I'm considering cancelling my preorder.

@spaceinsomniac: It's so strange. The stuff that seemed like it would be fun may have turned out to be even better than we expected, but the things that seemed off or busted are apparently much worse or more frequent than most predicted. To call the game inconsistent is an understatement; how can you get so much right and so much wrong at the same time?

@bottekott said:

@horseman6:

What the... whoever made this was born after 1995.

This seems pretty inline with everything that has been going on. It's probably going to be 3 stars from Brad depending if he is really into the good parts or if the bad parts really bug him. I know I'm going to enjoy the game and 75% is actually a pretty good score, even though people seem to have forgotten that.

@mavs said:

@bottekott said:

@horseman6:

What the... whoever made this was born after 1995.

Yeah, I was going to say. Having started reading games magazines in the early 90s, this is total rot. Reviews in the past were far worse for the crime of everything under 7 or 8 being bad. If anything, that trend is a lot better these days and there's a bit more room for nuance.

The meta-score now stands at a 75. The game's first 90 review has pushed it out of the metacritic yellow and into the green. It's okay to buy now, guys! The internet told me so.

Seriously though, as someone with a stack of EGM, GamePro, Next Generation, PC Gamer, etc in a box somewhere in my basement, that review score image above is some historical revisionist nonsense. 7 has always been on the low end of acceptable scores, and anything below a 6 has been various levels of shit.

And I'm fine with that, personally. Why don't reviewers use the whole review scale? They do, and anything below a 6 is shit. Making a game is like writing a paper for school. You might slide with an 80/100, but you really should be going for a 90 or above, and even a 70 should be considered a poor performance that should have been better. Having said that, I still think Giant Bomb's rating scale is the best way to go about things.

@spaceinsomniac said:

I think that might only apply in the States (assuming you are from the US). Where I am, 70 is a B which is a good grade. Not considered poor at all. Generally a C would be considered average (55 - 69). Lower than that would be poor.

Not giving you shit or anything man :) Just pointing out that that is interpreted differently in different places as well.

for steam reviews/general internet peruser reviews you can devolve ratings even lower: best thing ever created, or utter flaming horseshit. no inbetweens!

Publishers always know the quality of their product if Andromeda was better EA would have pushed it much harder mid 70's was expected, the flaws don't seem much different from any previous Mass Effect game I'm itching to play. 7/10 being a bad score is total BS was never true in the UK when I grew up in the 90's.

That's quite alright. Yes, I am from the US, but I do always find it interesting to hear how things work in other parts of the globe.

As far as things go here, in school and college / university, 90+ is an A, 80+ is a B, 70+ is a C, 60+ is a D, and below 60 is an F, meaning fail. Most college classes require a C or higher to pass, and some have even stricter requirements.

So yeah, it kind of lines up nicely with how people think of gaming reviews. Right now, Andromeda is getting some 60s and 70s, and people are acting like it's a trainwreck. To be fair, it very well might be.

We do, although I find some of the lower scores we dish out at a little hyperbolic, at times. I've never went lower than a 4/10 but, I suspect I'd know a sub-4 game when one lands on my lap. I see 5 as the precipice. A game that does nothing either way. 6 being a game that has something about it but not enough to consider it objectively 'good'. I suspect developers / publishers don't know what to take from a 6, though. Metacritic has that down as a negative, mixed at best, score. 7's shouldn't be mixed. They're positive.

I've seen this kind of thing written a few times now, did any of you actually play the previous Mass Effect games? It doesn't seem like it, Andromeda looks very different to me.

The main flaws of Andromeda were not issues in the previous games, actually I'll just say 1 and 2 because I only played 3 one time. The first two did not have tons of monotonous quests, the planet landing and scanning were not good but I did more or less every main quest and side quest and I found them to be of high quality (this is ignoring the first game's planet landings). The voice acting, writing and characters in Andromeda look like a gigantic downgrade. Dialog in Andromeda sticks out like a sore thumb, it's a game where even I think I could do a much better job.

It doesn't even look like the combat is much of an improvement, seems like 3 with a jump pack and the removal of any character creation choices mattering now that you can just change all of your abilities willy nilly. Most bizarrely, BioWare have managed to replicate the pop-in issues that plagued Unreal Engine 3 in an entirely different engine, let's pretend it's a homage? Although, on PC the pop-in was not an issue in the previous games.

I hear you, but its not the 90s anymore and a 7/10 given in the spirit of the game being mediocre shouldnt then be translated as "good" just because you personally think the scale should work different.

Im not here to defend the scale sliding the way it has. But its the system we got so why not just role with it? We get much more precise (aggregated) evaluation this way.

Having an aggregated score doesnt make any sense when theres no consensus on the "rules".

Seeing the reaction to the review scores for this games puts the whole Jim Sterling Zelda thing in a new light for me. At first I was all like "how could anyone honestly think 7 is a bad score?!" then you see this game floating around the mid 70s on Metacritic and everyone is immediately all like "well, that proves it, Andromeda is clearly a piece of shit."

Its a shame to say, but I think I'm gonna give Andromeda a pass, or at least wait until its on sale. I absolutely loved the original triology, but Andromeda does not look that good.

@trenox: UK magazines always used the whole scale like @arabes says in the UK schools they used the whole scale, the US sites in particular have always inflated scores its why Metacritic label games scoring below 75 orange this has been a consensus its just a bad one that doesn't use the whole scale. Its hard for me to role with it not only is it counter intuitive its a scoring system I've not grown up with and don't use day to day, its why I haven't used reviews to buy a game in more than a decade.

It's all relative, to me it looks absolutely awful because I judge it as a Mass Effect game where anything worse than ME3 might as well be made by Uwe Boll and the people that made Action 52

The first one had nothing but monotonous quests in prefab environments. The side quests were the worst part of 1

Some of my best experiences have been with games that have average reviews. I can enjoy 'mediocre' things a lot, I guess. The bugs are very worrying though. I will wait for some patches.

@donchipotle: Plus all the find thing go to seemingly random waypoint quests from ME3.

I find it hard to believe Andromeda is worse than that.

75/100? Straight Garbage! Note: Actually pretty close to as low as this one could possibly go. RIP EA Journalism relations. Also maybe people will finally stop singing Bioware's praises.

Right now the scores are pretty close to Wildlands depending on which platform you look at. Will a third game come out soon to make baby three?

What does gamebomb.ru think though!? They haven't reviewed it yet

It'll be 3 or 4 stars. If it's 4 I may play it but not at launch

The reviews are whatever. DA:I got amazing reviews then trashed later by most games journalists and outlets. It even got 4 stars here on Giant Bomb (and then yeah forgotten/knocked down later).

I'm just finding out for myself. Already enjoyed what I played quite a bit in the Trial even if it was a bit flawed. The moment to moment action for example is vastly superior. I also was not expecting them to fix issues that have been in every ME game so far but that's me (not that it wouldn't be nice, but there's only one CD Projekt out there).

This game is a good example I guess of my weird place with reviews, especially with RPGs, were I just don't care what reviewers say about a game really at all anymore. I rarely see eye to eye in the genre with major outlet reviewers, especially in regards to the quality of the story and its delivery.

Interested to see what users think but probably more down the line because it's kind of toxic around this game now. I kind of thought some of the "this game is amazing" or "this game is the worst ever" thing was going away but I think it's still around and it seems Mass Effect has a special ability to draw forth some real dark business, I guess still from the ending to 3 (when 2 had a way dumber ending... and well everything to do with 2's main plot is extremely dumb and hardly jives within that game nevermind the series)?

As I've mentioned in other threads, I I think ME is great but every game in the series has major flaws, even if 1 is by far the best to me. Especially with stuff like the story so I am not in agreement with critics on the series very often.

In the end, a game that does a few things no other games does brings it up in quality and interest to me. There are still no ME-like games other studios are making.

Oh and the multiplayer is even very good from the Trial.

The review scale hasnt changed much, peoples interpretation seems to have though. Usually if you read or watch reviews when it gets a 6 or 7 the reviewer enjoys the game but it has many flaws, but people see 6 or 7 and interpret " worst game ever" somehow. 5 is typically when the good cant out weigh the bad, and 4 is when a game starts being all bad.

I think the market's bigger, too. A 7/10 when there's an 8/10 vying for attention is always going to get dismissed.

yeah- this feels like a strong day 730 purchase for me. i'm glad there seems to be some good stuff in there, but i was hopeful (if not fully expecting) for something of a higher overall quality. i hope this doesn't financially torpedo the series, however. this was probably an expensive game to make (many years to develop with a large team), and given its release context (tepid buzz surrounded by critically acclaimed recent releases)- i can see this one 'exiting the conversation' faster than intended.

This lead up has been super weird because the incredible outcry over the game has made me more interested in judging for myself whereas if the reviews had just hit as they are I might have been more likely to put it off until a calmer month.

Now though? I gotta know.

That's right. Sega got BioWare to give Sonic his Super Mario RPG, or Paper Mario or Mario and Luigi RPG but it ended up being a big disappointment.

Last I checked Andromeda has a 75 on Meteoritic right now and hearing Jeff in the quick look compare this game as a whole to a straight to DVD sequel is pretty concerning.

A 75 on Metacritic? For a BioWare game?! More like Mass Defect, amiright?

If Brad gives it anything other than three stars -- in either direction -- I'll be absolutely shocked.

(For the record, I'm going through with my pre-order. Even if the single-player is lacking, I had a blast with ME3's multiplayer, and this sounds like more of the same. And yes, I do realize that falling back on the multiplayer in a BioWare RPG is a sad statement.)

It's not ideal but in the end the game is the game and for me what I played in the trial is the best Horde type mode out there for sure with all its elements. I am really excited to play more of it. I love that type of mode and it's something I can really sink a lot of time into.

Speaking of which, I tried a Silver mission with my highest character of level 10 and fuck is that a big jump. It should take some time, good gear, and good team work to get through the higher difficulties.

Well, we were due to get a middling/controversial game at SOME point in 2017, right? Honestly, the scores are lower than I expected, but I can't say I'm too surprised given all the preview coverage. I loved ME2 and thought what I played of 3 was great, but I think I'm gonna give this one a pass.

Well at the very least Dragon Age 2 can finally have company in the 'BioWare's fuck ups' bin....along with TOR

Jade Empire 2 when?

Yeeesh, definitely lower reviews than I expected but that's okay. I've played about 7 hours of the trial and it's been a lot of fun, my worry was the mission structure and the artificial lengthing of the game. I'm also really bummed to hear they didn't take this really smart idea to expand the ME univerise and populate it with at least a few dozen other alien species. From what I've ready there are only 2 or 3, I'm not expecting what they did for the original game but I thought around 6 or 7 new ones would've been the sweet spot. But just being in that world again gives me happinesss since it is so well realized so I can maybe see past that stuff.

Technical issues seem like a bummer and I feel like I've really dodged a bullet by at the last second switching my PS4 copy to the pc version. It's not spotless but I've not had any huge issues yet, and the facial animation stuff isn't too bad. Maybe it's the frame rate or something but it has bad moments but nothing thst I've seen in all the gifs. Also so far the dialogue hasn't been too terrible and while the characters are new, I think they can unfold into something more than just paper cut-ours of past crew members.

I'll need to play more but Mass Effect is something worth playing to me even if it stumbles. I've really enjoyed the combat so far and some of the other complaints haven't bothered me too much. My first 7 hours or so have been fun, I look forward to continuing further!

Ah, the Polygon review was 7.5 I think, but the words written in that one and the Gamespot one, in combination with the 2 hour stream on GB I watched last week, indicated to me that it's still a Mass Effecty game that I'll probably get a fair amount of enjoyment out of.

Strikes me that it's lacking polish....needed another 3 months for iterative testing maybe? Who knows. Anyway, I think I'll get it. Just broke up with my gf so will try to seduce a blue alien in a videogame as recompense.

@donchipotle: Outsourced to Platinum

@donchipotle: the last good Bioware game was ME2.

Dragon Age 2, dragon age inquisition, mass effect 3 were all screw ups.

I don't like Nolan North's normal, soap actor voice.

It's actually a voice actor named Tom Taylorson but he sounds just like Drake-esque Nolan North, yes. I also didn't care for it. I'm hoping I like the female VA better. (Sorry if you were making a joke there, personally I thought this was North at first when I heard the character).

Seems like the "agreed" score is somewhere in the 3 to 4 range. I already decided months ago I was playing this one reguardless of the reviews, its the next one that they have to win me on assuming I dont like this one.

Its probably important to note that I liked both DA2 and DA:I more then most people did.

Oh, that's right. Nolan's still on strike.

Non-Union Stunt North and Stunt Ashley Birch.

Suddenly the actors' strike seems a factor.

Oh man a game riddle with bugs and lack luster characters but is still really fun to play at it's core? I can't think of a single game like that. I mean Bethesda games are all perfect and nothing ever breaks in those games.

Sarcasm filter off though I can't help but think people are piling on this game. I do think the animation stuff can detract from the game but it's not enough from enjoying the game as a whole. The trial completely justified my pre-order purchase and I'm ready to dig in to some more Mass Effect.

To each his own I guess, but I never came to Mass Effect games for anything other than the story and characters. Unlike Bethesda games for example.

I also don't find menial quests with maps just littered with uninteresting things to do that appealing. But hey, if you enjoy something more power to you.

Dude, don't even with that!

Nah, man, I disagree with you there but it's all good. DA2 and Old Republic, post launch have been the major offenders

@atwa: What... what did you come Bethesda games for then? If not for story, characters or maps littered with uninteresting things to do. The amazing combat?

@shindig: I always feel embarrassed for the studio when they release videos like those and then the game is not good, reminds me of all the pre-release Tony Hawk 5 stuff

Too bad about the glitches but it still sounds like it'll be a fun game after some patches. I ran into some annoying ones back when DA: I came out. Add in how long it took The Witcher 3 to get ironed out on consoles, Dishonored 2 to patch in game balance and replay incentives, waiting on FF15 to patch in the extra story segments, etc, it looks like I'll have to wait a bit more until the bugs get ironed out with patches.

I've come to the conclusion this generation that even if a game isn't open world, it's probably best to wait for patches than deal with the frustrations of a buggy game. I just hope EA lets Bioware polish it up unlike what happened with DE Mankind Divided. That game still has some gamebreaking crashes from what I've heard.