GhostofAnakin

It was like that in the original trilogy too, I believe. But they just seemed to have a lot more to say in those games.

The party/squad members don't seem to have much new to say after the initial time you talk to them. Apparently I shouldn't have exhausted all the available dialogue with them when they first came on board, as now they rarely say anything new.

Yeah, ME3 had some flaws, but it was about what you could have asked for as a final chapter up until the final "end run". Hell, one could argue it was still on its way to a satisfying ending after your confrontation with the Illusive Man. It was after that, and resulting "red, blue green" options, that took the game in a direction that was just inanely stupid, and seemed to crap on everything you did up to that point.

Squad mates suck in combat. They just literally run all over the place getting shot and won't stay put. Good thing I'm playing on low difficulty anyway, otherwise I'd spend the entire time reviving my squad or having to go solo in fights.

Mass Effect: Andromeda. Between the bad character models, bad animations, and generally sterile looking environments (doesn't look alive like some recent games), it feels like I'm playing the beta version of the game, not the final product. Having said that, the actual game play is okay. Combat is the same as always, and the story/quests are about on par with ME3 so far. Not great, but fun enough to keep my interest. But man, are the females ugly.

So I just came across that new species (won't name them to avoid spoilers). How lazy is BioWare? They've got Quarian legs with faces that look like they came out of the movie Avatar. Honest question: how big was the actual budget on this game? The character models look like the type you'd find in games with almost no budget that you find in the bargain bin, not an AAA title.

It's crazy how bad the faces are in this game. It's like BioWare actually made them worse than in their previous games. When manly Cassandra suddenly looks like a supermodel in comparison, you know your facial animators did a poor job.

The "tasks" in ME:A are feeling a lot like the various side quests in Dragon Age Inquisition. There's a lot of them, but they're so mundane it's more tedious than fun. As someone who's kind of a completionist, it sucks for me because I'm compelled to do them even if I don't really want to.

Hmm. Not sure I like that "higher difficulty" thing in MP. I remember playing at higher difficulties in ME3 MP. It was okay as long as you had 3 other players who knew what they were doing and didn't bail as soon as it got tough, but far too often you'd either be stuck with players who sucked or who would quit mid-game and force you to take on hordes of enemies either by yourself or with one other person who didn't quit the lobby.

If you decide to play those strike missions in MP, do you join someone's game or do you have to invite other players to join yours, in order to play through and complete the objectives?

Yes. And I was kicking his ass until the game decided to just freeze on me, forcing me to have to quit and re-start. I was literally about to drop an AoE bomb-type thing on him that would have taken the rest of his HP when the game just froze. Come to think of it, the only two times the game has frozen were during combat.

Just started playing today. I can't believe how bad the facial animations are. The aliens are the only ones that look good. Any human animation looks bad. I don't remember it being this bad in the original ME trilogy, given the technology of the respective timeframe the games were released. They also walk weird. I was watching that Cora chick walk away, and she was all bow-legged with her arms arched in a weird way. And that's not even touching on the movement of the lips/mouth not even being close to syncing with the dialogue being spoken. How does BioWare do it? How do the manage to make such ugly characters? You look at all these other games recently released, and when they try to portray an "attractive character", the character model looks attractive. BioWare seems like it's being a caricature of itself by making every character -- especially female -- look like an ugly parody of what they're supposed to be.

Combat is tedious. It's especially tedious because it seems like I waste half of my turns moving into position because the enemy is always "too far away", then have to wait for a half dozen slow moving enemies to just walk around for a few seconds before finally attacking.

I'm still trying to figure out what it is I'm supposed to be doing. I mean, I understand what the quest logs are telling me I should be doing, but I'm not sure *why*. Am I supposed to be confused about my motivations the entire game?

You can safely sell any Oddities that don't have a "use" option, and even those with one in case they stick around after being used. There's also a truckload of healing items that restore your pools, uhm, make use of them. Actually that's probably the biggest thing to keep in mind - don't hoard consumables. Use them. I hoarded them as I always do in RPGs and it was mostly for naught. There really never comes that one time where being at the cypher limit with everyone pays off. I've found like literally 2 items so far that restore my pools. And they're both "might" ones, which is the one pool that is still full (most dialogue checks seem to use the .. umm ... brain cramp ... purple one?)

Still playing Tides of Numero Uno. I'm getting more into it the further I go. Only annoyance is with these "ability" things. Seems I keep missing out on dialogue choices because I can't replenish previously used up abilities. I don't have the cash to keep staying in hotels just to replenish them every time. I also bought ME: Andromeda. Just installed the updates, but haven't gotten around to playing yet. The reviews I've seen don't seem to paint a pretty picture.

Finally got around to playing it. Boy, is there a lot of reading in this game. It hasn't drawn me in yet like PST did, or even BG and the like. I think PoE got me hooked right at the start more. We'll see how it goes as I play more.

Is it a stand-alone game, or is it an expansion/DLC for the main Ghost Recon game released not too long ago?

I'm at the point in Horizon Zero Dawn which I dislike in pretty much every single game I've played: pretty much on the final "end mission" with nothing more to do other than make my way toward the final confrontation. I can't recall a single game I actually enjoyed at this point in the story. Even my favorite games turn into "Ugh ... just gotta get this over with" when I reach here. I think it's because when I play a story game, it's for the story/exploration/learning about the world and its people. So when I reach the final mission, I've pretty much experienced everything there is to experience and now it's just the tedium of fighting the final boss.

More Horizon: Zero Dawn. I've got 4 of the 5 power cells needed to access that special armor in that bunker. Of course, the armor will do me very little good at this point since I'm pretty much at the end of the story and have no side missions left. So I'll be the most powerful person on the map with nothing to do.

I agree, I don't understand the complaints with the mako since that damn hover thingie was actually 10x more painful to navigate. Something being worse than something that sucks doesn't mean the original thing didn't suck.

And the inventory and the weapon loot that made you switch your weapons every 10 minutes. I thought both were kind of tedious, but I didn't find them painful or boring. The exploration, however, was both, IMO.

Mass Effect 1 did a lot of things right. The story, the characters, the pacing, etc. The only painful part of ME1 is the boring MAKO exploration on empty worlds. It's almost like BioWare then decided to remove the stuff they did right, and do more of the stuff they did wrong, by ME3. I hope ME:A isn't continuing that trend.

Dropping one "L" and making the first letter a strong 'A' makes all the difference in the world.

I think I'm nearing the end of Horizon Zero Dawn's main quest line. At least I'm assuming so, given that I've unlocked all the various settlements and I'm not getting any new quests. Only one I've got available is the current branch of the main quest.