Mass Effect: Andromeda

Just as much as there's a tremendous value in a game - or an example of any medium - that excels at everything it sets out to do, there's also something to be said for a good old fashioned trash fire. Certainly not for everyone, but sometimes it's gratifying to wallow in the worst and have a good time. Between these two extremes, unfortunately, there exists that awful middle ground of indifference, and sadly that's where Mass Effect: Andromeda, bearer of the vaunted Mass Effect legacy, has found itself. Mass Effect: Andromeda isn't a great game, a good game, a bad game, or a horrible game; Mass Effect: Andromeda is just okay.

With the threat of the Reapers looming over the Milky Way, the Andromeda Initiative is formed to ensure that all the races and civilizations within our galaxy will continue on no matter what the outcome of the current predicament is. Filling several arks full of cryo-sleeping settlers, the Initiative sets out on the 600+ year one-way journey to the Andromeda galaxy. This story device is also a thematic conceit of the art imitating life. We're far away from the setting of the old games, under new management, and trying to start anew. Once in the Andromeda galaxy, the pioneers find themselves embroiled in a new conflict with a new alien race that is encroaching in on the current inhabitants in a quest to find the means to bring total ruination to the galaxy. Which is, well, not all that new and different from the situation they've just left.

That's really the most slapped together aspect of Andromeda, it's all a little too familiar for it to be a clean break, and what is new is not really all that compelling. The brutish Krogan are still more or less marginalized, especially by the intellectual Salarians, there's a new ancient alien civilization - the Remnant - that holds the key to a possibly world saving/ending power, there is an invading race of aliens - the Kett - with seemingly endless numbers, and so on. For a new jumping on point, a lot of the components feel like Mad-Lib jumbles of the original trilogy plot points. Furthermore, the new races are a smidge underwhelming. Besides the aforementioned Remnant and Kett, there's also the native Angara and... nothing. That's it. Moving from a galaxy with around a dozen or so distinct and vibrant races and cultures, the Andromeda galaxy sure has nothing going on. And on top of all that, there are only a handful of the Milky Way galaxy races present in the Initiative: Humans, Salarians, Krogan, Turians, and Asari. The other races like the Drell, Elcor, Volus, etc. are on the Quarian ark which has conveniently fallen behind in a move that smells suspiciously of DLC content.

It's not all bad though, there are some things that actually feel fresh and interesting, most notably the character progression and combat. Gone are the classes of the old games where you would need to commit to a skill set at the beginning of the game, instead replaced with an open system that classifies you as you put points into the styles you attach to. Although there are loadouts you can save for different set-ups, I found that once I had the three abilities I wanted that I never changed off of them, but it's still a good thing to have for people more adventurous then me. This all moves into combat, which has been greatly improved for the most part. Cover is contextual and not a button now, which works about 95% of the time (and I'll even admit it was mostly my fault the few times it didn't work out in my favor), and with the addition of dashing and jumping via jets or biotic powers, the flow of battle is more fluid, as well as vertical, than ever before.

You play as Scott or Sara (or whatever name you choose) Ryder, the son or daughter of the original human pathfinder, a leader tasked with finding new habitable worlds to begin colonizing. Given a ship named The Tempest - that might as well be the Normandy 2 - and a small crew, you go around exploring the worlds of Andromeda (i.e. six planets) trying to find a home for your people and while also thwarting the Kett. One thing I really appreciated about the game was that the crew of the Tempest felt like a tight-knit group of people. At only eleven people (counting yourself), it's also intimate enough that everyone who is on the ship feels like a fleshed out character. The plot may be heavily on the generic side, but I at least enjoyed the people I cruised around with.

The actual moving around the galaxy is often less fun. Although addressed partially in a patch post-release, the animation of moving from one location to another is lengthy and pretty unnecessary in a lot of places (even though it is obviously hiding a load sometimes). Furthermore, car traversal returns with the Nomad all-terrain vehicle you have at your disposal, but where the car can and cannot go feels arbitrary. Also found in traversal is frequent freezing. The game audio would continue, but multiple times everything would hold up a second like it was about to crash and then continue like nothing happened. It never actually crashed completely, but the hiccups became annoying.

This crashing was part of many common open world jank occurrences to be found. Enemies would sometimes pop into rooms right as combat was beginning, or just not notice me until I shot at them, even when standing in front of them. A particular favorite of mine was driving by enemies to get to a dialogue scene, and while talking to whomever I was meeting, the voice of a second Ryder would shout over himself "All clear!" or "That's the last of them!" like we had just fought and defeated that group of enemies. Speaking of dialogue, when you enter into conversation with most people in the open world the camera zooms in on them and Ryder, but does not account for how far away your party members or anyone else relevant to this conversation are. I would be talking to someone only to ask the opinion of one of my companions and have them sound like they were speaking from three rooms away and not in the same area. Also, I would be remiss if I did not at least once bring up the faces. Although the internet at large has already taken the game to task for it's bland looking faces and animations (again, some of which were fixed post-release) and I don't want to go on about it, it's still pretty disappointing that Andromeda shipped looking the way it did.

Oh yeah, there's multiplayer too. The same basic four person horde mode multiplayer from Mass Effect 3 returns, although seemingly even more confusing and menu driven before you actually get into a match. It's fine. That's really the best I can say of it, the multiplayer totally works, but after playing a few matches, I didn't want to return like I had back when it was first introduced to the series.

The debate over whether or not we really needed to continue the Mass Effect franchise has and will continue to be raged somewhere for some time to come, but with the results of the first attempt to strike out with something new, I think I find myself on the side of letting it rest for a while again. Almost everything here is supposed to be new and fresh. New developer (BioWare Montreal after the previous games had come out of BioWare Edmonton), new combat, new locations, new characters, new threats, new scope, etc. Some of it works, but a lot of it doesn't. Running around the open world planets and doing tasks was fun for a bit, but without some real substance it quickly became a game I would only play the critical path of, which ended up being just barely worth it anyway. Mass Effect: Adromeda's greatest sin isn't being a bad game, it's being dull and middling.