Mass Effect Andromeda (PS4)

I never really have posted a review on anything, although I feel it is necessary as to the hate this game is getting. I'll start this off by saying yes, this is by no means a perfect game and it has its problems. Although if you are are buying this expecting it to be an experience as the trilogy before it had, you're not going to get that. This is a brand new game, brand new galaxy, with brand new characters. You aren't going to have that connection with Ryder(Your character) from the get go. This WILL however be built overtime along will your team and you will enjoy this new experience in many ways. Also the facial animations... A big reason many people are slating this game and I don't blame them. The game does indeed have many moments like these, what doesn't get said though is how bioware are already trying to fix this with their being an update a day after release already. I for one though didn't even feel that bothered by the animations, in my opinion people blew it out of proportion completely and having played the trilogy was used to a few moments like this here and there. You will also be missing out on an an unbelievable experience. The sheer beauty within the many planets on this game is unprecedented. I'd find myself at times just sitting admiring how great these worlds looked. And also the number of worlds is way beyond what I expected and adds to a load of hours gameplay. Overall the gameplay, story and combat all provide a solid experience, one in which you'll love. Mainly what I'm trying to say here is the hate this game is getting for people having hypes themselves far to much and expecting to jump straight in and have a rollarcoaster of emotions and love for Ryder as they did with Shepard is a joke. If you appreciate Andromada for what it is, you will have an amazing experience. And for those not even giving it a chance for certain petty reasons you're missing out.

I never played the previous Mass Effect games so I can only base my opinion on this one alone, and I can honestly say it's amazing. I agree to a certain extent with some people regarding the facial animations but on the flip side, people need to seriously get a grip and stop clutching at straws for things to complain about. For anyone who fell into the trap like me and bought No Mans Sky, you'll know how it feels to be promised an intergalactic mind blowing adventure for it to turn it to be utter rubbish (or at least not as good as you expected it to be). This won't disappoint you in that way. Graphics are amazing and you've got the ability to visit loads of different planets which all have their own unique stories and missions to complete. It's not a matter of landing, running around for a bit and then getting back in your ship and going somewhere else. Each planet actually has a purpose and they all look fantastic with their own atmospheres and their own conditions. Combat is pretty straight forward and easy to adapt to as it's in 3rd person. The story mode is a bit of a slow burner at the beginning which actually works in your advantage, giving you the chance to explore and get used to certain elements within the game such as the customisation section and the ability to upgrade your character. I've only scratched the surface at the moment after putting around 6 hours in already and I'm absolutely loving it. Don't fall for some of the reviews on here which are only based on some animations. The game has bugs, no doubt, but to be fair I can't remember a single game other than Zero Dawn, which wasn't buggy. They'll be ironed out with updates which are probably already on their way. This is 100% worth the buy.

I find it really tough to give this game a score. Ignoring what has been well publicised about some of the animations and the voice acting, I found the main basis of the game to be very good. If it were just a case of reviewing the main story, it likely would have achieved at least another star with the potential of reaching the lofty five once some further fixes had been released. Where I feel this game has suffered, is unfortunately from the success of Dragons Age: Inquisition. Consumers want to have these huge, open world, sandbox titles and the manufacturers are showing they are meeting this demand by releasing what I can only describe as shallow filler side quests. The sheer amount of side quests just takes away from the essence of the game itself, for me. Rather than getting engrossed in a deep, story driven adventure like the earlier trilogy, I found that I was back to the Dragons Age methodology of running round to get all the available quests and then pulling up the map to find the nearest quest marker. Repeating this until each planet had been cleared. No real rhyme or reason, no real knowledge what I was doing or why. Whilst I understand a lot of these can be skipped, I still find myself getting dragged in to the desire for the more successful of endings which tends to require the 100% viability across the planets. This can only be achieved through completing a number of these side quests. The main quest itself is also dependent on raising viability to a certain level on a couple of planets so progress is stunted again. The main story I really enjoyed. I liked most the characters and the progressions of their stories as you get to know them more. This was what I loved about Mass Effect in the first place. Your own character progression I found to be pretty good and an improvement on Mass Effect 2/3 where you have a lot of choice which direction you want to go. Unfortunately, you do soon become over powered if you invest all your skill points and combat becomes a bit of a breeze. Another poor side effect of completing all those side quests is all that xp! I'd advise either not spending all those skill points or upping the difficulty level if you like more of a challenge. The graphics were ok for me. The worlds themselves could look breathtaking in places and you could spend a few moments looking around, drinking it all in but the draw distances are awful so you quite often looked at a blank canvas until it caught up. This was also true when you had arrived in places and things would pop into existence right next to you. Mass Effect isn't alone in that problem but I expect more from a PS4 title. The bugs others have reported are by no means game breakers for me. I had a couple resets after getting stuck but no significant loss and I could live with the odd graphic glitch. I wanted to love this game. I certainly got drawn in once the main story was progressing and found it was always a case of "just this next quest". Unfortunately, its not enough to score it any higher as its not that long a story and the negatives bring the score right back down. Its a worrying trend being seen over the years that games are less about meaningful content and more about quantity over quality.

Playtime: 12+ Hours The criticsm levelled at Andromeda’s animation has been largely exaggerated and is mostly unwarranted. It’s easy to find fault, cut specific scenes into a youtube, and say it is representative of the whole game, but this is far from true. Are the animations perfect throughout the game? No, but you’ll hardly notice the flaws unless you’re actually looking for something to find fault with. The Mass Effect games have always had two separate types of gameplay; there is the combat missions, where you battle various enemies who have shields/armour/biotic powers/tech powers, and the roleplay sections, where you wander around the hub or planet (The Citadel or Nexus) interacting with people and pursuing various tasks and questlines. Andromeda is no different and, like ME2 and ME3, some of those minor questlines task you with exploring the wider galaxy to locate items or people for the folk back on the Nexus. Personally, this is more fitting in Andromeda than it was in any of the previous ME titles. You are the Pathfinder, the main explorer of the Andromeda Iniative; they have limited resources, and it’s your job to locate these resources and bolster the chances of survival for the initiative. While some are mundane fetch quests, they do reinforce Ryder’s responsibility. Characters are interesting and diverse; There are 6 or so active crew members you can recruit (combat members) and half a dozen other crew members who are the support staff of your ship. The combat members consist of your usual assortment of aliens; A Turian, Asari, a soldier human, a biotic human, a Krogan, and one of a new species, the Angara. Each has an interesting back-story and some quirks, and personally I’ve made sure Ryder has talked to them all to learn about them. If you find this irksome, then you’re under no obligation to talk to people (You can skip most dialogue if you want to] but to me, learning about the characters and their perspectives is part of what makes a Mass Effect game. Combat is on par with ME2 and ME3 though at this stage I’ve yet to encounter anything particularly challenging apart from some giant beasts (Fiends) but I expect I will as the game progresses. Andromeda introduces more flexibility than ME3; In ME3 you chose a “class” (Vanguard/engineer/adept/soldier) and that determined your skill-set. In Andromeda, you can choose from any skills (combat/biotic/tech) and switch between “classes” whenever you wish. Each class provides some passive bonuses, and a unique skill or effect. This allows you to adjust to combat encounters on the fly, adapting your skill-set and tactics to counter the enemy. I’m barely on the third world of Mass Effect, and feel like there is a vast amount more to explore and uncover, and this is what a space RPG game should feel like. Overall, Andromeda takes Mass Effect in an exciting new direction and is highly recommended to anyone who enjoyed previous Mass Effect games. It’s not perfect but it’s really not that far off. Edit: The game shifts from good to remarkable shortly after you reach Kaldara. Kaldara introduces some darker elements into the story, has some really entertaining side quests (with a nice nod to ME2 and the Lazarus Project) and improves the game substantially. If I could give more than 5 stars I would do so.

As an avid Mass Effect fan I was disappointed with this game. Firstly, no game should be released with this amount of bugs. I'm on the 1.06 patch and it's still not that stable. This is particularly true in multiplayer where drops in the game and crashes to blue screen mean that I lose boosters and consumables that I paid actual money for. Very poor. The main story line is ok, but unremarkable - it apes other sci-fi offerings along the lines of something between the reapers and the borg. Facial animations are so bad (even with the patch) I could weep. The dialogue is lacklustre and pointless for pretty much every NPC you encounter. I realise that the writers wanted to do world building where you go around and find out about the Angaran culture - but it's so boring. Why should I care what a stationary NPC with 4 lines has to say? The squad members were ok, but the writing was still flat. Voice acting is decent throughout, they just have nothing interesting to say. Combat is pretty good - an evolution of ME3 which I enjoyed. The range of powers, weapons and play styles is varied. Unfortunately, you become over-powered very quickly as you can only take 3 powers mapped to the controller. If you choose two quickly recharging powers (one to prime combo detonations and the other to trigger them) fights became a bit formulaic. You can however respec and go for a whole different build, which improved the experience. You don't get stuck (as in Dragon Age Inquisition) bashing the same key over and again to spam the enemy with powers. Multiplayer has a decent difficulty curve from Bronze, Silver and Gold. It needs more maps however. The Apex missions where you click what you want a squad of imaginary mercenaries to do for you are a waste of your time, but they are needed to get the materials and research data for your single player missions. There is nothing fun about farming materials in this way, but cynically it means you have to keep logging back in or using their buggy mobile app. Overall it is a shame. The game isn't awful or unplayable, but it's just not that fun. I miss the Witcher 3 - I think I'll play through that again instead.

Big fan of the last trio of ME games, this has a bit of slow start but soon opens in terms of narrative, main changes from previous games are: 1-You can choose any power from tech, soldier and biotic, in the last ME games, you choose a specialist role and leveled up/learnt new skills based in the speciality. In ME Andromeda you spend skill points in any speciality class for Ryder, so you can have skills from any tree which makes your character a bit more versatile, instead as your spend points in each class you develop 'profiles' what boost different skills, so if you invest mostly into the solder tree, you will keep leveling up their skills themselves (boosting their effectiveness as in the previous games) and the profile will keep leveling up also the more points you invest in the soldier skills and the combat spec boost grow greater the more the profile levels up, there is a profile for each skill tree and there are hybrid profiles for a mix of skills from each tree such as the 'vanguard' profile which grows as you level up soldier and biotic skills. 2-you can only map 3 skills at a time to Ryder, the combat is faster so you no longer have the power wheel like in the last ME games, you change powers before missions and at forward stations which are dotted around the map. 3-You companions are now fully AI in that you can no longer command them to use specific skills which I feel is a steo backwards from the last games. 4-you can't change you companions weapons or armour. 5 - you CAN change Ryders weapons and armour. 7- There is a new crafting element for weapons and armour, so as your explore new worlds you can research weapons and armour and better versions of these, their are tons of weapons and armours to research and develop, although you can buy them and find them easily enough, the advantage of crafting your own is that you can odd permanent behavior augments to the weapons and armour such as boosting the amount of armour damage a weapons does or making it shoot different projectiles (such as bolas, electricity/energy beams, grenades) or in the case of armours you can add effects such as each time you boost/dodge you can disperse shield draining energy which effects enemies surrounding you. There are dozens of combos you can add to each weapon and armour pieces (helmet, chest, arms and leg). 8 in addition to augmenting weapons you can also odd mods to each weapon (like in ME3) which do things such as boost projectile damage, melee damage, magazine size, stability etc, so if you augment a weapon with permanent augments and then odd detachable weapon mods your own crafted guns will be much better than just using weapons that you find or buy. 9 You have a land vehicle called the 'Nomad (' like the Mako from ME1) to get around each world as the maps are massive, as your drive around you will be able to obtain resources from mining bots you can deploy in the land to mine resources (which you also find when exploring). 10-enemies drop items, credits, weapons,armours which you can equip on ryder or dismantle for resources used for crafting. 11-You can also research upgrade to the nomad. 12- You end up with all your companions quite quickly in the game so you're not having to wait as long to get new team mates. 13 The maps for each world are massive and as your explore you will find buildings, missions, npcs, enemies and other things to investigate, as your drive or walk around you can reach points in each map where a forward station will automatically land which acts as a fast travel point, as well as restocking ammo and letting you change Ryder's Weapons/armour/power/and team mates. 14.You will get a lot of missions from each world, as your complete more more missions and make each world safer, you make the world more 'viable' which gives your points to spend on bonuses such as letting you get regular shipments of credits/resources/ more xp for completing various tasks, (again there is a lot of choice). 15-when you complete all missions on each world, new missions will open up at certain points in the game so that you can travel back to each world. 16 -Loyalty mission make a return and the missions themselves are often split into multiple parts/missions. 17- NO renegade or paragon options, instead a screen prompt will appear during certain cut scenes which you can select (if you want to) which will change the outcome of the scene. 18- Your characters responses are similar to the style used in fallout 4, often what Ryder says is a bit different to what actually comes out of their mouth after choosing the response instead your options are more like the choices from Dragon Age games (also from the same developer) where you have a general mood/response type (a logical/sarcastic/emotional response etc) 19 There is the equivalent of the the citadel, it's called the Nexus your can retrun here frequently a will to progress parts of the stry and pick up new main and side missions. 20- You can customise Ryders armour colours and patterns like in ME3. 21- When in space you scan for resources and launch probes like in ME2. 22- The game is huge, although you can make it to each world quickly (within about 15-20 hours) when you start doing the side missions and unlocking each vault on each planet, the amount of play time stacks up so far I've clocked up about 47 hours and I'm still not near the end. 23- You meet 2 new aliens races- The Angara are mostly friendly and you end up with one called Jaal as a permanent team member early (in addition to your 2 human, 1 Krogan, 1 Asari and 1 Turian team mate, sadly no Salarian squad member fights along side you). 24 Optional multiplayer- These are called APEX mission, you can send strikes teams you recruit in game to do missions automatically for you against different mission parameters which will be completed or failed after a set amount of time. as these teams do missions they will level up and increase their chances of completing higher difficulty missions, as they complete missions they will bring you back intel, weapons and resources to use in game, you boost their equipment by spending mission points (a kind of APEX only currency to improve the squad's load outs or you can recruit more strike teams, which means you can send more teams out to increase your yield of rewards. 25 You can also play the multiplayer missions yourself from on board The Tempest (the new Normandy) 26 Each world has a different environment and hazards that you need to overcome. 27-..and that's all I can think of!

It's not like the other Mass Effect games but it is still Mass Effect and it is thoroughly enjoyable. The graphics are stunning and all the problems that other people have had with it, I have not had. The locations are stunning and the open world concept is a nice introduction to a new idea for Mass Effect. Character customisation is more creative. You can either have the standard Ryder twins or create entirely new twins. Great action sequences and the romance options are plenty. A couple of the romance scenes have been upped a little. But all are great. Nice character designs on the enemies and your allies. Voice acting is good. The only thing that could have been improved is the script for the game. In some areas it lacks, but it brings out the story and character development still. It's an odd crew that you have but hey it is Mass Effect after all. Planet scanning is a lot easier than the 2nd Mass Effect. Each play through is different as always, all conversation options have consequences. You also have a lot of options for your weaponry and I personally have a favourite weapon. (No spoilers don't worry) and you also get to choose different profiles so each combat experience is different with each profile. (Again no spoilers) I've played it over 5 times and I have never got bored of it. The car handles more smoothly than the Mako (Mass Effect 1) and has more options for the car. For example, you can upgrade your car so it handles all environments. The ship that you acquire is obviously not like the Normandy SR-1 but it is a nice ship with an elevator that has more haste than the 1st game and you get to know your way around easy. You also get to research other weapons outside of the Heleus Cluster. The only problem once you have researched your weapon, is you have to reach a certain level to add more research. For example, say you want to research your weapon when YOU the player reaches level 10, you have to keep levelling up until you can research it at level 20 and so on. It didn't deserve all the backlash from critics and fans. I am a big fan of the Mass Effect universe and I can say in my opinion that it is a Mass Effect game but on a slightly different scale. I would recommend to anyone that is a fan of Mass Effect and can forgive that it is slightly different and that is has plenty of action, gun fights and a lot of side-quests. I hope you enjoy the game as much as I did. Thank you for reading this.

With all of the negativity surrounding the game from certain elements that had played early access, I was worried. But, on arrival, the excitement kicked in. Upon loading the game up (impatiently) I went through the character Creston process. The system is a little different than before, but it still produces good results if you enjoy custom character creation. After starting the game, there was a nice introduction scene that set the events within context in the Mass Effect universe. Then the madness of the first mission hit home. The combat has changed since the original games. Skills have become much more dramatic and the difficulty of the combat encounters and the skill progression feels much more akin to the original, but with skills seeming much more dramatic and versatile. By the time I was a couple of hours in, the Mass Effect feel had really kicked in. I was talking to Asari, Turians, Krogan and Salarians, accepting what would appear to be godless missions and making small talk with my wonderful and varied team mates. The setting, The Andromeda galaxy, is a nice way of telling a new story in the universe without discarding anyone's choices from the original games. It doesn't matter what ending you choose, what decisions you made it who s survived, this game could fit in perfectly with your individual Mass Effect experience. The animation issues that people have been talking about are so minor as to be unnoticeable. Even when they do occur, they are nowhere near as bad as certain people have been making out. The bottom line is this, if you enjoyed your time as Commander Shepard and want more experiences in the Mass Effect universe, this game won't disappoint. The sheer amount of content is staggering and I suspect it will keep me entertained for months.