official Mass Effect: Andromeda

[DrunknMunky Veteran]

 

Quote

You are on a mission to find a new home for humanity. Explore dangerous worlds, keep your crew alive, and unravel the mysteries of Andromeda. The journey begins now. How far will you go?

Available in North America March 21 and worldwide March 23 on PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 4 Pro, and Xbox One

 

[xendrome]

I thought there was going to be a 10 Hour single player demo today?

[SidVicious]

Hated the song but the trailer is awesome.

[xendrome]

25 minutes ago, SidVicious said:

Hated the song but the trailer is awesome.

Yeah it's one of those crappy manufactured songs that the artist knows will get used in Movies/TV/Games, etc.

[trag3dy]

Should this be turned into an official thread? I don't think there is one yet.

 

 

Looks like the pc has superior shadow and lighting but beyond that all 3 versions are fairly similar. The lighting is especially noticeable in the first video with the close up screen shot of the alien with the building in the background. Pay attention to the lights and depth of field.

Edited March 17, 2017 by trag3dy

[DrunknMunky Veteran]

Review scores:

 

Press Start – 9

Gaming Nexus – 8.8

Forbes – 8.5

PlayStation Universe – 8

The Sixth Axis – 8

PCGamer – 80/100

PCGamesN – 8

IGN – 7.7

Polygon – 7.5

Trusted Reviews – 70/100

RPG Site – 7

Hardcore Gamer – 70/100

GamesRadar – 3.5/5

Destructoid – 6.5

PlayStation Lifestyle – 65/100

Gamespot – 6

Metro – 6

USGamer – 3/5

Digital Trends – 5

Eurogamer – “probably BioWare’s worst RPG yet”

Kotaku – “a game to get lost in”

Shack News – in progress (but uses the phrase “ruff Ryder” in the URL)

Rock, Paper, Shotgun – (no single quote was representative of this savage take down)

 

https://www.vg247.com/2017/03/21/mass-effect-andromeda-reviews-all-the-scores/

 

-----

BioWare mulls Mass Effect Andromeda animation, character creator improvements

Day-one update patch detailed.

[Emn1ty]

I still don't get why people are so annoyed with the animations. Bioware games (and to that extent, Mass Effect games) always had pretty annoying if not less than mediocre animation.

[+Asmodai MVC]

I'm treating this as the general thread for Mass Effect: Andromeda despite the title being Launch Trailer if that's incorrect please move to the correct thread but I didn't see one.

 

So I just started playing last night and I only spent about 30 minutes on it so I'm still VERY early in the game.

Some backstory though, I didn't play ANY of the prior Mass Effect games.  I've heard good things about the series though it just never made it to the top of my games list.  I did pick up the PS3 pack that came with all 3 games so I do OWN them but I've not even put them in the console yet.  So I really don't know what to expect from as Mass Effect game.

 

I have played A LOT of Bioware games though from Shattered Steel and Bladur's Gate I & II on PC up to Dragon Age: Inquisition most recently on console.  The only game I didn't like that comes to mind was Dragon Age II, though Inquision was a solid game IMHO so they seemed to largely correct the issues.

 

So back to Mass Effect Andromeda... so far (again VERY early) it doesn't seem like much of an RPG to me at all.  I was expecting "Dragon Age: Inquisition in space" which I've heard it referred to as but I'm not getting that at all.  From the get go the faces in the character generation looked horrible to me and a giant step back from Inquisition.  Once I started playing it seems MUCH more twitch based like an FPS than an RPG (and maybe that's just how Mass Effect always is, again this is my first Mass Effect game).  In fact I'd stay Division and Ghost Recon: Wildlands were less twitch based (cover and stealth seem to work better i these) than Mass Effect Andromeda and I don't think they even try to pass themselves off as RPGs.  I don't feel 30 minutes of gameplay is enough to pass final judgement on it but so far I'm disappointed in what I've seen.  I hope it opens up and gets a lot better.

 

 

 

 

[trag3dy]

 

6 hours ago, Asmodai said:

I'm treating this as the general thread for Mass Effect: Andromeda despite the title being Launch Trailer if that's incorrect please move to the correct thread but I didn't see one.

 

So I just started playing last night and I only spent about 30 minutes on it so I'm still VERY early in the game.

Some backstory though, I didn't play ANY of the prior Mass Effect games.  I've heard good things about the series though it just never made it to the top of my games list.  I did pick up the PS3 pack that came with all 3 games so I do OWN them but I've not even put them in the console yet.  So I really don't know what to expect from as Mass Effect game.

 

I have played A LOT of Bioware games though from Shattered Steel and Bladur's Gate I & II on PC up to Dragon Age: Inquisition most recently on console.  The only game I didn't like that comes to mind was Dragon Age II, though Inquision was a solid game IMHO so they seemed to largely correct the issues.

 

So back to Mass Effect Andromeda... so far (again VERY early) it doesn't seem like much of an RPG to me at all.  I was expecting "Dragon Age: Inquisition in space" which I've heard it referred to as but I'm not getting that at all.  From the get go the faces in the character generation looked horrible to me and a giant step back from Inquisition.  Once I started playing it seems MUCH more twitch based like an FPS than an RPG (and maybe that's just how Mass Effect always is, again this is my first Mass Effect game).  In fact I'd stay Division and Ghost Recon: Wildlands were less twitch based (cover and stealth seem to work better i these) than Mass Effect Andromeda and I don't think they even try to pass themselves off as RPGs.  I don't feel 30 minutes of gameplay is enough to pass final judgement on it but so far I'm disappointed in what I've seen.  I hope it opens up and gets a lot better.

 

 

 

 

The RPG elements aren't really apparent until you get out into the open world of Eos and start collecting different types of armor and weapons and can customize your skills. Even then they're kind of shallow. Andromeda is closer to an action game with rpg elements than it is a real rpg game.

[+Asmodai MVC]

41 minutes ago, trag3dy said:

The RPG elements aren't really apparent until you get out into the open world of Eos and start collecting different types of armor and weapons and can customize your skills. Even then they're kind of shallow. Andromeda is closer to an action game with rpg elements than it is a real rpg game.

You collect different types of armor and weapon in Division but I don't typically hear it hyped as an RPG.  If you've played Mass Effect games before would you say this one had more, less, or about the same amount of RPG elements than the original trilogy?  Thus far I don't find it to be Dragon Age: Inquisition in space.  In fact if I HAD to compare it with a Dragon Age at all I'd say it was closer to II (which I hated) but again, I haven't gotten to Eos or whatever yet so maybe my feelings will change when it opens up.  I can so for sure though that the characters in Dragon Age Inquisition looked much better than the ones here (IMHO) and I'm not sure why that would be coming from the same company and I believe using the same engine.  I feel like there's a reason they like to show the characters with their helmets on a lot... because their heads look awful.

[trag3dy]

2 hours ago, Asmodai said:

You collect different types of armor and weapon in Division but I don't typically hear it hyped as an RPG.  If you've played Mass Effect games before would you say this one had more, less, or about the same amount of RPG elements than the original trilogy?  Thus far I don't find it to be Dragon Age: Inquisition in space.  In fact if I HAD to compare it with a Dragon Age at all I'd say it was closer to II (which I hated) but again, I haven't gotten to Eos or whatever yet so maybe my feelings will change when it opens up.  I can so for sure though that the characters in Dragon Age Inquisition looked much better than the ones here (IMHO) and I'm not sure why that would be coming from the same company and I believe using the same engine.  I feel like there's a reason they like to show the characters with their helmets on a lot... because their heads look awful.

In some ways they're all the same but others they're all different. All I can tell you is that after you get control of the Tempest the game really opens up quite a lot.

 

My save file says I have 40 hours into the game and I'm only 36% through with it. Just to give you an idea of how big the game is. Playing on the second highest difficulty.

[Emn1ty]

1 hour ago, trag3dy said:

My save file says I have 40 hours into the game and I'm only 36% through with it. Just to give you an idea of how big the game is. Playing on the second highest difficulty.

I was surprised when I noticed I'd already dumped 20 hours into it the first week, haha. This game does suck you in pretty well.

[trag3dy]

18 minutes ago, Emn1ty said:

I was surprised when I noticed I'd already dumped 20 hours into it the first week, haha. This game does suck you in pretty well.

Yeah, no denying it's a good game despite the criticism of the animations which are definitely bad. Though Bioware games have always had bad animations (specifically the DA and ME games) so it's not exactly a new criticism.

 

Anyways... what is everyone's favorite crew set up for banter while you're out exploring? So far mine is Drak and Peebee. They have some great conversations.

[techbeck]

Gave is pretty choppy at times on the X1.  Also, sometimes load screens hang and I have to force quit and reload.  Hope they release a patch soon to address some of the issues.

[Emn1ty]

2 minutes ago, techbeck said:

Gave is pretty choppy at times on the X1.  Also, sometimes load screens hang and I have to force quit and reload.  Hope they release a patch soon to address some of the issues.

I experienced this on the X1 with EA Access. It's the reason I went PC with it. But now I am getting the loading bug on PC and am having to restart as well. Hope the fix is soon, cause I don't want to lose interest.

[trag3dy]

Haven't had any issues with loading the game on pc but I have gotten a direct x error multiple times saying I was short on virtual memory. At one point in time the game was taking up 13gb of normal memory too, which I found interesting.

[Emn1ty]

For anyone having issues with loading screens hanging while resuming a game, instead just go to your main save files and load them directly. Autosaves are having issues and it supposedly results in them being deleted.

 

@trag3dy - I've not had any directx issues... however I have 32GB of memory and am running a GTX1070 so I doubt I'd hit it yet...

[George P Global Moderator]

I was thinking about getting this game sooner rather than later but I changed my mind, for the time being, I have other things I need to get through first, but I'll snag it once there's time and a good sale on it, probably for PC, though I have the original trilogy on the xbox.

[+John. Subscriber¹]

I'm currently playing it, just got to the slums. Goodness knows how many hours I've put into it so far, but once you get over the animations (particularly Addison ) It's a really solid and enjoyable game. 

 

I'll probably never complete all the quests but the story line is good and the gameplay is an improvement from previous ME games. 

[Brys]

28 minutes ago, John. said:

I'm currently playing it, just got to the slums. Goodness knows how many hours I've put into it so far, but once you get over the animations (particularly Addison ) It's a really solid and enjoyable game. 

 

I'll probably never complete all the quests but the story line is good and the gameplay is an improvement from previous ME games. 

Yeah the animations are weird... But the game is ok. I haven't been really hooked by the story yet, maybe that's because I'm just beginning ? Nothing yet really made me really care about the bad guys.

I keep comparing it in my head with the last bioware game I played, dragonage inquisition, that kinda started with a bigger bang. I remember thinking I was at the end of the game and thought I would move on to the final fight with the big bad guy when I realised I'd just finished the tutorial. I'm still hoping mass effect will pull a trick like that

[+Asmodai MVC]

On 3/30/2017 at 9:07 PM, trag3dy said:

In some ways they're all the same but others they're all different. All I can tell you is that after you get control of the Tempest the game really opens up quite a lot.

 

My save file says I have 40 hours into the game and I'm only 36% through with it. Just to give you an idea of how big the game is. Playing on the second highest difficulty.

Ok I put some more time into it.  I'm still not very far but I've at least got off the Nexus and got the rover and stuff.  I'm still on the first planet (Eos?) so I'd say I'm still in the "Intro" part of the game as they're still introducing new things.  I found running missions on the Station and then doing the stuff on the planet far more satisfying than the first half hour or so which was too fight heavy and linear for me.  I still don't feel like it's opened up a lot because despite the fact I have a rover the planet is radioactive so all I can do is run from one shielded zone to the next.  I drive by things that look intersting and I'm not sure if you're supposed to stop and investigate but I don't right now for fear I'll get bogged down and my armors radiation shielding will deplete before I can get back to the rover.  So I just run linearly from one story objective to the next.  I think (hope?) this initial set of missions is going to fix the radiation situation so I'll be free to go back and investigate the things I'm just fying by right now. (don't tell me if I'm right or wrong though).

 

So all in all I went from disliking the first half hour of fight heavy linearity to liking the next couple hours of running little errand missions with occasional fights.  I can't say I find the story compelling yet but I realize I'm still VERY early and I can't say it seems particulary open but it at least looks like that's going to change "soon" and is just a function of them easing you into the game instead of just throwing you into an open world and saying "have at it".  I'm cool with that so overall it seems to have a lot more potential than I thought before.  I still think the graphics are bad though, not just the animation that everyone complains about but peoples faces and to a lesser extent character models in general look subpar to me.  When they have helmets on it's not as bad but only I seem to wear a helmet.  I'm not sure what's worth crafting/researching and haven't spend any time mining or anything yet either but again, I'm still very early in the game.  I only play for an hour or two a night so it's going to be a while.  At this point though it's good enough to keep me from moving on to another game in my backlog but I can't say it's blown me away or anything.

[Luc2k]

"Despite the Denuvo anti-tamper tech, Mass Effect: Andromeda has been cracked in 10 days"

 

That didn't take long.

[DrunknMunky Veteran]

At least the Denuvo license includes an agreement which refunds publishers if the DRM is broken. Although it's interesting that much older games are still un-cracked, even very popular titles.

[Luc2k]

1 minute ago, Andrew said:

At least the Denuvo license includes an agreement which refunds publishers if the DRM is broken. Although it's interesting that much older games are still un-cracked, even very popular titles.

Is there? I thought they denied that. As for what is cracked or not, I guess it depends on that group since they're the only ones doing it. At any rate, the cat and mouse game will get hot again once Sniper: Ghost Warrior 3 is released as it apparently uses a new version of Denuvo.

[DrunknMunky Veteran]

Just now, Luc2k said:

Is there? I thought they denied that. As for what is cracked or not, I guess it depends on that group since they're the only ones doing it. At any rate, the cat and mouse game will get hot again once Sniper: Ghost Warrior 3 is released as it apparently uses a new version of Denuvo.

That's what I read back when games which launched with Denuvo removed it after the DRM was cracked. It's not true? If not, then I expect we'll see a large drop in games utilizing it going forward. It's clearly not as effective as it was a few years ago and the pirates have caught up.