@n1nj4d00m

Read post 29. I played about 50 of the 60 hours it took me to complete the game before any game updates, aside from the day one update. I never saw what you're describing above, and I never saw the vast majority of the issues that Brad ran into.

Simply a matter of perspective. Brad has a lot of investment with the story telling of the previous franchise so he was let down + GiantBomb is classically unforgiving about technical issues on release (as they should be). The reason GiantBomb is great is because we can understand the perspective of the editors. Also the GB editors are way upfront about their perspective in their reviews on top of that. Because I have the same feelings about the previous ME games as Brad does this review is spot on for me and I'm gonna wait on this thing if I get it at all.

70% is typically the lowest score you can get and still pass in most college courses. When I was in high school you could pass classes with a 60% (D). 80% (B) is good and 90% (A) is excellent.

its a good question but even reading through the forums here you get different things. programs are very delicate thing so even minor changes cause cause glitches. and with games like this not many people are gonna do things the exact same way.

the other stuff like framerate and some animations are just not gonna bother some as much as others. I found this generation has really brought technical stuff nickpicking to the forefront and past the hardcore pc crowd.

So I would say it depends on the situation. I think if you're talking grade school-high school age, a 70% would be considered "low." A 70 would generally be a C- at most public schools, with a 69 being a D+. So it technically "passes." But if you plot student grades on a chart, most of those 70s would be clustered as outliers pretty near the bottom. At least around where I grew up, the "average" student would achieve B's. The kids who really struggled got Cs, and the D's were reserved for kids who went out of their way to skip classes and annoy teachers.

When it gets to university or professional school, things might get more complicated. In grade school, I think most classes probably work on a "points" system, where your grade is just the raw percentage of available points you achieve during a term. That's how it worked at every school I attended growing up. Most of my college courses (at University of Wisconsin) also had points, but then added in a really simple curve system where the student with the highest number of points became the "A" and then everyone was graded off of that.

In professional school, all bets are off, and each school will usually set their own rules. Marquette Law, for example, had a "B" curve and a bunch of very precise rules about how professors were allowed to reach that average. Other schools might set a C average. Places like Yale and Northeastern do away with grades all together.

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A little bit of history might help with this, and also because it's kind of cool (and I apologize in advance. This is going to be a long walk for a ham sandwich as my dad would say.):

So prior to the Vietnam War, a couple of things were true in the United States. First, far fewer people went to University than do today (there's a useful chart here). Second, most colleges in the US, generally speaking, graded on something resembling a C curve. In other words, the "average" grade for the "average" student came out somewhere around a C. Then Vietnam happened.

At this point, the US still had an active military draft, so a lot of people started for looking for ways to avoid it. At the time the war started, there was a blanket draft exemption for people attending university. So the solution to avoiding military service was to get admitted to college. Originally, there was no requirement for the exemption beyond attendance, so it didn't matter what you did once you were there. You could completely slack off and still avoid the draft. That led to college attendance numbers going up from what at the time was the historic normal. Because of the way the mechanics of the draft worked in terms of the age groups getting drafted, you were pretty much safe if you made it though all four years.

That system ended up pissing a lot of people off, since a lot of kids were either too poor to attend, or would lose a slot to a person whose mommy and daddy were wealthy enough to pony up the money to bribe their kids' way in with an endowment. At the same time, the gov't didn't want to draft a bunch of really serious students who might actually be contributing to some sort of scientific or social advancement. So the compromise that got reached was that college was still a draft exemption, but only for "serious" students. If you were performing badly in class, then you'd lose the exemption and be eligible for the draft. I don't remember the exact way things got phrases, but generally speaking, if you were getting below a 2.0 C average, you'd lose your exemption.

And that sounds good except that the college professors also knew this. And setting aside for a minute that a lot of them were very liberal and opposed the war, many of them also didn't want to be responsible for getting a kid sent off to Vietnam. So what ended up happening was that in a lot of cases the "close" grades, where a student might be getting like a D or a low C, were bumped up to a level where that student would pass so they could still maintain their draft exemption.

Of course, that obviously isn't fair to the students who actually worked for their grade, so if someone who was getting a C- is now getting a C, then those actual C's need to be bumped up to a C+, and so on. The result is gradual grade inflation, which, as college stats start showing higher and higher GPAs for students, gradually trickles down into grade schools as well. Combine that with a modern social atmosphere where it's more or less verboten to make anyone think they are anything less that totally awesome, and a C becomes a "bad" grade.

Shoemaker: realest in the game.

@lawgamer: That's some A+ analysis!

My thoughts exactly, doesn't pull any punches.

The realist.

Not really.

All reviews are subjective, so naturally there's going to be some difference in opinion. Having a different opinion on a game shouldn't be some big controversy. Although I disagree with Brad's score on the game, I enjoyed his perspective and found his experience with Andromeda to be interesting.

I mean, of course they are all subjective, and you try to find someone with similar tastes and look to them for your reviews. But when it comes to technical issues, while it can be subjective as to how much one is bothered by it, its not subjective that the characters fall through the floor and get stuck in t-poses. That's the game objectively not working as intended.

And you are objectively ignoring my posts, and the posts of others in this thread, explaining that they didn't run into the glitches that Brad did. It's very likely that neither did most reviewers.

In fifty hours with the game before any update, no one fell through the floor, and I didn't see a single t-pose. Other reviewers aren't wrong for not complaining about bugs that they didn't run into. You're wrong for assuming that everyone ran into the same glitches, and believing that other reviewers "pulled punches" where Brad did not.

Feeling that others should review the game poorly because of glitches that they didn't experience would be just as wrong as thinking that Brad should review the game more favorably, because most people don't seem to be running into the amount of glitches he did. Reviews are based on time spent with a game, and not everyone ran into situations where the game was "objectively not working as intended."

Speaking of which, have you even played the game?

@dixavd: 70% would likely be considered scraping by in most universities. I know in a lot of schools scholarships are dependent on getting at least a C average (so 70% minimum), and in some schools sports players are benched if they fall below that score, even if they are not on scholarship. In my school getting below a C average in courses in your major was not acceptable either. Getting below a C average in High School pretty much means you will never get above a technical degree, as almost no universities would admit you. A score below 60% is a failing grade in almost any situation. The only exception to these rules are in courses where the professor grades on a curve, either making the highest score a perfect score, or making it so that the score received by the most students is considered a C. But such systems are created by each individual professor and might even only be used for specific exams or papers and not for the entire class. But due to needing at least a C average to attend university, American high school students generally look at anything below a 70% as a failing grade.

I just want to say that I really liked Mass Effect Andromeda, and had none of the problems Brad did. The only problems I ran into was with the multiplayer, but I think sending strike teams is more rewarding anyway, so that didn't bother me.

Brad's review is fair. He and I had different experiences, which sucks. It would be great if the game worked well for everyone, but it obviously isn't, and people that criticize the game because of poor performance are well within their right. I felt the same way about Jeff's console review of Fallout 4.

I don't agree with a lot of the criticism for Andromeda. Thought the writing was fine, if not silly in some spots. Graphics were about what I expected from the trailers, and the gameplay (to me) was fun. Not everyone agrees with me, and that's alright.

I like ME:A, and I enjoyed Brad's review. That doesn't make Brad's opinion invalid, or mine, or yours. Different people, different experiences.

I wouldn't say the game is lacking in ambition. For all its faults it at least attempted to solve the goofy Paragon/Renegade dynamic from the OT. They removed the global cooldown from the combat and tried to make it more dynamic overall. Then the biggest change is obviously bringing back the exploration elements of Mass Effect 1 and giving you giant planets to run around in. If anything they were too ambitious and tried to change too many things all while having to create an entirely new story.

They could have used the corridor shooter formula of Mass Effect 2& 3. Now THAT would have been far easier and less ambitious.

@n1nj4d00m said:

That's a valid point. I had an instance of t-posing and one of falling through the environment, but I'm more the type to laugh at that type of thing than be annoyed by it. The game is so aggressive about auto saving that it wasn't really an issue as far as lost progress either. So I agree that it all depends on your expectations and tolerance for that sort of thing.

Brad's in a position of giving consumer purchasing advice, so he obviously has to be more critical of things like that - and rightly so. And again, it does come down to personal experience, which can vary quite a bit with bigger RPGs.