Mass Effect: Andromeda - Review

[luj1]

As pointed out I miss the old ME where you explored space instead of your sexual orientation.

 

[Maylander]

I personally don't see much of a difference betweem unlocking everything in ME1/ME2/ME3 in under 60 levels and MEA requiring over 123 levels to do it. MET required a new games + to achieve and MEA most probably also requiring one.

Nothing is forcing you to use the respect feature if you don't like it. Nor is the game forcing you unlock everything in a single playthrough. But then I'm the type of player who doesn't use respec and often leave skill points unused because I got everything I wanted already.

I just like choices that have an impact. That I need to really think about. It's my main beef with Oblivion for example: You can choose not to do a quest, but you can't choose the outcome of one. Unlike Morrowind before it, it never lets you actually decide the outcome (for example if you want to play a good guy, and you get some murder quest, you can't go to the guards and have him arrested; your only option is to let the quest remain permanently in your log).

In MEA, we are likely to see many such choices, which is excellent. That particular aspect will likely add quite a bit of replay value. Sadly, character progression will not have such options - every choice can simply be undone. The best feature in DAO (for me) was the Origins part, where the game would actually recognize you for what you are. It even provided additional, more personal content. I loved that. Being a mage has rarely felt better. I'd love it if the ME universe would recognize the player as a biotic, a sniper or tech expert, but they're moving in the opposite direction.

 

[joxer]

I personally don't see much of a difference betweem unlocking everything in ME1/ME2/ME3 in under 60 levels and MEA requiring over 123 levels to do it.

ME4 is supposed to continue ME1, not ME2 and not ME3 - more RPG, less shootin' and whatnot. And more Mako.
Seems, by social network trolling from Bioware employees, ME4 will be even less RPG than ME2 was and Mako will now emulate GTA5 boredom instead of being fun bump_around. Sure, there are millions who bought GTA rubbish with bald tyres and icy roads, but to me that game is yet another carracer crap while ME1 had something unique. Frustrating for some perhaps, challenging and fun for me.

As pointed out I miss the old ME where you explored space instead of your sexual orientation.

WTF are you talking about? What space exploration?

ME1 - decide who survives, choose boobs because boobs and preach it's not boobs but it's a girl and we all save damsel in distress first.

ME2 - choose big butt&boobs (Miranda) or small butt&boobs (Jack), some say there were more choices, but noone remembers those.

ME3 - enjoy your ME1 (correct!) choice got plastic boobs and lips, die in the end because you refused to play MMO.

Anyhow, ME4, if we'll bite social networks trolling from Bioware, is not about sexual orientation but about banging everything. Not everyone. But everything.

 

[luj1]

I know you skipped the daily rabies shot but come on the first was legit, wasn't it?

 

[azarhal]

ME4 is supposed to continue ME1, not ME2 and not ME3 - more RPG, less shootin' and whatnot. And more Mako.
Seems, by social network trolling from Bioware employees, ME4 will be even less RPG than ME2 was and Mako will now emulate GTA5 boredom instead of being fun bump_around. Sure, there are millions who bought GTA rubbish with bald tyres and icy roads, but to me that game is yet another carracer crap while ME1 had something unique. Frustrating for some perhaps, challenging and fun for me.

Class choices was totally irrelevant in ME1 storywise, it's never referenced outside Kaiden recognizing Shepard is a biotic once in one conversation. I don't see how MEA doing the same suddently makes it less RPG.

ME1 doesn't have less shooting, it just split the shooting between shooting with the Mako and on foot.

 

[BoboTheMighty]

17 min long vid from IGN: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x9rwdaI8rCo

Pretty much in line of what's been seen before. Gameplay seems at it's best in open field ( go vanguard!), but with cover/shooting…blech.

Dunno if it's just me, but Andromeda seems to be a treasure trove for killer gifs with crazy facial animations.

 

[Morrandir]

I hope the reviews will clearly state that Bioware lost its top spot in visuals in RPGs (especially face/hair) to CDPR and is now trailing by far.

 

[JDR13]

I hope the reviews will clearly state that Bioware lost its top spot in visuals in RPGs (especially face/hair) to CDPR and is now trailing by far.

If not, joxer will make sure everyone knows anyways.

On a side note: I've never considered BioWare a front-runner when it came to visuals.

 

[azarhal]

I hope the reviews will clearly state that Bioware lost its top spot in visuals in RPGs (especially face/hair)

When were they in the top spot?????

 

[Morrandir]

Indeed I'm not very good in remembering visuals (I tend to keep it in mind better than it actually was) but which "RPGs" had better visuals when the ME and DA games had been released?

 

[azarhal]

ME, DAO and DA2 look "old" by the time they released. Low textures, low poly meshes for 2007, 2009 and 2011. DA2 had Dark Souls, The Witcher 2 and Skyrim that released the same year too (really showed the engine age). ME2 was pretty good looking for 2010, ME3 wasn't much of an improvement over it in 2013 though.

In term of face/hair, anything scanned from real person looks good (which is usually what very good looking games do anyway), the rest had low textures faces. Hairs were like plastics too.

DAI was much better in term of landscape and mesh/textures, but the hairdo…arghh!

MEA seems to have better good landscape/mesh/textures and the hairdo looks slightly improved over DAI.

 

[BoboTheMighty]

ME, DAO and DA2 look "old" by the time they released. Low textures, low poly meshes for 2007, 2009 and 2011. DA2 had Dark Souls, The Witcher 2 and Skyrim that released the same year too (really showed the engine age). ME2 was pretty good looking for 2010, ME3 wasn't much of an improvement over it in 2013 though.

In term of face/hair, anything scanned from real person looks good (which is usually what very good looking games do anyway), the rest had low textures faces. Hairs were like plastics too.

DAI was much better in term of landscape and mesh/textures, but the hairdo…arghh!

MEA seems to have better good landscape/mesh/textures and the hairdo looks slightly improved over DAI.

ME II was one of the best looking for it's time( still holds up pretty well, unless one of companions sneaks up on you in the dark)...I'll be damned if ME III didn't look worse overall.
Bioware still makes pretty good looking games, but they have noticeable issues with faces, hair and body proportions.

 

[Deleted User]

In terms of visuals, I thought the first Mass Effect game was impressive. The crisp planets/moons in the background of exploring planets, for example, were really nice. The textures seemed high-res and stood out to me, even compared to other games at the time.

 

[JDR13]

ME II was one of the best looking for it's time( still holds up pretty well, unless one of companions sneaks up on you in the dark)…I'll be damned if ME III didn't look worse overall.
Bioware still makes pretty good looking games, but they have noticeable issues with faces, hair and body proportions.

I didn't like ME2's style at all. It was way too dark, and it seemed like a big downgrade from ME1 in terms of visual variety.

 

[Maylander]

In terms of RPGs, ME1 was definitely top notch in 2007 when it was released. Oblivion or Gothic 3 were probably the closest contenders (2006), but they're fairly far behind in terms of animations, faces etc.

I don't really think BioWare were "kings of graphics" before or after that though. The Gothic series were way beyond NWN etc and Skyrim is beyond Dragon Age. They've always been good, but rarely the best (except ME1, which set the bar for some time).

That being said, I do agree that CDP are the current kings by a wide margin. They set a new standard, and MEA won't be changing that. In fact, I know of no upcoming RPG that's likely to be more impressive than TW3 in terms of technology at all.

 

[azarhal]

In fact, I know of no upcoming RPG that's likely to be more impressive than TW3 in terms of technology at all.

Horizon Zero Dawn wants a word with you... (although TW3 wins in term of mocapping).

 

[zahratustra]

I have to admit that H0D while not quite my type of game does look gorgeous!

 

[Morrandir]

Indeed I have no idea of visual quality on comsole.

 

[joxer]

Horizon Zero Dawn used a trick to avoid fur animations - hostiles are mechs. HZD just as ME4 videos contains poor facial animations.
Also, Horizon Zero Dawn is not playable on today's announced GTX 1080 Ti - the fastest GPU in the world.

So no, even if we'll close an eye on the visuals "optimization" through trashmobs being robots strategy and if we'll ignore facial animations, a game that cannot work on the best hardware for whatever reason can't be compared with TW3.

Another news today is that Bethesda works closely with AMD to "tame" Ryzen as effective as possible (like we didn't know already about vulkan support in Doom) which means horrible Gamebryo probably won't be used for next TES or FO game but we could get some (default and not heavily modded) visual spectacle and no_bugs game instead.

 

[Maylander]

Horizon Zero Dawn wants a word with you… (although TW3 wins in term of mocapping).

I suspect it would have been a challenger if it had been a PC title, but it's not. It's likely equal (or better) if the settings are equal (resolution, AA, etc), but TW3 has the option of being run on super high end hardware, with 4k resolution and so on. You're likely to need a Titan X or 1080 Ti or something to really max it all out on a big monitor, but it can be done.

If they make a PC version of it, and allow such tweaking, it might very well be a challenger.