Mass Effect: Andromeda (PC) - as I've been very curious about this, I downloaded the approx. 47GB Trial.
I played a little bit over 2 hours worth of ME:A from this 10 hour trial...and I actually do like it, so far. I probably was smart in waiting to buy this b/c I'm not really having much complaints here w/ the animations here, in its current version + early on in this game. At least early on here, it probably has come a long from what we've seen from version 1.00 vs. now; I can't speak on how the facial animations have been re-tweaked for later on, as I haven't got that far + haven't bought the game yet. Every little thing they did (extra shadows + whatnot; eyeball tracking which is VERY important; etc) has really mattered here, in the early scenes. I've certainly seen much worse animations...in numerous Bethesda games before, TBH.
The game's flat-out gorgeous. The scenery on the planet that I'm on in this opening Prologue just looks wonderful. Character models look great. If there's anything that Frostbite can do, it's produce great-looking graphics.
Combat's by far the best it has ever felt in an ME game. You can still get into cover, of course - but don't expect to sit there very long - as the AI will toss grenade or do whatever it can to get you out of it, at some point. The extra jet-packing really makes combat much more interesting as now you feel like you have to constantly keep moving, can jump, and zip in different directions in the air quickly for a brief moment - than say just constantly sitting behind cover compared to the old ME games. Combat is just much more fun, visceral + interesting this way. I'm loving this, TBH.
My complaints right now are this: story + character stuff. Namely, some of it lacks depth + personality - which, of course, the older ME games are absolutely known for doing extremely well.
It seems to have characters enter + exit too quickly. Granted, I'm only a bit over 2 hours in - but some characters that felt like they should be important are already getting killed off or written-out of the script too quickly. How am I supposed to care about them, if you're just axing them by death or kicking them out of the script too quickly? It seems like sometimes, we're not even given enough info about and spent time w/ a character to really even care about them. It does really feel like this game's story + character stuff was thrown together in the last 18 months or so (that Kotaku mentioned in their article), in that regard.
Other than the absolutely hilarious "my face is tired" line, the dialogue quality of the writing isn't horrible, TBH. It just feels like....they are basically hitting the beats they feel they need to + move the heck on, since they didn't have time to flesh a lot of that stuff out. Unfortunately, this game could really use more dialogue + writing. It doesn't really have the depth or intrigue of the older ME games - in both character + story & whatnot, at least so far.
There's also this weird tone going on in the game - b/c most of the 200,000 people on this ship are waking up 600 years later or so from a cryogenic sleep + you are basically trying to find & set-up a new home. Most characters seem to be ultra-positive about finding a new place. It's weird, as you'd think b/c you basically got evicted from your home planet + went into cryo-sleep on a ship in space, everybody would wake up pretty much upset, pissed-off, depressed, or something that they have to go try + find a new home. At least, for the most part, Ryder is given options to answer in a negative manner (i.e. cynical, depressed, not happy) or positive, when given dialogue options - as since the game seems so positive + hopeful in tone, at least I can bring the game back to its reality. There seems to be very few characters so far who are negative here, except the blunt & often angry-seeming Addison.
Regardless, I certainly played games much worse than this. It's good with its combat + graphics & it certainly has potential with its interesting premise (i.e. discover + set-up new lands & worlds), for sure - but it's just not on that BioWare Edmonton level of greatness w/ the character + story stuff. At least not yet, anyways - I can't speak on if it gets better since...well, I ain't got far along enough + I haven't bought the full game yet. It could be that this game is a slow-burn b/c it's said to be very long, too - and maybe it could develop + accumulate much more stuff later (i.e. story + plot + character), since people have said it does take about 10 hours to get past the initial stuff.
We'll just have to wait + see, I guess...whenever that might actually be...with me actually getting to the point in the game where (or if) it turns around + to actually buying the game.
ed.
