Reviews dropping in 3 hours...

MOD EDIT:

This thread has been edited to remove the link to the countdown. Instead we're going to use this as the review roundup thread.

Forbes: 85

Game Informer: 80

IGN: 77

GamesRadar: 70

GameSpot: 60

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Last I heard the embargo was up at 6:00am PT/13:00 GMT. Guess they changed it?

5 star brad review may change everyone's minds?

seriously i feel ill enjoy it like i enjoyed dragons age inquisition even though everyone was lukewarm or hated that one too.

I played enough of the trial to tell it's worth buying and playing, especially as a ME fan - I don't really care about reviews unless there are some Bethesda level or bigger bugs that happen later in the game. I heard about issues on PS4 Pro, but it was smooth on X1 for me.

I love the series, but I canceled my preorder since I just won't have time to fit it in anytime soon.

Regardless, I'm SUPER intrigued by what the reviews will look like. Probably the most interested I am in a game's review impressions since The Stick of Truth, where I also had next to no idea how the full game would turn out.

I've never played a Mass Effect game, so I'm a neutral party just watching how things play out. I have no expectations, hopes, or ideas for what this game should be, but I'm very interested in seeing reviews. Who knows? Maybe I'll hop into the series here, maybe not. What I've seen definitely doesn't look great, but I don't think it's all doom and gloom yet and I'm going to wait and see what the general consensus is after a few weeks.

Haha, no, he is way too lenient on games.

I'm predicting a lot of 7's and 8's.

I was really looking forward to a new Mass Effect and hoping it would return to something more like ME2 and ME1, but that doesn't look to be the case. And the game polish looks real bad so I am not expecting much.

It's funny how Giant Bomb effected me, everyone seemed kind of down on DA:I and I didn't play it (also fantasy isn't really my thing), but I recently played 100+ hours of it and loved it. Then I wondered why no one liked it and checked the metacritic page and realized it has an 89% avarage... I realized my whole perception of the game before playing it myself was based on Giant Bomb.

DA:I in the ME universe seems like a dream game to me and I hope it's as well made. The trial was really promising to me. I don't remember ever being in such a "minority" in my gaming likes. I think a big problem in those games is that if you are a person who feels compelled to do everything you will burn out, there is too much meaningless stuff that you should just do on the way to other things that if you get hang up on you are going to have a bad time. That's definitely not for everyone.

So far playing it has been fine. It's fun to shoot, explore, and jump jet around. The story though... could either really get interesting or completely flounder. So far I feel like everything past the prologue has been massive exposition dumps between characters who seem slightly annoyed with each other even though I'm trying to be a nice guy to everyone. Be interested to see the reviews in the am.

I didn't care for a lot of the characters and some of the writing in DA:I, but what really hurt my opinion on that game was playing The Witcher 3 afterwards. I still did enjoy DA:I, though, even if I would have liked it a lot more if it had done some things differently. And I also think a Mass Effect game with environments as large as those found in Inquisition could be great. I've heard enough positive comments from those who actually played through the trial--as opposed to laughing at bad animations on the internet--that I decided to keep my pre-order and hope for the best. I can get past some bad animation, and I'm the only one who can decide if I like the writing and the overall story.

That, and mutliplayer alone will likely make the game worth owning.

@horseman6:

I already bought the thing, so I'll deal one way or the other. Good luck, Bioware. May the chips fall in your favor.

Also, the gifs of T-posed characters and weird facial expressions make me think that I'll like this one way or the other. The jank will either be barely noticeable after a while or offer a Mystery Science Theater 3000 level of drollness. Either would work for me. :-P

Well okay. I liked the trial quite a bit and thus paid for it already but interested to see the range I guess.

Even if the story is bad I think the combat alone can keep me interested. I'm looking forward to playing more new Mass Effect.

@probablytuna: Yeah the combat kind of surprised me, I've never been that into it in ME games, but this was a whole lot of fun. There is a lot of things you can do, but in the trial I just charged people and shot them in the face with a shotgun. I really like the pace of it. You can get into and out of trouble in seconds and don't just have to pick a cover spot and sit there the whole fight. The melee is also cool since it really packs a punch both in animation and in damage. I hope you can re-spec as easily as in Inquisition so you can just chance your stuff 2-4 times during the game to keep it fresh. I'm so glad there isn't any classes to hold you back too.

Dragon Age Inquisition was a 5/10 game for me, pretty average. Balanced out the spots of brilliance with a few really dull points in the game. From what i've heard about Andromeda it mimics a lot of Inquisition's questing (which I was bothered by) so i'm interested to see how it scores.

Not to mention the terrible animations we've been subjected to so far.

The part that I can boost around in combat and the feeling I got from that sort of stuck with me. I really like the way the pace changes because of that (I'm also playing on Insanity so you get in a zone when you start doing that stuff and then pre-planning my boost routes to move from one cover that is a bit farther to another).

I'm referring to that movement when you jetpack jump first and then immediately do a side or forward dodge. You also get around faster that way when out of combat. When I discovered that I can do that in quick succession (doing a jetpack jump first then boost), I had a similar reaction when I discovered that in the Ninja Gaiden reboot (and its sequels) you do the dodge roll to directional jump to move around areas faster. I really like the feel of using that in combat since it just makes it a whole lot faster, plus the hover while aiming down was a nice touch.

I'm scared.

8.8/10

What really got me hooked was when I pulled a guy to me then saw a cliff and thought "can I just drop him down there?" The answer is yes. It elicited the same feelings I had in the first Mass Effect where I could lift a guy up then use throw to propel him towards the sky and just watch as his body flail away aimlessly to his death. I look forward to seeing how people would use biotic powers and combos in creative ways.

Brad's doing the review? If so, then this:

6/10 from Gamespot ........

Man, if this is a consensus, then this could be the most disappointing game of all time for me. What a bummer.

Polygon: Game fucks up a lot, enough that this review is provisional (but not many game breakers): 7.5/10.

Gies spends half the text of the review explaining what doesn't work right but he does say he likes it.

All over the place, looks like.

Sounds about right.

Eurogamer:

The combat crackles and the worlds are lush, but mediocre writing and tepid quests add up to what is probably BioWare's worst RPG yet.

I think I need to play this!

Gamespot says the glitches are myriad but it's the repetitive missions that really kills it. Says story and character development is better in the later part than the early part you might have seen already. 6/10.

Reviewer says animations just freeze up, dialogue plays at wrong times and NPCs drop through the floor at times. And frame rate is poor on PS4 and PC. Bizarre.

7.7 from IGN.

Mass Effect: Andromeda is an expansive action role-playing game with a few great moments that recapture the high points of the landmark trilogy that came before it, and energetic combat and fantastic sound effects contribute to a potent sci-fi atmosphere. Without consistently strong writing or a breakout star in its cast to carry it through the long hours and empty spaces, however, disappointments like a lack of new races, no companion customization, and major performance problems and bugs take their toll.

It would be nice to see BioWare fix the technical problems. They'd kind of have to, if they would ever want to sell a complete edition with all DLC for $60 again.

That headline makes me think Eurogamer have completely forgotten about Sonic Chronicles :P

So the glitches and animations seem to be as bad as they appeared to be, along with the bland fetch quests (like the Inquisition quests) bogging it down further.

Not surprising based on the footage we've seen and early word of mouth.

77 on Metacritic, currently. My prediction was 78. Let's see if it lasts.

http://www.metacritic.com/game/playstation-4/mass-effect-andromeda

Seems like my prediction might be on the high side...I had a hunch that the problems wouldn't magically go away after you moved past the trial areas, but it's a shame that they seem fairly endemic.

I knew you couldn't order your dudes to use powers, but I had no idea you couldn't change out their guns.

What's the point of the crafting system if I can't give everyone sweet guns? Half the fun of Inquisition was crafting a ridiculously OP axe for Iron Bull with an added explosion effect.

Not sure about that site in the OP but here is metacrtic

Average is higher than i expected so far, watched the video review at gamespot and it only glanced at the multiplayer and just highlighted how bad the writing was (which seemed obvious from the trial anyway). If it's fun to play i could see myself just clicking through dialog randomly, seems like choice doesn't mean much anymore.

@flippyandnod: that's sounds on par with how Arthur discussed it on his podcast. He sounded really conflicted about the game

Some reviews are praising the story and characters, and just about everyone is praising the combat. Those glitches, though. This one needed more time. It sounds like it didn't need polish, so much as to grind down some seriously jagged edges before they hurt someone. After all the fans who expected this game to be delayed, perhaps EA should have listened to them.

Perhaps I'll play only some of the main story if the glitches and frame rate issues are really bad, I'll spend most of my time with the multiplayer. I took my time with The Witcher 3, and that game was much better by the time I finished it. One can only hope BioWare and EA won't leave well enough alone, here.

It's a good thing I had low expectations for this game or I'd be disappointed. More time for Breath of the Wild and Persona 5.

@beachthunder said:

Brad's doing the review? If so, then this:

four shanes from walking dead out of 5!

Yep, they dropped. This is unfortunate. Well, I'm less excited (or maybe I should say hopeful), but I'm still going to play it on the first day. When I watched the Giant Bomb video of the game, that's when I first noticed that the game had some issues. I hope it doesn't ruin the experience.

Sounds like a total slog. Guess it's time to never expect anything good out of BioWare again.

I didn't know so many of the people responsible for Dragon Age: Origins, Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2 had left the company, kind of shows when you look at the drop in quality since those games.

The GamesRadar review was quite funny, the reviewer is asked if each part of the game is fun and it follows with "...no"

I ended up watching this. Even during all this I still had good feelings about the series. It used to be good.

Ouch, some of those reviews are very damning. Really glad I held off on this one, what a shame considering even Mass Effect 3 was great despite its many issues.

Keep in mind this isn't the same team that made Mass Effect by all accounts, which is a shame to.

More positive than negative as of now. Still feelin' good about it.

You know you've messed up when the Mass Effect fanbase are collectively starting to say "3 wasn't that bad after all..."

Now a 73 on Metacritic. I really want to know what the game would have scored without these technical issues, just like I really want to know what Street Fighter V would have scored if it was a complete product when it launched. I'm always sad to see wasted potential in video games.

Seems like the lower scores ran into more bugs, which makes me hope that the experience can be improved if some of them can be hammered out. This review in particular is really damming:

Now for the section of the review that brings me no joy talking about: bugs. While all open world games have issues due to the large number of moving parts, Mass Effect: Andromeda is a complete mess. Over the sixty hours we put into Andromeda, we ran into a staggering amount of issues in the open world, conversations, cutscenes and segmented missions. For starters, we’ve had party member models multiply in the Tempest (your ship), enemies fight in the T-pose position, doors refusing to open, trapping us inside, having the ability to phase through geometry, and NPCs and enemies who turned invisible (we’re not talking about the ones who have a cloaking ability, either). There were also environmental models that disappeared, allies that merged into the floor horizontally, enemies either skated around or floated in the air, event triggers refused to occur, objects obstructed our vision in conversations, and we even phased through the ground a couple of times and were unable to escape. These are just a handful of the many bugs we ran into during our time in the Andromeda galaxy, causing much frustration and constantly reloading.

Fortunately, none of these are game breaking issues, or at least the ones we listed above aren’t. There were a couple of instances that forced us to close the application entirely. For starters, after sending a probe to an asteroid, the camera would occasionally swoop in automatically and stay peering at an infinite abyss, with button commands ceasing any functionality. After restarting the game, we came back only to see Ryder had taken massive damage, from what I expect is from being jettisoned into deep space instead of the probe. While this happened multiple times, they don’t compare to the completely broken segments and scenes. One specific instance that’s still fresh on the mind is during one of the Loyalty missions, where a platform for an elevator was nowhere to be seen. After about ten minutes of wandering around a lifeless station, I jumped outside the boundaries only to be teleported back to the beginning of the checkpoint with newly spawned enemies and the elevator finally intact. After riding the elevator and defeating a handful of gun-toting raiders in the following area, the final scene for the mission completely broke animations, scene camera positions, and even character models, just before going into an endless loading screen. At the very least Mass Effect: Andromeda is generous with the autosaves, but this is just one example of many instances that occurred throughout our lengthy playthrough. It was a nightmare.

Yikes.

EDIT: Here's a video from the same website showcasing a dialog scene that is totally broken (no/missing animations, t-poses, models popping in and out, random freezes, etc). Probably some spoilers so heads up, but it's all out of context and kind of worth seeing it absolutely beyond busted.

I just watched around 5 minutes of the quicklook, watched one conversation and decided its what I need in my life and stopped watching. I'm expecting average reviews but at the same token I couldn't care less, its mass effect, gotta get my injection of space RPG.

I doubt it, they didn't add that much since (just DLC characters) and there's still glaring issues that have gone unfixed and ignored by Capcom.

The story mode they patched in is worse than Mortal Kombat 9 (2011) with stilted animations and very poor transitions, I don't think it would have contributed very much to the score. If anything reviewers were too generous to Street Fighter V to begin with.

Thinking of it now, the story mode might have made the scores worse because I saw very little praise for it. It felt like a half-assed "Me too!" addition because of Mortal Kombat and Guilty Gear.

Wow. And even THAT review has high praise for aspects of the game.

Mass Effect: Andromeda is an unbalanced experience. It’s an incredibly ambitious game with a colossal scope, but it doesn’t always hit the right notes. While there’s an air of mystery behind the story that will keep you going, the cast of supporting characters are far from the most compelling bunch, not to mention decision-making feels far less important than ever before. There will certainly be moments that resonant with fans, but at the same time, there are design decisions that are put into question. Combat and the sense of exploration are the key components and thankfully, they’re done perfectly. You will be engrossed in the vast new beautiful worlds and immersed within the fully versatile combat system. Unfortunately, even by open world standards, this is an absurdly bug-ridden game. I by no means regret the 60+ hours I put into Andromeda as it does have an addictive quality that draws you in, but it’s marred by frequent technical issues. Every time I begin to have fun, I’m quickly reminded of just how unpolished things are. When it works, Mass Effect: Andromeda is a stimulating adventure. When it doesn’t, it’s nothing short of dispiriting.

What the fuck did you do, BioWare / EA?