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Even the animation was better, when the protag says "oh my god" he actually reacts.
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Mass Effect: Andromeda | Review Thread (READ MOD POST)
- Thread starter kubus
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Even the animation was better, when the protag says "oh my god" he actually reacts.
CrichtonKicks
Member
Considering that the game seems to struggle on a regular PS4 and One I'm sure that the game needed some downgrading during the optimization process. Seems less a "problem" and more just a normal product of development.
SilentRacoon
Member
Yep, all gaming outlets just had a meeting and decided unanimously this was the deserving score for the game in relation to the paycheck EA handed to them.
Also for anyone unaware, this isn't the same Bioware of ME:3 or DA:I, Bioware Montreal was mainly used as an assist studio for pre-existing games, this is the first time they have worked on a full game.
xeroborn55
Member
Witcher 3 is my favorite game of the last few years... but I did not enjoy the actual gameplay of it. Writing, atmosphere, and the world CDPR made were all amazing, but the gameplay was serviceable at best.
LaunchpadMcQ
Banned
I think what the poster is saying is that Witcher 3 [and Horizon] nailed a lot of things that many games haven't been able to replicate or best since. Witcher still stands as one of the finest game in the genre. It's hard for people not to draw comparisons.
Lashley
Why does he wear the mask!?
Lighting at least, can be fixed with reshade
Fucking sold.The gameplay looks completely badass:
I know that I am definitely going to have some fun there, at the very least.
It certainly doesn't feel like a 2017 game.
At first I was excited by the more open feel of the game. Like it was ME3 with the linear restraints removed. But I've played more and it has the feel of an open world game designed by people who have never made an open world game before, nor understand what makes good open world games work.
Honestly, it feels like a free-to-play open world game with checkbox quests. Only when I hit a cutscene am I like, oh yeah somebody designed this.
Wind's Howling
Member
I remember the time where Mass Effect had massive texture pop-in's, severe loading times and somewhat atrocious animations from time to time but it was still ahead of its time.
Now there are other developers who managed to create something more spectacular. I am pretty sure that comparisons against other games do give other games, like Andromeda, lower review scores if the competition is fiercer.
VincentMatts
Member
I dont think it had development problems per say as much as the fact that it just wasnt Bioware Edmonton doing it. You game is as good as your team. This clearly wasnt their A team.
It's a point worth making, I think, since there appears to be a general feeling that Bioware's writing has been steadily receding in quality since some high point in the aughties (KOTOR? ME1?). ME1 had very good writing for a space opera game when it released; it has loads of clunky dialogue, though. On a line-by-line basis, KOTOR is outright badly written and delivered by modern standards. Both ME1 and KOTOR, for instance, have some shit-tier villain dialogue, of the "explain my plans and then cackle madly" variety (I'm pretty sure this literally happens in KOTOR at some point).
That said, I think that what has happened is that the rest of the industry got its act together with writing and dialogue, at least a little, meaning that what was exceptional in 2007 is only adequate now, and perhaps less than adequate for a game in which dialogue plays a huge role. From my own experience with their games, what has happened with Bioware is that their writing hasn't kept up with the evolving marketplace - and the writing was the one thing they did better than their competitors in the first place (and, I suppose freedom of choice, which is also something that competitors have knocked out of the park).
(Incidentally, I haven't played enough of ME:A to have a meaningful opinion of it, but I certainly noted some awkward dialogue & delivery in the parts of the early access that I sampled.)
The difference isn't that the Witcher 3 was good, it's that the Witcher 3 sold enormous amounts of copies. You could ignore Witcher 2 (which is also miles ahead of every non-BG2 BioWare game and is frankly better designed than W3), but it was PC-only so it was "niche" and could be ignored.
Witcher 3 and Horizon are mega-hits though. So up goes the bar.
--
Dragon Age Inquisition reminded me a bit of Two Worlds 2, which is actually a decently fun, beautiful waste of time (if you play on PC).
Ain't nobody ever calling TW2 GOTY though lol
Witcher 3 and Horizon are mega-hits though. So up goes the bar.
--
Dragon Age Inquisition reminded me a bit of Two Worlds 2, which is actually a decently fun, beautiful waste of time (if you play on PC).
Ain't nobody ever calling TW2 GOTY though lol
Don't kill my hype!
I'll let myself be my own judge.
I put 100+ hours into dragon age and loved it. My bar has been set low.
obeast, I know we've gone back and forth on the KOTOR thing, but I will defend that game to the death.
KOTOR's wide-eyed innocence fits in perfectly with the Star Wars mythos, imo. It was the perfect Star Wars game. Still is.
And for as much shit that it takes these days for its binary choice/consequence, KOTOR's quest design is miles, fucking miles ahead of anything BioWare has made since then. The only game on par is DA:O (which I've always felt was the dumbed down version of KOTOR anyways), since it has the whole Landsmeet which is pretty cool as far as BioWare set pieces go.
KOTOR's wide-eyed innocence fits in perfectly with the Star Wars mythos, imo. It was the perfect Star Wars game. Still is.
And for as much shit that it takes these days for its binary choice/consequence, KOTOR's quest design is miles, fucking miles ahead of anything BioWare has made since then. The only game on par is DA:O (which I've always felt was the dumbed down version of KOTOR anyways), since it has the whole Landsmeet which is pretty cool as far as BioWare set pieces go.
SpiceMelange
Member
And PC gets the shaft yet again =/ I would have liked to play with the original lighting
The stream I was watching yesterday seemed to be fine. He was sliding and zipping around like it was Vanquish with force powers or something. It looked fantastic and sold me straight up and down. The rest of it looked good as well.
Like a year after release, though.
Patrick S.
Banned
That's not true. They use the full scale but they are just not reviewing super bad games.
I mean a 1/10 game is some unknown indie from Steam which doesn't even work properly and has no animations or textures. Like what Jim Sterling had in his videos.
A 2/10 game is a little bit better but still hot garbage. Like Life of Black Tiger for example.
Etc, etc. You won't see these scores because nobody plays these games anyway. And I don't think Andromeda is THAT bad that it should have less than 5/10 or 6/10.
That's why in terms of AAA games 6/10 and 7/10 is bad.
Wind's Howling
Member
One could argue that Fallout 4 was pretty disappointing as well.
I would not exactly say that they put less effort into Andromeda. It almost looks like Bioware does not have the team to keep up with the competition. The competition is better, fiercer and more skilled these days.
SpacePirate Ridley
Member
And even with this scores im still adamant of canceling my amazong order, and id ont know why. Like the force of wanting to play a new mass effect is bigger than anything else.
I hope Im somewhat happy with it when i play it.
Holy shit, how this could happen.
This is not a regular textures downgrade, the animations were also completly scratched.
Something happened to the team during development.
I hope Im somewhat happy with it when i play it.
Holy shit, how this could happen.
This is not a regular textures downgrade, the animations were also completly scratched.
Something happened to the team during development.
VincentMatts
Member
Games are as good as their overall package. ME then reviewed well partially because no other game really attempted to do what it did. But the game itself, even with its problems, was wonderful. I started it again yesterday on xbox one and man, it has aged really fucking well. Still really holds up. The characters are better and more interesting and the story is compelling from the start.
MEA just feels like a 'copy' of the original trilogy. Its as if they just had a checkbox of things they needed to be in the new Mass Effect game and had to put them in. It doesnt feel like a passion project or something they wanted to do cause they wanted to push the series forward or because they missed it. It just feels like they took a bunch of people that were available and told them: hey guys we need a new ME game, so go make one.
I played a few hours of MEA on xbox one and the best way i can describe it is that it feels like a completely new studio has taken over the franchise. The vision feels off or incomplete as if they either didnt have time or just didnt know what to do with it.
Your recent posts are the only things that are embarrassing and cringe-worthy around these parts.
I get goosebumps just thinking of the last couple hours of that game.
Yep. It's remarkable pacing in that final sequence from Virmire and onwards to Ilios to the Citadel. The elevator stopping and having to go out in the Citadel in all that red background light is one of the finest moment in video games for me.
damnit Jarmel, you're making me want to replay ME1 now and I don't have time for this.
I'm excited for this. Their live stream the other day was hilarious. This game may wind up being one of the funniest this year, albeit unintentionally.
SRTtoZ
Member
Everything is off about this game. Watching the GB Quick Look there seems to be a bugs galore, like every 30 seconds you can see something flicker or dialog cut off or the cutscenes stuttering. In the Quick Look they go to the Nexus and walk up to a bunch of 'protesters' and they are all standing still like mannequins, I mean, cmon, this is so bad. Also the amount of pop in...on the PS4 PRO. I know they had 5 years on this but it seems like it needed a good year more. Its unfortunate but hopefully a lot of it gets patched and its a better game in a year.
Brad walking up to a console to reveal these mobile game-like timers for collecting resources and off-site missions (ala Dragon Age Inquisition war table, after Flynn repeatedly said DAI wasn't a template for this game) just broke me. It looks exactly like that.
There's always time for ME1 again. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sUKiOcV1SSc
Same here. I don't get "bigger=better" game design philosophy at all anymore. I don't want to play a checklist simulator where I spend a lot of time wandering the map finding 5 blue flowers and scanning 3 lost terminals. Urgh, that's not fun.
Developers: That's not fun. Respect my time please. Ubisoft does it really bad and it's why I have not bought a single one of their open world games. MMO game design is just not for me at all and it bores me to death.
Mass Effect 2 was freaking awesome because it was tight and cohesive, it felt like I was playing a movie. There wasn't huge checklists of shit to do and I never felt like I was wasting my time, even probing was over pretty quickly.
Yep, same here. Even with all the disappointment on here with the animation jank and stuff, I still had hopes the core game could still be special. Sad to see huge maps with a million checkboxes on them and resource nodes. I was pretty bored during the quicklook and preview video except when the jank started. At least that was amusing.
Unaha-Closp
Member
there are more reviews coming right? 34 seems small?? Am I wrong? So many questions lol
I loved the original trilogy warts and all, but I've just felt so indifferent towards Andromeda as a whole. It's weird, I should be so excited for a new Mass Effect, yet I have no hype whatsoever.
Even the lower scores aren't terrible but it affirms to me along with some of the footage I've seen that I'm probably going to be waiting for a price drop on this one.
Even the lower scores aren't terrible but it affirms to me along with some of the footage I've seen that I'm probably going to be waiting for a price drop on this one.
Like so many others I've seen the footage in the last week and hoped that the reviews would reassure and that the spirit of the originals would remain. I'm not fanatical about the series but I have massively enjoyed at least 2/3rds of the previous games Sci-fi/space opera/RPG is a combination I adore and I would normally pick this up day one, at this point a heavy sale would be the only thing compelling me to dive in.
I could suspend disbelief sufficiently over some jank (after all its not unheard of in the genre/series history) and even bland side quests with some of the worse MMO trappings, but reports of the lacklustre script, delivery and frankly horrible looking facial animation during conversations has put me right off. Add to this the seeming wasted potential of a "whole fresh new galaxy" and uninspired party member choices and I'm not only soured on the game but seriously saddened, I was looking forward to this.
I play these games for the story, the role playing elements, the social interplay etc. and it very much seems that those aspects were put to one side for one reason or another. Though I think as others have said its been something Bioware have arguably been getting weaker at (or not improving enough) as time goes on
Scores/metascores whatever don't bother me one way or another, likewise if someone enjoys it for what it is then fair enough, but for me what Bioware/EA have presented isn't Mass Effect certainly not "my" Mass Effect, it very much seems to be the straight to TV version.
Sci-fi/space opera/RPG is a combination I adore and I would normally pick this up day one, at this point a heavy sale would be the only thing compelling me to dive in.I could suspend disbelief sufficiently over some jank (after all its not unheard of in the genre/series history) and even bland side quests with some of the worse MMO trappings, but reports of the lacklustre script, delivery and frankly horrible looking facial animation during conversations has put me right off. Add to this the seeming wasted potential of a "whole fresh new galaxy" and uninspired party member choices and I'm not only soured on the game but seriously saddened, I was looking forward to this.
I play these games for the story, the role playing elements, the social interplay etc. and it very much seems that those aspects were put to one side for one reason or another. Though I think as others have said its been something Bioware have arguably been getting weaker at (or not improving enough) as time goes on
Scores/metascores whatever don't bother me one way or another, likewise if someone enjoys it for what it is then fair enough, but for me what Bioware/EA have presented isn't Mass Effect certainly not "my" Mass Effect, it very much seems to be the straight to TV version.
There are more. Depends when Metacritic adds them. OpenCritic has 54.
Why is everyone talking about the game being rushed out? It had FIVE years. If you can't make your game and smooth out the hiccups when you aren't really innovating with anything new in five years then the problem is management hired the wrong people.
This all goes back to who the blame should really be shouldered by. Mac Walters. The buck stops there.
This all goes back to who the blame should really be shouldered by. Mac Walters. The buck stops there.
Unaha-Closp
Member
ah I only clicked the Metacritic link. I clicked on Horizon there and it had over 100 so I just assumed there would be more coming.
The hype cycle for this game has been nonexistent in part because the developer was not putting the type of content out there you'd normally get when they're super-confident about the title.
Yup. When you hire the freshman football team to replace an NFL team, it's not their fault when they can't deliver the same way the pro team can.
CrichtonKicks
Member
I would put both the events leading to the arrival at Skyhold in DA:I and the Suicide Mission from ME2 above it, though narrowly.
Eh, those systems are rampant in a lot of open world games (AC series in particular but also MGSV). I think DA:I's war table is the best I've seen of them, though. Some of the missions were pretty cool.
Sounds like it.
It's a place where employees can review their current or former employer.
Can obviously be wrong as it's a former employee giving his opinion, but all those leads leaving over the development cycle would explain alot.
Allthough people can leave for various reasons, creative differences, personal reasons, a better job offer and so on.
In the end, it could be a part of the big puzzle why the title didn't live up to the former titles, but it's also just one part.
LaunchpadMcQ
Banned
You kind of seem to be batting around a lot of negativity around here, man. You and...
Mr. Hot Takes over here.
Lunafreya Nox Fleuret
Member
The last mission in London in ME3 is still one of my top moments but Virmire is also up there.