and command moments, the universal cooldown system), DA2 recycled alot of shit, ruined multiple previously established characters for a half-assed plot that had no real differences in it no matter the choices you made. And Inquisition was the breaking point for alot of people, myself included. They took early MMO mechanics, and crammed them into a single-player action game. ME3 was just an extended goodbye to the characters people got attached to from the previous games for the most part and made alot of people have no will to play through the series again with the initial ending(again, I'm one of those, I've tried half a dozen times and the ending just kills my desire to get even halfway through ME1).
OT:
Human animations seem to be shit and lack alot of character and life, customization makes Oblivion look amazing, combat is like a less impactful ME3(as in, your melee is now something you can spam instead of it being a wind-up), and characters seem to be around ME1 Kaiden Alenko level(who I loved as a character, voice, and world-builder, but didn't have nearly enough lines and screentime compared to how much you learned about him through the others). Also the camera seems to be really cramped.
Other than that, it's got an even more simplified talk wheel(as in, you have some questions you can ask, and four options of Logic, Professional, Emotional, and I think Reckless?). Story seems to be pretty silly too. First time you run into an alien it's "We have to be nice so they don't shoot and first contact war, blah, blah, blah", then you proceed to do the exact opposite for the rest of the trial with not even a "should we really be killing every bit of wildlife we find?" comment from what I've seen.
Doesn't help that your character seems to be a bit more of a Mary/Marty Sue than Shepard ever was. At least Shepard had to come up through the ranks, Ryder just gets everything handed to them. Also SAM and the "experimental FTLS drive" are such fucking gigantic retcons that pisses me off to no end. Bunch of Bioware cowards that didn't want to deal with the ME3 ending as far as I'm concerned are the only reason those two things exist. Give a new setting and a PC with new toys and hope nobody asks questions.
Overall, it seems...alright? If you're a diehard fan of Bioware, I guess you wouldn't be too concerned because you've already pre-ordered it anyways and you're already fine with their characters being sorta flat and their post-Karpyshian/ post-"this story is important to me" Gaider writing being, but it's not enough for me to want to buy it on sale even at the moment. Been burned too many times in succession by Bioware lately. Add in that their head writer for this game has a bit of a reputation for putting out shit, and I'm not holding out hope that it gets better later on. Maybe the characters will go a sorta ME2 type route and get you attached, but I dunno.
I read RPS preview and they said what i have been saying from start. game has some of the worst animation ever and its 2017. plus gameplay looks mediocre. so tired of third person cover peak shooter.BabyfartsMcgeezaks said:
mass effect has always been gears of war clone with dialogues system.
This is the definition of nitpicking. Are you saying that developers must be slaves to their lore and not add in new gameplay elements or new story ideas because it might rub up against per-established lore? The Mass Effect 2 reload system was needed, Mass Effect 1's gunplay was ass and ME2 improved every nearly aspect of actual gameplay from ME1. And, they did so by adding to the lore not simply ignoring it. Everything in Andromeda is appropriately explained, nothing "lore breaking" occurs within what I played of the game, fuck they even managed to explain why before leaving for Andromeda they were able to get more accurate sight readings of the planets within the Heleus Cluster. In other words, the very opposite of screwing with lore.Redryhno said:
I also don't get your Mary Sue complaint, Ryder has done nothing at this point of the story besides almost dying in the first mission while their super-soldier father did everything. It's pretty apparent that this is a story about a fresh team of untried individuals becoming heroes. So your Mary Sue complaint makes no sense unless your solely talking about their gameplay abilities which is an odd thing to complain about. Are you saying you wished your character could do less and controlled more like crap?
Any who, BioWare's last game was Inquisition and despite some of the internet backlash it's received lately it won all the game of the year awards at the time of its release and was BioWare's biggest launch to date. So, while you may think that BioWare collectively has been failing the rest of the gaming world don't seem to agree. I liked what I played of Andromeda so far and hope it only gets better as I eventually get to play more.
I haven't played it, but the gameplay actually looks kinda fun, in a turn-off-your-head-and-shoot-aliens-from-behind-a-wall way. The quests themselves though don't look amazing.
The animations I couldn't give a rat's ass about (I played ME2 lately, and Miranda... *barf*), but the voice acting pisses me off. What, did they get every single amateur voice actor out there? They sound like an enthusiastic high school play. And that the dialogue constantly cuts itself off is really annoying.
I don't know. I will most likely wait for a huge sale or something.
The animations I couldn't give a rat's ass about (I played ME2 lately, and Miranda... *barf*), but the voice acting pisses me off. What, did they get every single amateur voice actor out there? They sound like an enthusiastic high school play. And that the dialogue constantly cuts itself off is really annoying.
I don't know. I will most likely wait for a huge sale or something.
The animations aren't that bad at all, people (including you) are just blowing things out of proportion. Aren't you a Deus Ex fan? If you like Deus Ex then why even consider complaining about ME:A animations or its cover system? Besides, ME:A doesn't share the same cover system as ME1-3, Gears of War or Deus Ex, not that there's anything wrong with their cover systems.B-Cell said:
Also, sharing a similar cover system to Gears of War doesn't make a game a Gears clone, I know that you've been told this 100's of times already but there you go.
Deus Ex is stealth game thus cover work but it would be much better if it involve lean and peak instead of cover like original game. i never praised deus ex cover system.BabyfartsMcgeezaks said:
now mass effect is a third person shooter. and having cover system mean your immersion is now break. you can see behind the wall you just take wall cover and shoot.
the early previews has not been very good. Its shaping to be most disappointing game of 2017. its kinda sad 20 years old FPS (System shock 2 and Deus Ex) are more deeper in RPG than a game that claim to be RPG.
You haven't but I've caught you saying that every game that uses a similar cover system to Gears of War is a Gears of War clone, yet you praise Deus Ex as a whole.B-Cell said:
You do realize you can do the same in Deus Ex and even in all Max Payne games? You're being extremely hypocritical. If it truly broke your immersion then how come games like Gears of War, Mass Effect and TLOU are extremely popular games?
Really? Please elaborate how System Shock 2 and Deus Ex are ''more deeper in RPG'' than a game that claim to be RPH.
The game itself, as far as mechanically speaking goes, is fun and lovely. The vistas and space stuff is beautiful (on XB1). Animations are a bit wonky though, and some dialogue feels very out of place, like the voice acting does not match up with the character. What I mean is some aliens sound way too humanocentric and some humans sound like a bad AI pulling individual words from sound files. Even some humans sound more alien.
Overall, despite those oddities that are somewhat immersion breaking, the game is fun and so far I like how it works. Story is nothing hugely special, but its not terrible either. I was hoping for less of a SAVIOR role and more of a smaller scale story but hey, its Bioware... I don't know if they know how to do that.
Overall, despite those oddities that are somewhat immersion breaking, the game is fun and so far I like how it works. Story is nothing hugely special, but its not terrible either. I was hoping for less of a SAVIOR role and more of a smaller scale story but hey, its Bioware... I don't know if they know how to do that.