What are you Playing Now? - Video games are bad for you? That's what they said about rock-n-roll

[MrBrown]

2 minutes ago, Serrano said:

I haven't played Andromeda but it's such a shame that the series fizzled out like that. The premise sounded so good. Is there anything you like about the game so far? Even though you're just getting started how is the story?

Well, ok, some analysis.

I like the basic setup of the story, and how it's different from the main series. But I have lots of problems with the story, mainly that the PC is given a hugely important title with almost religious reverence, out of pure nepotism from no actual results. And there's no reason the title or role should even exist, or given to just one person. And next to no one even comments on the ridiculousness of it.

The other maim bugbear I have is that they took a 600 year trip to another galaxy, and no one apparently considered anything might go wrong, and apparently everyone expected it to be paradise on arrival. This kind of plot might suit a wackier setting with inefficient government like Outer Worlds, but doesn't really fit ME.

There's a lack of suspense because the enemies apparently have a big space fleet, but prefer to have small squad shootouts on planets.

None of the characters seem that interesting. Dunno how the plot develops, maybe it'll get better.

As for gameplay, it's a weird mixup of ME1 and ME2/3, with wide open areas but still cover-based shooting. It kinda works ok, and is not that bad really. But most of the gameplay time is taken by planetary or area exploration, which just mounts to go to place X, press button, listen to narrative. Which would be kinda ok if all the places weren't so huge or if the narrative was interesting, so it ends up just being boring.

Also, the game feels a bit unpolished. Lots of weird stuff, like stuff floating in the air, monsters spawning at your feet, the save corruptions I mentioned, which all just smells like unpolished content.

I didn't follow ME:A when it was released, but I assume it was the lack of polish and uninteresting characters that killed the interest in it.

[Bartimaeus]

From what I recall, the protagonist in particular was lambasted for coming across as both whiny and ineffectual but also borderline sociopathic in presentation, and a lot of people hating their main character is something that shouldn't - cannot - happen. Also, the usual contingent of "she's uggo" gamers for people wanting to play the default female Ryder, but I personally thought many of the human faces in the Mass Effect games, especially in 2 and 3, looked like science experiments that had gone wrong already (probably because of BioWare going way farther to model and map real life people's faces onto characters' to, uh, varying degrees of success), so you know, it is what it is. I'd be pretty far down on the list of people trying to argue for all conventionally attractive characters in movies, shows, or video games, but I do prefer it when my brain doesn't keep screaming at me that a supposedly human character that looks like an alien wearing someone else's skin must be destroyed.

Edited 6 hours ago by Bartimaeus

[Zoraptor]

2 hours ago, MrBrown said:

The other maim bugbear I have is that they took a 600 year trip to another galaxy, and no one apparently considered anything might go wrong, and apparently everyone expected it to be paradise on arrival. This kind of plot might suit a wackier setting with inefficient government like Outer Worlds, but doesn't really fit ME.

That is kind of what happened historically here on earth though. Lots of voyages planned in completely misplaced confidence on the assumption nothing (substantive) would go wrong and in the expectation that everything will just work itself out once you were going. Let's not forget the greatest voyage of discovery here was Kupe Leif Erikson Chris Columbus confidently looking for a new route to India.

Anything other than wide eyed optimism tends to mean you don't go at all.

Edited 16 hours ago by Zoraptor