oh no now im pissed

* REMOVED *
This comment was deleted on May 12, 2017, 10:11.

Honestly, I'm REALLY enjoying Mass Effect Andromeda. Literally my only gripe is the favourites system for the powers, which cause cooldowns to have to expire when you switch favourites. Other than that, I'm perfectly happy with the game and I loved Mass Effect 1, 2 and 3.

CJ_Parker wrote on May 11, 2017, 11:44:
Creston here is a good example for that whole phenomenon because at ME:A release he was massively under the influence of the kool-aid... which I find surprising in his case. He is usually quite a critical person with somewhat decent taste even so I was kind of puzzled why he gave EA/Bio such a massive pass for their mediocrity. Must be some old days BioWare fanboyism or something... I didn't get it. But as we can see now, the tune has changed after the kool-aid has left the system.

And? In your world, is someone not allowed to change their opinion? Like I explained in my post to NKD, I very much enjoyed the game in the start. It's just that the start is really the coolest part of the game. The rest just very much peters out and becomes very same-same-same, and once you become so powerful that combat is no longer a challenge, that no longer provides a break from just doing the same shit over and over.

I'd still call it a pretty good game, especially if you like their implementation of mp, it's easy to get a good amount of fun out of it, but it's definitely an Ubisoft type "Quantity over quality" scenario. I've also never called it the greatest mass effect or anything. It EASILY ranks the lowest for me. But even so, it's still mass effect, the combat is cool (even if it gets too easy), the scenery is pretty, there are some excellent missions. It's not as if the game is garbage like you are pretending it to be.

But hey, if you want to sit there and bleat about how RIIIIIGGHHTHTT you were, go right ahead, dude.

NKD wrote on May 11, 2017, 10:51:
And like I said, I'm pretty sure I'm the only one around here who gave it high praise, so it's far from true that everyone here was circlejerking the game and CJ was the lone voice of dissent like he wants to pretend.

No, I liked it quite a bit as well. The opening mission was okay, Eos (the first part) was pretty dull, but the Vault was really cool, and then after that I went to Vould and had an absolutely great time playing that planet. Sliding the Nomad through the snow, taking out Kett bases, some cool sidequests, cool scenery, an absolutely AWESOME "take out the main enemy base" sequence. It was great.

I did the jungle planet next, and it was different enough to still be cool, even though it all felt pretty cramped and a little stupid because of it. (The turians whining that all their shit from the ark needs to be found, and some of it is literally FIVE FUCKING FEET from where they are standing), and you start to feel that, despite the fact they had five years to build this game, they clearly ran out of time to finish this planet properly.

And then you go to the next planet, and you realize... oh, it's literally like Vould, only it's a desert rather than snow. It's copy-pasta bases, encounters, etc. And then you go to kadara, and it's literally like Vould, only it's prairie instead of snow.

And where Eos is cool with the Vault and all, that coolness evaporates VERY rapidly when you realize that every single planet can be fixed by turning on three monoliths and flipping a switch in a (often pretty boring) vault.

Combine that with the fact that you very rapidly outpower all your enemies, and combat ceases to be a challenge by the mid level 20s, and all that's left is a long-ass slog through content you've already done before, with enemies that aren't challenging at all anymore. :\


The story missions are still good, and there are some very good and fun sidequests, but the big exploration deal just very rapidly becomes "Yeah, it's a planet with a yellow color rather than a white one."


MP is still great fun (we realllllly need new maps though, especially bigger ones), but I keep finding excuses not to continue with the sp portion. And I've played the other MEs through like 14-10-5 times respectively.

I will buy this game on a deep sale. I have still neither forgotten nor forgiven the rainbow colored endings of the first Mass Effect trilogy.

I'm disappointed to see the series go on Hold, but if that improves the quality of the games future installments, I'm all for it. I'd love to see - as others have suggested - a return to the Milky Way, but that opens a can of worms best left closed.

Mass Effect Andromeda is a great heroic story set in a boring game. I think they focused to much on the combat - which gets pretty boring itself because you end up facing the same 5 aliens, 5 robots & 5 animals everywhere you go. By mid-game on the 2nd to hardest difficulty I could punch through a pack of 15+ aliens in under 30 seconds easy, and that wasn't even while using one of the various super powerful builds out there. With the challenge gone and yet another planet full of boring fetch/kill/fedex quests - half of which were broken - it doesn't matter how good the story gets, I can't bring myself to keep playing.

This is the same problem DA:I had. Fantastic story, fun combat, but the base game was rather boring and filled with pointless side-quests. At least in MEA you can see which ones are semi-interesting and which ones are just simple useless 'tasks', but you cant like quit a task, and when half of the quests are broken anyway.. what's the point?

I had more than my fair share of complaints of Mass Effect 2 & 3. I felt the focus on great combat reduced focus on just making a great game. With MEA it's obvious they didn't learn this lesson and only compounded the problem.

At some point I'll force myself to finish this game - and DA:I. The main stories in both are fantastic, MEA's just takes a while to get there (according to several friends who finished it). But as I said.. great stories set in boring games make for mediocrity.

Flatline wrote on May 11, 2017, 12:27:

NKD wrote on May 11, 2017, 10:51:
I mean I've got more hours in it than I probably have in all the previous ME games combined...

I'm just going to point out the game has been out 51 days and you've spent 24.5 days *in game*.

Which means basically you've spent as much time in ME:A as spent sleeping, eating, working, and the rest of your life.

Like... do you work? Because you're spending on average around 11 hours day playing ME:A, and unless you only sleep like 3 hours a night I don't see how you could sleep, eat, and work in the 13 hours a day on average you have left over.

Either that or you just hit pause when you walk away from the game and like those 8 hours of sleep are time spent "in game".

Most of that time is multiplayer. And no I don't work, I've been disabled for about 4 years now, been divorced for 10 years and never had any kids. Lots of time to play games.

UttiniDaKilrJawa wrote on May 11, 2017, 10:49:
Guess that explains why there was no Season Pass.

They expected it to fail.

Not necessarily. None of Bioware's games have had season passes and EA isn't really big on season passes to begin with.

As with DA:I, I think EA believed that ME fans wanted the game to be more like Bethesda's RPGs in terms of scale but forgot that Bethesda generally fills its games with interesting content.

Jivaro wrote on May 11, 2017, 12:10:
It could be a long time I think....seeing as I quit DA:I out of pure boredom after one week of trying to find a way to stay interested.

I keep intending to go back to DA:I but I can't bring myself to. It started out boring as dirt, got actually reasonably interesting and fun once the inquisition started, and then kind of petered out after a while.

NKD wrote on May 11, 2017, 10:51:
I mean I've got more hours in it than I probably have in all the previous ME games combined...

I'm just going to point out the game has been out 51 days and you've spent 24.5 days *in game*.

Which means basically you've spent as much time in ME:A as spent sleeping, eating, working, and the rest of your life.

Like... do you work? Because you're spending on average around 11 hours day playing ME:A, and unless you only sleep like 3 hours a night I don't see how you could sleep, eat, and work in the 13 hours a day on average you have left over.

Either that or you just hit pause when you walk away from the game and like those 8 hours of sleep are time spent "in game".

I promised myself that I wouldn't buy ME:A until I finished DA:I.

It could be a long time I think....seeing as I quit DA:I out of pure boredom after one week of trying to find a way to stay interested.

Man, I loved the first 3 ME games and I really liked DA:O, but basically everything else EA/Bioware has released has been crap that isn't up to Gameloft's standards let alone my previous perception of Bioware's. The best single player experience Bioware has published in the last ~4-5 years is, humorously enough, probably in SWTOR. A MMO.

Fuck you EA. You keep buying the shit I like and turning it into shit I don't like...for like 25 years now.

NKD wrote on May 11, 2017, 10:51:
I mean I've got more hours in it than I probably have in all the previous ME games combined...

Duuuuude? 589 hours in Mass Effect An-fookin-dromeda? And you have the nerve to call me "retarded"?

And like I said, I'm pretty sure I'm the only one around here who gave it high praise, so it's far from true that everyone here was circlejerking the game and CJ was the lone voice of dissent like he wants to pretend.

You were by far not the only one. I got completely steamrolled by a whole bunch of people when I dared to criticize the super-awesome Mass Effect Andromeda, the best game of all times (two months ago). Some folks accused me of not even playing the game when I said repeatedly that I played the full 10 hour trial.
Others said 10 hours is by far not enough to even begin to grasp the epic awesomeness of this masterpiece that will shape the future landscape of gaming and put classic BioWare back on the map as well as heal cancer.

There was barely anyone else who criticized the game beyond the facial animations when that is in reality the least (because merely cosmetic) issue of the game.

Anyway, it is pretty typical how, once soberness has set in, all the cheerleaders do not want to know anything about their hyped up praise anymore when it turns out a couple months later that the game wasn't as well received as their kool-aid had them believe.
Like, when in doubt, it's always better to praise it and be a member of the kewl kidz club than admit it's garbage, right?

Come on. You know it to be true. It happens all the time except when a game really is a true classic and actually deserves the praise like The Witcher 3 does.

But other than that, there are so many games that were hyped for a couple of weeks and then a few months later people, including the media, come out of the woodwork admitting it wasn't as good and they write postmortems about overrating and overhyping.

Creston here is a good example for that whole phenomenon because at ME:A release he was massively under the influence of the kool-aid... which I find surprising in his case. He is usually quite a critical person with somewhat decent taste even so I was kind of puzzled why he gave EA/Bio such a massive pass for their mediocrity. Must be some old days BioWare fanboyism or something... I didn't get it. But as we can see now, the tune has changed after the kool-aid has left the system.

Agent-Zero wrote on May 11, 2017, 09:10:

yep... so it looks like you went pretty far there..

just so we are clear

It's definitely my favorite Mass Effect but it's still got a good number of problems, particularly in the polish department. Though I don't agree with the sheer amount of venom people throw at it. It's a very fun game, but it's not GOTY nor is it going to be considered the best Mass Effect by the vast majority of ME fans.

I mean I've got more hours in it than I probably have in all the previous ME games combined...

And like I said, I'm pretty sure I'm the only one around here who gave it high praise, so it's far from true that everyone here was circlejerking the game and CJ was the lone voice of dissent like he wants to pretend.

Guess that explains why there was no Season Pass.

They expected it to fail.

CJ_Parker wrote on May 11, 2017, 01:42:
Told ya it's garbage .

But noooo....

BluesNews cheerleading fangirl choir: "MASS EFFECT ANDROMEDA IS GOTY AWESOME SAUCE".

Eight weeks later...


"Mass Effect Series on Hold"

Me: Strrrrrrrrrriiiiiiiiiiikkkkkeeee!

Score CJ_Parker 1 vs. BluesNews AAA cheerleading fangirl brigade 0

Well, when you have negative opinions about pretty much everything, your chances of being right about a game not doing well are pretty high.

I don't think they need to say the series has been put on hold... so other developers that might work on it are busy, doesn't mean they can't start something up and get the ground work laid out.

Overall I'll finish the game, its ok but doesn't give me that hey its ME must play every day type of engaged feel. The characters are not great, the facial animations are a joke compared to the original series thats how old? Bug wise thankfully I've only had one... and just came across it the other night where I fell through the terrain.

The combat has been good, selection of equipment has been nice. Combination of skills I'd say are pretty standard to the ME series, though the loadout and how to switch between them is a joke. Graphics are decent, but there is a lot of issues of popin textures at least on the console (PS4 Pro) and even performance at times can be a little funky at least with the initial loading of the zone.

Least from how far I am in the game currently, I can say yes I'd be happy if they continue the series I just hope they can learn from these issues and take some hints from the old trilogy that made it so good.

I found Mass Effect: Andromeda was a maddening combination of bugs, glitches and jank. This is the patched version by the way, not some pirated copy. The game has huge issues with micro stutter in various locations (Eos and the Nexus especially) and no its not my machine, its a widely reported optimization issue acknowledged by Bioware. There is no excuse for releasing something so poorly optimized on ALL platforms, even the consoles got fucked on this. The scripting and dialogue are held together with scotch tape, sometimes people just turn away from you while speaking and other times characters just end a conversation abruptly. People warp in and out of objects, slide around the scene and etc.

I know writing is inherently subjective but I thought it was a very noticeable step down from previous games, particularly the characterization. I felt no real stakes in the story and couldn't take it very seriously. There were a few isolated sidequests I enjoyed (Movie Night is awesome) but that was about it. This was just a really lackluster experience all around.

Redmask wrote on May 11, 2017, 06:40:

Jerykk wrote on May 11, 2017, 04:28:
Would be nice to see actual sales figures for ME:A compared to the previous games.

ME:A had the same issues as DA:I. Too much focus on scale, not enough on quality. Bioware is really bad at open-world design and ME:A would have been better off if they made it a 40 hour game instead of a 100+ hour game. It would have been far more polished and free from the burden of half-assed filler.

There's no point in doing an open world game without environmental storytelling unless the sandbox itself is compelling. DA:I even did this better than ME:A. Just driving around aimlessly from outpost to outpost is not a good loop for the player. The problem with these fucking huge studio efforts is that they focus too much on 'stuff' to do and not enough on whether that stuff is actually enjoyable. ME:A was like playing a Ubisoft game at times and that's not a compliment.

This game ended up being a glitchy, boring mess when it could've been much tighter and more enjoyable. It doesn't make for sexy game trailers where you boast about huge massive your open world shit is but at least people will like it.

thats because it was driven entirely by clueless executive decisions and filling up bullshit marketing quotas... not to say the actual developers had any better ideas - because if they did, they would have proposed them and fought for them and you would see at least a little bit of that

this was clearly made by devs trying to please their bosses, and of course since the bosses are always wrong, they only ended up fucking themselves over and delivering a mediocre-to-shit game

NKD wrote on May 11, 2017, 03:02:

Kxmode wrote on May 11, 2017, 02:07:

CJ_Parker wrote on May 11, 2017, 01:42:
Score CJ_Parker 1 vs. BluesNews AAA cheerleading fangirl brigade 0

Not sure if you're boasting, seeking validation, or both.

Neither, he's just retarded.

Not a single person here claimed Andromeda was anywhere near GOTY. I think the highest praise I've seen of it is from myself, and I'll only go so far as to say the combat is fun, the multiplayer is fun, and I'd like them to finish the story.

hmmm seems like you were one of the guys saying "its my favorite Mass Effect game ever" werent you?? because i know there were a few... lets see...

NKD wrote on Mar 27, 2017, 11:03:
So I'm over 60 hours into my ME:A playthrough now... and I'm still planning on diving right into a NG+ after this one.

After more time with the game, I can say this is my favorite Mass Effect game. Don't get me wrong, it definitely has weak points compared to the previous games, but all the hate it is getting is VASTLY out of proportion given how good the game actually is.

yep... so it looks like you went pretty far there..

just so we are clear