-
Re: Mass Effect Andromeda: To Boldly Go
At this point I'm glad I pre-ordered just so I can get in there early on and see what the fuss is about. Since I usually like games that review around a 7 to 8 better than the 9s and 10s, the scores don't bother me. I find it far more interesting really, since a lot of them are saying things I've found true of Bioware games for years (flat writing, overreliance on chosen one plot lines etc) or else simply make no sense - the kvetching about Andromeda not being particularly imaginative. Given how blatant the game is about being essentially a soft reboot of the entire series, the fact that Andromeda is the Milky Way all over again should hardly be a surprise. I'm not sure why anybody would have entertained a different notion.
-
Re: Mass Effect Andromeda: To Boldly Go
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Corvus
The
game reviews are coming out and they are in the 6/7/8 range, averaging about 7.5.
Huh, that's a lot lower than I expected. I mean, I might be pessimistic about the game, but that's because of my personal tastes for the most part, which aren't common. I figured they'd easily be getting their usual high marks from people who actually like the big open-world stuff.
-
Re: Mass Effect Andromeda: To Boldly Go
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Rodin
Finally decided that this squeaks onto my "play at launch" list. Just. Mainly because I'm really itching for a shooter and I'm finishing out Hollow Knight exactly as the game releases.
Hopefully I won't wind up regretting it.
Honestly the gameplay itself is really fun, its just the facial animations and the dialogue/VA in some places that are problematic. The story is standard Biowarefare so if you like the story in any game they've done before this you'll probably like the story in this game. A good game to compare it to would be DA:Inquisition. It has that same story feel and the open world areas feel similar, if more refined, to the areas in Inquisition.
-
Re: Mass Effect Andromeda: To Boldly Go
Gamestop released Andromeda early, so my brother is building his Ryder right now. I have to wait until Green Man Gaming coughs up the keys for my PC version, but I can wait.
-
Re: Mass Effect Andromeda: To Boldly Go
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Zevox
Huh, that's a lot lower than I expected. I mean, I might be pessimistic about the game, but that's because of my personal tastes for the most part, which aren't common. I figured they'd easily be getting their usual high marks from people who actually like the big open-world stuff.
Fun fact about critics: they love to nitpick. A game that's completely perfect, save for one flaw, will probably rate lower than a consistently good game that's never perfect.
Personally, I find critics rarely have opinions that correspond with my own tastes, and when they do it's likely either by chance or because the game was "objectively" (insofar as that's possible) phenomenal or terrible.
-
Re: Mass Effect Andromeda: To Boldly Go
So here's a thought: this is one-way for humans, but an Asari or Krogan? They could easily have family in the Milky Way live to see them leave and come back.
-
Re: Mass Effect Andromeda: To Boldly Go
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Strigon
Fun fact about critics: they love to nitpick. A game that's completely perfect, save for one flaw, will probably rate lower than a consistently good game that's never perfect.
Personally, I find critics rarely have opinions that correspond with my own tastes, and when they do it's likely either by chance or because the game was "objectively" (insofar as that's possible) phenomenal or terrible.
Oh, I agree about the latter (not so sure about the former). I tend to just ignore reviews and scores altogether, personally, since like you I've never seen a reviewer whose tastes closely correspond to my own. But I'm still at least vaguely aware of how they operate from when I used to pay attention to them, and a big-name company putting out a new entry in a much-praised franchise like this tend(ed) to get a lot of easy 9s more often than not. And given how most people react to the sort of things they're changing relative to past entries, I wouldn't expect those to drag the scores down.
-
Re: Mass Effect Andromeda: To Boldly Go
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Strigon
Fun fact about critics: they love to nitpick. A game that's completely perfect, save for one flaw, will probably rate lower than a consistently good game that's never perfect.
Go any evidence to back that up? Because it sounds completely untrue to me.
-
Re: Mass Effect Andromeda: To Boldly Go
My personal 'theory' - although that sounds awfully strong, guess seems more appropriate - about game critics is something like this. Most genres of game are subtly annoying. Because games copy each other like no tomorrow, you're gonna see the exact same set of annoying features in multiple games/ These annoyances slowly accumulate, particularly if you have to play the damn things all the time, and write/record/edit thoughts about them, all to a deadline so that the raging horrorshow that is the internet can shred your every thought in a punctual manner. So after about ten billion hours of playing ten million very similar hoover up all the icons on the map games, one that's a little less polished, with just a few extra annoying parts is gonna be very annoying indeed.
For a person who plays a smaller number of games, doesn't have to mainline the things, and is there for their own very personal reasons, I suspect this sort of genre fatigue is a lot less of a problem. If I decide I've gotten what I want to out of a game after 20 hours and never beat the thing, I can still come away satisfied.
-
Re: Mass Effect Andromeda: To Boldly Go
Quote:
Originally Posted by
warty goblin
My personal 'theory' - although that sounds awfully strong, guess seems more appropriate - about game critics is something like this. Most genres of game are subtly annoying. Because games copy each other like no tomorrow, you're gonna see the exact same set of annoying features in multiple games/ These annoyances slowly accumulate, particularly if you have to play the damn things all the time, and write/record/edit thoughts about them, all to a deadline so that the raging horrorshow that is the internet can shred your every thought in a punctual manner. So after about ten billion hours of playing ten million very similar hoover up all the icons on the map games, one that's a little less polished, with just a few extra annoying parts is gonna be very annoying indeed.
For a person who plays a smaller number of games, doesn't have to mainline the things, and is there for their own very personal reasons, I suspect this sort of genre fatigue is a lot less of a problem. If I decide I've gotten what I want to out of a game after 20 hours and never beat the thing, I can still come away satisfied.
True. I also tend to judge games on how many hours of enjoyment I get out of them. I'm sure when I eventually play this one I'll get my money's worth. That doesn't mean we have to ignore flaws if they're there though. I want the next installment to be better after all.
-
Re: Mass Effect Andromeda: To Boldly Go
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Inarius
Honestly the gameplay itself is really fun, its just the facial animations and the dialogue/VA in some places that are problematic. The story is standard Biowarefare so if you like the story in any game they've done before this you'll probably like the story in this game. A good game to compare it to would be DA:Inquisition. It has that same story feel and the open world areas feel similar, if more refined, to the areas in Inquisition.
It being like Inquisition is what I'm afraid of.
I'm hoping the difference in core gameplay and setting (I like Sci-Fi better than Fantasy) will make up the difference and get me past the MMO feel that Inquisition had. We'll see. I've got it downloading right now.
On the reviews, I think it's pretty fair. Based on the reviews I've read:
1) The open world stuff is decent, but other recent open world games do it better.
2) The character animations are passable, but better is expected of a AAA title.
3) The plot is okay, but it's standard Bioware fare and isn't anything remarkable.
4) The game doesn't really innovate in and of itself.
All of that results in a "Meh" from the reviewers. It isn't a bad game, so it doesn't get a low score. It isn't knock your socks off either, so it doesn't get a super high score. That results in the game getting a load of 6s, 7s, and 8s.
-
Re: Mass Effect Andromeda: To Boldly Go
Quote:
Originally Posted by
tonberrian
So here's a thought: this is one-way for humans, but an Asari or Krogan? They could easily have family in the Milky Way live to see them leave and come back.
The trip is 600 years. A round trip would be at least 1200. Asari live 1000.
Round Trips are Krogan only, and why would they want to?
-
Re: Mass Effect Andromeda: To Boldly Go
Quote:
Originally Posted by
tonberrian
So here's a thought: this is one-way for humans, but an Asari or Krogan? They could easily have family in the Milky Way live to see them leave and come back.
Even assuming their tech could make the trip back (it can't - see below), 600 years each way is long even for Asari. Krogan might live long enough to go back, but they were pretty lucky to even make it on the away trip. (I mean, in-universe they were lucky - from a metapopularity/marketing standpoint, there was no way in hell Krogan would be getting left behind.)
To elaborate on that tech point:
Spoiler: state of the Initiative
Show
When Ryder's Ark arrives - the only one to do so - the Nexus is so starved for power that they immediately plug Hyperion's core in and start siphoning juice from it. Given the desperation in Andromeda, there's no possible way they could spare the resources to outfit the ships for a return trip. The only real way to move up that timetable would be to incorporate Remnant tech, and that would mean settling and studying.
And speaking of Andromeda Krogan:
Spoiler: Genophage Things
Show
They used the 600-year trip to Andromeda to make a dent in the genophage through a combination of gene therapy and their own mutations - the same kind of mutation that led Mordin and Maelon to modify the genophage prior to ME2. This drastically increased their birthrate from one in one thousand ("Like gardening!") to four in one hundred - still very low, but no longer a race-wide "perpetual twilight" of decline, especially since there aren't as many merc bands or clan rivalries in Andromeda for them to run off and die in either. They can just focus on things like growing crops and breeding, just like Wrex had wanted in ME1.
-
Re: Mass Effect Andromeda: To Boldly Go
I'm kinda raging at the character creation already.
There are decent looking presets that I would love to modify and make my own.
Except...you can't. There's "preset with no changes" and "custom". And Custom brings up a hideous version that looks nowhere near as good as any of the presets, which would force me to spend ages with the sliders which I'm terrible with and SHOULDN'T HAVE TO MESS WITH BECAUSE THATS THE POINT OF MODIFYING A PRESET.
It's a massive oversight that I'm certain wasn't missed in any of the previous games. What the hell, Bioware?
Edit:
Nevermind. It's just that the UI is HORRIBLY unintuitive.
-
Re: Mass Effect Andromeda: To Boldly Go
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Rodin
I'm kinda raging at the character creation already.
There are decent looking presets that I would love to modify and make my own.
Except...you can't. There's "preset with no changes" and "custom". And Custom brings up a hideous version that looks nowhere near as good as any of the presets, which would force me to spend ages with the sliders which I'm terrible with and SHOULDN'T HAVE TO MESS WITH BECAUSE THATS THE POINT OF MODIFYING A PRESET.
It's a massive oversight that I'm certain wasn't missed in any of the previous games. What the hell, Bioware?
Edit:
Nevermind. It's just that the UI is HORRIBLY unintuitive.
You definitely couldn't modify the preset Shepard in the first two games. I don't know if you could in the third one because by then I was resigned to using the default.
-
Re: Mass Effect Andromeda: To Boldly Go
There's some terminology confusion happening here. "Default" is the initial face of Ryder/Shepard, the one that you see in the promo material. These are typically based on real-world models, which is why you can't modify them. (e.g. default Shepard is based on Mark Vanderloo and Scott Ryder's default comes from Steven Brewis.
Presets are different - these are a series of pre-made faces that Bioware devs put together using their face creator. These all CAN be modified/tweaked; they're not based on real people. It's basically a way to throw out a series of proportional noses, eyes and the like for us to use as a starting point.
-
Re: Mass Effect Andromeda: To Boldly Go
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Psyren
There's some terminology confusion happening here. "Default" is the initial face of Ryder/Shepard, the one that you see in the promo material. These are typically based on real-world models, which is why you can't modify them. (e.g. default Shepard is based on
Mark Vanderloo and Scott Ryder's default comes from
Steven Brewis.
Presets are different - these are a series of pre-made faces that Bioware devs put together using their face creator. These all CAN be modified/tweaked; they're not based on real people. It's basically a way to throw out a series of proportional noses, eyes and the like for us to use as a starting point.
Yeah, so what was happening is that after you select a preset, it locks it in and places it as "Custom". If you go back to the presets screen and select someone, the picture changes to the preset. I was then changing tabs to modify the one I selected, but it immediately switched to the Custom one (which happened to be an ugly preset). To get it to change I had to lock in a different preset.
I wound up changing very little as the options are...pretty sparse. Then again, my Shepards were always pretty close to the default so that's perhaps not surprising.
First couple hours summed up: Gameplay good, plot baaaaad. Hopefully it'll pick up once I get into the game proper.
-
Re: Mass Effect Andromeda: To Boldly Go
I'll take any amount of customization over a static PC like Geralt, Link or Aloy any day. I want to be the protagonist, not merely pilot them, which is why I prefer WRPGs in general. (One reason, anyway.)
Having peeked at the romance options I restarted the game as FemRyder; it's pretty disappointing that there's only one gay male option and he's not even a squadmate. Hopefully the sequel broadens the cheesecake options much like ME2 did. As it is, FemRyder can get with nearly all the aliens on the ship (including the new one), so she's the next best thing.
-
Re: Mass Effect Andromeda: To Boldly Go
Quote:
Originally Posted by
5ColouredWalker
The trip is 600 years. A round trip would be at least 1200. Asari live 1000.
Round Trips are Krogan only, and why would they want to?
Especially since one of the the krogan companion's whole schtick is visit new places, find new things to kill.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Psyren
There's some terminology confusion happening here. "Default" is the initial face of Ryder/Shepard, the one that you see in the promo material. These are typically based on real-world models, which is why you can't modify them. (e.g. default Shepard is based on
Mark Vanderloo and Scott Ryder's default comes from
Steven Brewis.
Is it just me or does default male Sheperd look tougher and more bad ass than Mark Vanderloo, but somehow Ryder looks like a weiner compared to Steven Brewis? Maybe its just that I have a history with Sheperd being a bad ass and Ryder not so much yet.
-
Re: Mass Effect Andromeda: To Boldly Go
-
Re: Mass Effect Andromeda: To Boldly Go
Also Shepard has an history as a badass when ME1 starts, Ryder is a "kid" in their early 20s
-
Re: Mass Effect Andromeda: To Boldly Go
Quote:
Originally Posted by
thorgrim29
Also Shepard has an history as a badass when ME1 starts, Ryder is a "kid" in their early 20s
Fair, Sheperd is a System Alliance command officer and SPECTRE candidate at the start of ME1, so already a certified bad ass.
Also, I'm so angry that I can't play until at least tomorrow since my copy gets delivered today, while I'm at work. So mad, so very, very angry.
-
Re: Mass Effect Andromeda: To Boldly Go
Quote:
Originally Posted by
5ColouredWalker
The trip is 600 years. A round trip would be at least 1200. Asari live 1000.
Round Trips are Krogan only, and why would they want to?
I didn't think Krogan lived as long as Asari, after all the poetry Krogan wasn't going to live as long as the Asari he was chatting up but it would still be a fairly long time.
-
Re: Mass Effect Andromeda: To Boldly Go
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Spacewolf
I didn't think Krogan lived as long as Asari, after all the poetry Krogan wasn't going to live as long as the Asari he was chatting up but it would still be a fairly long time.
Krogans live much longer than Asari. I thought poetry Krogan was gonna die in battle.
-
Re: Mass Effect Andromeda: To Boldly Go
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Spacewolf
I didn't think Krogan lived as long as Asari, after all the poetry Krogan wasn't going to live as long as the Asari he was chatting up but it would still be a fairly long time.
No, where did you get that idea? Krogan live longer than they do. The problem is their lifespan is theoretical since nobody has seen one die of natural causes, not even them.
-
Re: Mass Effect Andromeda: To Boldly Go
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Psyren
No, where did you get that idea? Krogan live longer than they do. The problem is their lifespan is theoretical since nobody has seen one die of natural causes, not even them.
The Krogan companion in ME:A is 1400 years old. I recall an off hand comment in ME3 that natural death for a krogan is getting eaten by a thresher maw, since it naturally causes death.
-
Re: Mass Effect Andromeda: To Boldly Go
Oh no.
Did the Andromeda Initiative check to make sure they didn't bring thresher maws to Andromeda? Those things get everywhere.
-
Re: Mass Effect Andromeda: To Boldly Go
Quote:
Originally Posted by
tonberrian
Oh no.
Did the Andromeda Initiative check to make sure they didn't bring thresher maws to Andromeda? Those things get everywhere.
Given the in game explanation about how they seem to get everywhere, we can't be sure that they didn't come from Andromeda to start with.
-
Re: Mass Effect Andromeda: To Boldly Go
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Beleriphon
The Krogan companion in ME:A is 1400 years old. I recall an off hand comment in ME3 that natural death for a krogan is getting eaten by a thresher maw, since it naturally causes death.
My point exactly.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
tonberrian
Oh no.
Did the Andromeda Initiative check to make sure they didn't bring thresher maws to Andromeda? Those things get everywhere.
Even if we brought some spores ourselves though, we don't know how long they gestate. But in any event, there is something filling that niche in Andromeda at least gameplay-wise.
-
Re: Mass Effect Andromeda: To Boldly Go
Whew. So I finally managed to tie my EA account to my gamertag on Xbox one after it somehow got tied to a dead account- I had no problems on Xbox 360, but the Xbox One had to be different. That took the better part of an hour, and was the conclusion of a years long struggle that began because my Sister was too eager to use the new Xbox, and tied my Xbox account to a non-existant email (And by the time I figured this out, I had used that account for years).
So, after the conclusion of this drama, guess what happens? Xbox Live is down now. :smallfrown:
Ah, well. At least I finally fixed that conundrum.
Question for anyone else who purchased a physical copy of the deluxe edition- Did you get two identical code inserts (apart from the code itself, obviously)? I'm confused as to whether this is a manufacturer error that has given me an extra copy of the deluxe edition content, or a second code I need to enter. The EA support said the latter, but I think he was confused by my gamertag being tie to the dead account at the time.