Mass Effect Andromeda

[RB]

Well, I couldn't resist playing my copy. 4k HDR is pretty. After a few hours of play, the game is still shit. It's a mix of mundane tasks; boring, emotionless conversions and blank faces with wazzy eyes.

This is not a Mass Effect game, it's a sad broken headstone on Shepard's grave.

[Ekona]

General consensus is it gets better after about 10hours.

Still not played my copy, still stuck in hospital.

[RB]

I couldn't stand 10 hours of this. It's like being at a posh dinner party. Everyone is polite and inoffensive and talks about nothing of interest. Nobody gets angry or sad or, well, anything.

[Mr.Clark]

I'm having fun. About to get my personal little ship, I think, so that should get me out of the tutorial area and into a bit of open exploration.

Plus, I've got a flamethrower, so that makes me happy...

Oh, and as a final bonus, my Sarah Ryder doesn't look like she's wearing someone else's face as a mask, so that's a nice touch.

[RB]

I spent ages making mine quite fit. But now I'm not playing it ever again.

[Mr.Clark]

I'm having a ton of fun with this. There's just so much to do.

I'll try and avoid spoilers.

I'm liking the lack of clear Paragon/Renegade. While that might have made sense for the more black-and-white military figure of Shepard, having more shades of grey allows for more of a personalised gameplay style. Plus the cluster is full of the "no right answer" moral questions that BioWare excel at. Plus Shepard already had that "been there done that" attitude and authority, which Ryder does not, being pretty green.

Combat is fun and the way that abilities and weapons work lets you customise the combat style to suit you, rather than having to pick a class and wish you had just one thing from another one...

I'm only about 12 hours in, and I've spent a disproportionate amount on one planet. By choice. And there's still more to see. And the rest of the Cluster is MASSIVE. I've barely scratched the surface.

I'm liking most of my crew. PeeBee is mad in a way that Jack wasn't, which currently isn't doing it for me, but we'll see where she goes. Maybe I won't wish I could flush her out of an airlock after a few more chats with her. Or maybe it's because I wasn't nice to her when we met. Who knows?
I'm enjoying getting to know the rest of the crew. Some of the dialogue I'm having with them is hilarious.

Plus as well as the obvious surface story, there's a ton of side-quests and the fun of exploring this new bunch of people and working out how much of the "official" story of the history of the Andromeda Initiative is accurate (so far everything seems kosher, but I still have my suspicious about a few people...)

So yeah. Personally, loving it. I can see why some people might not think it's Mass Effect enough, but the things I liked about the original trilogy (especially the first one) were the background galactic history and challenging preconceptions about how and why things are. And this has that in spades.

[RB]

I just can't like this. I've played some more but that's it now. Planet scanning is crap, mining is stupid, conversions are dull and made worse by the dead faces. The interactions are pointless as it makes no difference what you choose, the outcome is mostly the same.
I'm fucking sick of talking to people only to have them send me on a pointless, boring quest for their lost keys or some boring shit.
What gets me most though is the bugs and lack of polish. When you're taking to a Grogan and their head clips inside their stomach, it just ruins the illusion. Sims 3 had more realistic models, this is a joke.
Back to Horizon Zero Dawn.

[Ekona]

I've only done the first mission, like the intro mission, and I love it. It looks beautiful, it plays just like it should, and I can't wait to get back on it. Only thing I'm not keen on so far is that FemRyder isn't as much of a badass as FemShep, but I'll give her a chance seeing as how I've only been at it for two hours.

I dearly love the ME games so much.

[Mr.Clark]

I like the fact that she's a bit of a noob. Some of the things she says are so adorkable. She's not the confident military commander that Shepard was; she doesn't have the years of hard military experience. She's young and new at the whole Pathfinder thing. But the lack of clear Paragon/Renegade give more options, for more of a personalised experience. I'm liking the choices of emotional/logical/casual/professional. Plus the symbols for friendship and flirting are handy so you're not surprised by some of the outcomes.

I've just spent a large chunk of today's session listening to my crewmates talking. Even when I'm driving the Nomad, they're just chattering. To Ryder. To each other. It's awesome. And quite often hilarious

And as for the Krogan - they've always had clipping issues. I don't know why. Maybe it's because they're massive but still built on the same sized skeleton. But they've had 3 games after the first one to fix that, and never have. I just live with it.

[RB]

I'm not talking about the clipping when bending over, I'm talking about the top​ of its head just sticking out of the top of its stomach like Kuato.

I started this again because I accidentally made my Ryder look exactly like Suvi and it irritated me as I was planning to make them fuck before the shitness made me give in. I deliberately chose different conversation paths second time round and it makes no difference.

Bioware could have made this faultless, I blame EA as they fuck everything because money (which they aren't getting because of poor sales, maybe they'll learn).

Also, auto correct of Krogan is funny.

[Ekona]

More hours today, I always forget how huge an ME game feels at the start. Having all the developing and mining and modding thrown at you, feels massive. Not sure I like the Nomad much, seems there's still a ton of places I can't get to for missions as they're up miles high. Early days though.

Starting to like FemRyder more though, very naive yet endearing. I can't imagine HimRyder being a better playthrough, just seems more 'right', especially considering what happens after the prelogue.

Feels odd that they have no idea what happened to the Milky Way, with the Reapers and all. The references to how they left things 600 years ago, when things were normal, really got my feels.

[RB]

This guy nails how I feel...

[Ekona]

I'm 28 hours in now. I fucking love this. It's so very, very pretty, and I don't even hate the driving bits any more as I can go where I like now. The 'Task' quests seem a bit shit as they don't actually tell you where stuff is and unless you walk around with your scanner out all the time you're never going to find some of the bits, so I'm not worrying about those so much. I've had a mission break completely on me which is a shame, but it's not a big one and really it was my own fault for forgetting about it.

I really love this game, I really do. It feels so very Mass Effect-y, and I can't see any issues with dodgy lip-syncing at all on my PC copy. Oh, and did we all notice the not-very-subtle transperson (I can never remember which way round you're supposed to say transman/transwoman so I'm defaulting to person ) in the game too? First trans in any AAA video game? Bit odd how they'd spill their entire life story to a stranger within 20 secs, but I bet the LGBT community loved it.


Peebee is awesome! I love when you take her and Jaal out together on missions, they banter like fuck. I think I'm going to sleep with either Peebee or Suvi, whoever has me first.

[RB]

I fucked Suvi. Now I'm done.

[Mr.Clark]

(I can never remember which way round you're supposed to say transman/transwoman so I'm defaulting to person )

Pretty sure that a trans woman is a woman who was assigned male at birth and a trans man is likewise a man who was assigned female at birth.

I'm still loving this. Some really really frustrating bits where the waypoints on a 3D map don't in any way help you find them (the base is not IN the mountain, but you get to it by going inside the mountain, but there's a separate layer of map to show inside the base AND THEN YOU PUT THE OBJECTIVE ON THE GENERAL AREA MAP NOT THE INSIDE ONE WHAT THE SHIT YOU GUYS), but other than that, I'm just taking my time and enjoying it. Only got two colonies set up so far, so loads more to see and do.

I think when I play BroRyder (is that a thing? If not, I'm going to make it one), I'm going to make him an unlikable space racist as much as possible. Just for the difference. But as I'm ~20 hours and 20% in, this will not be for a while.

Also, someone pointed out there's an APEX app for your phone, so you can run several missions in the time when you're not able to actually load up the game on the computer. Kind of lame (but then so is the whole concept of the missions), but it gets you XP and stuff which may or may not ever be useful for single player.