Results 841 to 870 of 1447
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2017-03-20, 07:20 PM (ISO 8601)
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- May 2007
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- Tail of the Bellcurve
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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.
Blood-red were his spurs i' the golden noon; wine-red was his velvet coat,
When they shot him down on the highway,
Down like a dog on the highway,And he lay in his blood on the highway, with the bunch of lace at his throat.
Alfred Noyes, The Highwayman, 1906.
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2017-03-20, 07:34 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Nov 2008
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Re: Mass Effect Andromeda: To Boldly Go
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.
Toph Pony avatar by Dirtytabs. Thanks!
"When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty, I read them openly. When I became a man, I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up." -C.S. Lewis
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2017-03-20, 08:11 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Jan 2006
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Re: Mass Effect Andromeda: To Boldly Go
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.
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2017-03-20, 09:01 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Aug 2008
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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.
The name is "tonberrian", even when it begins a sentence. It's magic, I ain't gotta 'splain why.
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2017-03-20, 09:12 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Aug 2014
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- Ontario, Canada
- Gender
Re: Mass Effect Andromeda: To Boldly Go
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.
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2017-03-20, 09:19 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Aug 2008
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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.
The name is "tonberrian", even when it begins a sentence. It's magic, I ain't gotta 'splain why.
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2017-03-20, 09:24 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Nov 2008
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Re: Mass Effect Andromeda: To Boldly Go
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.
Toph Pony avatar by Dirtytabs. Thanks!
"When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty, I read them openly. When I became a man, I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up." -C.S. Lewis
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2017-03-20, 09:50 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- May 2007
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2017-03-20, 10:03 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- May 2007
- Location
- Tail of the Bellcurve
- Gender
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.Blood-red were his spurs i' the golden noon; wine-red was his velvet coat,
When they shot him down on the highway,
Down like a dog on the highway,And he lay in his blood on the highway, with the bunch of lace at his throat.
Alfred Noyes, The Highwayman, 1906.
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2017-03-20, 10:26 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- May 2007
Re: Mass Effect Andromeda: To Boldly Go
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.
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2017-03-20, 10:42 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Nov 2013
Re: Mass Effect Andromeda: To Boldly Go
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.
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2017-03-20, 11:34 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- May 2015
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2017-03-20, 11:38 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Oct 2010
- Gender
Re: Mass Effect Andromeda: To Boldly Go
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 InitiativeWhen 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 ThingsThey 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.Plague Doctor by Crimmy
Ext. Sig (Handbooks/Creations)
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2017-03-21, 12:14 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Nov 2013
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.Last edited by Rodin; 2017-03-21 at 12:18 AM.
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2017-03-21, 12:46 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- May 2007
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2017-03-21, 12:59 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Oct 2010
- Gender
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.Plague Doctor by Crimmy
Ext. Sig (Handbooks/Creations)
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2017-03-21, 02:04 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Nov 2013
Re: Mass Effect Andromeda: To Boldly Go
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.
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2017-03-21, 08:49 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Oct 2010
- Gender
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.Plague Doctor by Crimmy
Ext. Sig (Handbooks/Creations)
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2017-03-21, 10:25 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jan 2006
- Location
- Protecting my Horde (yes, I mean that kind)
Re: Mass Effect Andromeda: To Boldly Go
Especially since one of the the krogan companion's whole schtick is visit new places, find new things to kill.
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.Last edited by Beleriphon; 2017-03-21 at 11:36 AM.
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2017-03-21, 10:46 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jan 2006
- Location
- Protecting my Horde (yes, I mean that kind)
Re: Mass Effect Andromeda: To Boldly Go
double post
Last edited by Beleriphon; 2017-03-21 at 11:36 AM.
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2017-03-21, 11:02 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Feb 2007
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- Quebec, Canada
- Gender
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2017-03-21, 11:40 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jan 2006
- Location
- Protecting my Horde (yes, I mean that kind)
Re: Mass Effect Andromeda: To Boldly Go
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.
Spoiler: MarvinLast edited by Beleriphon; 2017-03-21 at 11:40 AM.
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2017-03-21, 11:50 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jan 2012
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- Britain
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2017-03-21, 11:57 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Aug 2008
- Gender
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2017-03-21, 11:57 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Oct 2010
- Gender
Re: Mass Effect Andromeda: To Boldly Go
Plague Doctor by Crimmy
Ext. Sig (Handbooks/Creations)
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2017-03-21, 12:13 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jan 2006
- Location
- Protecting my Horde (yes, I mean that kind)
Re: Mass Effect Andromeda: To Boldly Go
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2017-03-21, 12:19 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Aug 2008
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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.The name is "tonberrian", even when it begins a sentence. It's magic, I ain't gotta 'splain why.
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2017-03-21, 12:32 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jan 2006
- Location
- Protecting my Horde (yes, I mean that kind)
Re: Mass Effect Andromeda: To Boldly Go
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2017-03-21, 01:38 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Oct 2010
- Gender
Re: Mass Effect Andromeda: To Boldly Go
Plague Doctor by Crimmy
Ext. Sig (Handbooks/Creations)
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2017-03-21, 02:02 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jan 2007
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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.
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.Last edited by Squark; 2017-03-21 at 02:08 PM.
Steam ID: The Great Squark
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