Quick Look: Mass Effect: Andromeda

Here we go!

EA watching the sales charts: "We got this, right?"

Horse meets Ryder.

Im ready to see how far this franchise has fallen. Sad that EA gave it to a B tier studio that never made a full game. According to all the reviews its really mediocre in almost every way.

Would have liked to have Vinny on the QL but still cautiously excited to watch this. I'm not as big a ME fan as the GB crew so at this point I'm pretty sure I'm not going to be playing this. I just want to see if the game gets better after the initial 10 hours.

I'm super uncomfortable with the love conversations, heard better dialogue in porn.

Aww yeah!

BioWare don't even have an A tier studio anymore, the saddest thing about Andromeda for me is I found out how many people that made pre-Dragon Age 2 era games have left.

When Bioware released DA: Origins and Mass Effect 2 it was like man, these guys are un-fucking-stoppable. Then everything afterward has just been...yeah. What a fall from grace.

Is it just me, or does the game look kinda framey in this QL? Like it's sub-30 FPS a lot of the time.

Hm. Okay, fifty minutes in the video, aside from visual issues I am not that turned off by it. Aside from visual issues, not everything looks good/great, but I think I can look past some (maybe a lot) of the issues. Also, I don't know how many people go to God is a Geek; it's the most recent site I've found and I've enjoyed hearing what they've had to say about games, and they seemed to enjoy this game alright.

Whenever Jeff responds with his disgusted "uh-huh", you know he already made up his mind on the game he's watching being played. Sad!

Combat is great. The game looks beautiful. The upgrade system seems like it will be really cool since in some trailers they have shown you can get upwards of level 100 (there is new game plus supposedly).

I ordered through GMG so I have to wait until the 23rd to play the game, but frankly I can't wait. It will be the only thing to get me to stop playing Nier Automata so much ... must kill machines forever

@whatshisface: yeah, been obvious how he'd feel long before this was ever released.

So you're telling me this is like the 2 Fast 2 Furious of the Mass Effect franchise?

I heard the 2017 Pathfinder gets great gas mileage for how much space it offers the pathfinder and it's crew.

How is this running at like 20 fps inside the ship? I don't recall the demo being like that.

The Pathfinder is the new hire? Itll be awesome if the new hire is just called by a cool nickname.

In a series that, in my opinion, lives and dies entirely on your connection to characters, the way they look, move, and speak turns me off of this entirely.

Afterthe action gets goingi I truly liked this game. I'm not attached to the old games the same way other players seem to be so maybe that's part of the reason why I like this game better than some other people do. Maybe not but I found it really good.

Looks like more Mass Effect. I'm all in. Not gonna let some silly visual stuff deter me, from this.

This doesn't look very appealing. The number of quests, and "tiers" of quests seems to suggest fetch quests/errands being abundant, which was not something I was very fond of in Dragon Age Inquisition. Combat seem fine, but not amazing enough to carry the whole game on its back. The animations are still really bad, it's hard for me to pay attention to the 'serious' dialogue when i'm staring at this ridiculousness. I'm sure the game has its bright spots here and there, but everything i've seen just seems boring or at best average.

I didn't expect much from Andromeda, and I still feel disappointed.

"Why does this alien have this accent?"

Yeah, why isn't she American or posh British like proper space aliens?

A lot of quantity, just not much quality.

@kishinfoulux: so you didn't play the other games then?

@rikiguitarist: Yea it's not smooth at all, and they're playing on a Pro.

as someone who does actually like that game, it's astonishing to me that anyone could look at the mission design of DA: I and say "mmm yep more of that please"

@reaganismthehedgehog: The thing about the DA:I mission design is that it is easy(ier) to create and good at padding out games, plus a decent number of people are fine with it. It's a business based decision.

If the next Visceral game is shit then EA will have officially ruined every single talented studio they have ever owned. The list is long and depressing, what the hell are they doing?

I've loved every Dragon Age and Mass Effect game so far despite their flaws, I'm sure I'll enjoy Andromeda as well. Can't wait to play it tonight.

Man what the hell is happening over at Bioware? Maybe somebody will write a book about it all in 20 years or something. Knowing EA... RIP Bioware :(

So when Bioware said DA:I was the template for games going forward, they really weren't kidding. Ugh, what a disappointment.

Yeah, what gives?

Where's the spirit guys, this game fantastic! The combat is perfectly refined, could not go back to ME2. Not sure why Bio-Ware bother after copping so much negativity. Just enjoy or move on.

so yeah... whose ready for some Persona 5!

This game has given me plenty of entertainment without having to play it.

ugh, this game looks terrible...

Initially I was happy to poke fun at all the weird stuff pre-release but after watching this and seeing them basically go through the stages of grief over what happened to this franchise i'm now just sad that this game exists.

24:25 Jeff and Brad completely missing the random T-pose dude

This is just sad.

This is some real Gearbox-ass dialogue.

The multiplayer still resolves around getting the characters and weapons randomly from packs?

Sigh... :(

This game bums me out. The idea of the singleplayer is cool but looks so rough in its execution. And I would've bought the game just for the multiplayer alone (ME3 multiplayer is awesome!) if it didn't have the pack progression.

Well, PS4 pro framerate looks terrible here. :)

I'll just buy this when it goes on sale.

@gundogan said:

I have zero issue with the random packs, as somebody who's put a couple of thousand hours into ME3 multiplayer. They're a decent hook to keep you playing, and there's zero reason to ever spend real money on one. The bigger issue with the ME:A multiplayer is that the netcode is utterly and completely broken, to the point that the game becomes unplayable with even moderate lag. You literally can't move your character much of the time, with such awful rubberbanding that you snap back to where you were over and over and over again. Leaping around with the jetpack and dashing only exacerbates the issue. ME3's netcode wasn't the greatest by any means, but it was nowhere near as bad as ME:A's.

Aside from that, I'm not really digging the new combat system either. The movement stuff is fun in isolation, but its implications on the combat, namely far more emphasis on height, makes matches feel incredibly chaotic, to the point that teamwork is difficult. The pace is so much faster than ME3, and I don't feel that's a positive. Not to mention that it all has a real floaty feel. There's none of the sense of impact that ME3's combat had. Even Krogan characters feel completely lacking in weight, probably because they just zip around on jetpacks like every other kit. I'm honestly completely bummed out by the whole thing. The trial put me off the game completely.

Extra bummed to hear that the base gameplay isn't great either. But the problem with the random packs is that you start to fall behind quick when they start to release new stuff unless you put in those thousands of hours. I played a fair bit of the ME3 multiplayer, but not enough to consistenly unlock all the new stuff or level it (or the old stuff for that matter) up so I kinda gave up after a while.

A credit base unlock system next to the pack system (something like Overwatch does) would've been so much better. Using packs to unlock things saves credits, but is random while unlocking things the hard way is more expensive, but ensures you get what you want.

This looks bad in so many ways (framerate, faces, animations, voice acting, etc.)

I cancelled my preorder and I'm super bummed. I'll definitely play it at some point but I'll wait until it's cheaper. I'm playing Nier and Zelda at the minute and I haven't even started Horizon, then Persona is out in 2 weeks.

What's going on with the framerate? No one mentioned it.