I just played an hour of it and wow its bad. Im hoping SONY can refund my money on the preorder since I did the spend $100 get $15 back by preordering it.
Its just not the same ME I used to love and is super boring, boring characters, story and writing, and bland and graphics/animations are so bad its funny. The gameplay is also bad, doesnt feel fun.
God I really wish Horizon was longer than 44hours :/
That's cause Drew worked on those games, he left ME2 halfway and it showed as half of ME2 was brilliant while the main story seemed like an afterthought. As for ME3 I don't even have to say anything about that game.
What I noticed immediately in the starting area/level is that plants are just static and don't move when you walk through them. After having played games like Uncharted 4, Horizon ZD and Zelda, hell even Force Unleashed had it, it's just something I find unfortunate and wish MEA had this as well. Maybe the engine can't do it?
What I noticed immediately in the starting area/level is that plants are just static and don't move when you walk through them. After having played games like Uncharted 4, Horizon ZD and Zelda, hell even Force Unleashed had it, it's just something I find unfortunate and wish MEA had this as well. Maybe the engine can't do it?
Played about two hours of the trial and really have liked it so far. The game looks really great (on PC), like really great, except for the faces and eyes which, yeah, they look pretty garbage. But I've never been terribly sensitive to that stuff. The rest of the game shines visually.
Gameplay, this early, feels much faster and more fluid then the old games. The soft cover initially was worrisome but after about 10 minutes it feels like the soft cover just allows for you do dash around and move about much faster and easier. I really look forward to digging deeper into the combat.
And I really look forward to learning about the characters and world and general plot. I cannot say anything about it thus far because it is so early. I just look forward to learning more.
Cannot really figure out where all the negativity is coming from (in some places online) after the first two hours. I dig it (and I really liked 1-3).
What I noticed immediately in the starting area/level is that plants are just static and don't move when you walk through them. After having played games like Uncharted 4, Horizon ZD and Zelda, hell even Force Unleashed had it, it's just something I find unfortunate and wish MEA had this as well. Maybe the engine can't do it?
For sure. I don't think a lot of people actually notice it, and I must admit that the lack of reaction/physical interaction between Aloy and water + most of the vegetation is one of the few, but incredibly minor, gripes I have about the game (especially made more obvious when running through the corn stalks in
Meridian
lol). Horizon definitely makes up for it in the graphics department though - which makes stuff like that a whole lot easier to overlook for many people.
ME:A on the other hand... I'm still pretty excited about the game and am willing to give it a chance because I quite like Bioware's formula. I will also be playing it on the PC, so hopefully things will look a whole lot better? If not, there will always be mods lol.
Just played about 1.5 hrs worth.. I'm not seeing where all the negativity comes from? Caveat: I'm a huge ME1-3 fan.
Interesting thing, just tried for expediency Sara just to see what all the facial fuss is about- she looks fine ingame to me. The biotic (name escapes me) on the other hand looks kinda tiny in relation to others around her.
The combat feels fun and fluid, like an extension of ME3, and as others have mentioned recently the auto-cover system becomes natural very quickly. The UI nitpicks - haven't explored much in depth but it doesn't feel bad, just reached level 2 and found things pretty easy to navigate.
I admit I tend to be easy on games early (loved DA:I, but after the slog couldn't finish it, even tried a second time), but so far I'm loving what I'm seeing. Crew quips between Sara and Liam are fun in the first mission, so that will hopefully continue. Anyway, just adding another to the pile of "huh?" to all the bad vibe posts.
PC performance: I have to dig deeper but I hate to waste time on it, however default settings, 1440p with a GTX1070 & 6700k everything is silky smooth, only had one glitch coming out of zoom that felt like slowdown.
First impressions posted in the Origin Access thread :
JCH! said:
So, just got to the Nexus. Some impressions:
- Characters look like ass. Embarrassing, really.
- Writing is hilariously bad.
- Environments look quite nice, and run pretty well on my rig.
- Really like the new dialog wheel with the different 'tones' for replies.
- Combat feels pretty fun and challenging, at least on insanity.
- Movement is a bit janky but whizzing around with the jetpack is quite fun.
- Not at all a fan of the new scanner thingy. I can already see it becoming tedious as fuck.
- Music is great. Had been the highlight so far.
played about 4hrs and am now commanding the Tempest. Just landed on the first planet.
I can honestly say I am enjoying the game so far. I think the environments and lighting look rather nice playing on pc. The first planet map seems massive as well, so lots to explore
combat is fun especially jet packing around.
music is also good.
While some of the facial animations can look a bit weird from time to time, it has in no way stopped me from enjoying the game
I think the backlash against this game due to the animations is ridiculous imo.
Posted my thoughts in the community thread, but long story short I'm loving it and it's already made forget all about Horizon, which I'm 20 hours into.
I know everybody hates the faces, but what really confused me are the claims that the story/characters/writing are (insert hyperbolic negative affective here). I feel like I'm playing a different game than these people... in my book all that stuff is so far so good.
All in all, I can't wait to continue on later today. It was pretty addictive, and as a Mass Effect fan that loved the trilogy and was hoping this would turn out well, I'm so relieved. It's Mass Effect. 100%.
Also side note, the music in general is fucking awesome. Lots of synth, some bass. Oozes a bit of ME1.
Thanks for your impressions. I've noticed that you seem to have similar taste in games to me, so your positive feedback about this game is a good sign. I'm looking forward to playing it myself.
What I noticed immediately in the starting area/level is that plants are just static and don't move when you walk through them. After having played games like Uncharted 4, Horizon ZD and Zelda, hell even Force Unleashed had it, it's just something I find unfortunate and wish MEA had this as well. Maybe the engine can't do it?
Huh? The vast majority of the flora in Horizon doesn't react to your movements either. You walk right through it. Uncharted 4 has dynamic foliage, but it's a much smaller game and even then the swaying foliage is animated at half the framerate. So quit nitpicking. All games have things you can nitpick if that is your intention.
I don't know. I watched one of those first 45 minutes videos last night and nothing (outside of a couple tiny nitpicks) about the characters and writing threw up any real red flags for me. You can call me unsophisticated if you like, but I'm not really all that worried, and I don't give too many shits about animation/lipsync jank. YMMV I guess. My ONLY concern is the possibility of a Hinterlands in space type of situation in terms of questing. But those complaining about that aspect seem to be in the minority thus far. I guess I'll just have to play it for myself (almost at 42%, but probably won't be able to fire it up for a couple hours).
For how bad or mediocre Inquisition was in some aspects, it still single-handedly revived any interest I had in the lore of the series. It still managed to close a lot of plot threads left hanging from past games and did mostly a great job with it and with returning characters. Trespasser kept going in that good direction. Patrick Weekes seems to know where to take the series and it seems to be a very interesting place.And I'll still be the first one to tell you that most of the gameplay systems, from the power system to the focus on fetch quests, from the lack of AI costumization for party members to the battle system as a whole, need to be entirely rethinked and rebuilt in a future episode.
Having seen a lot of Andromeda footage, I'm not sure they can manage to accomplish the same thing
My thoughts are in the community thread. Maybe more predisposed to like it than most, but the long and short of it is that my take was almost as glowing as Shinobi's and it's made me forget all about Horizon (though I'm sure I'll exhaust the 10 hours and be back on Horizon prior to Tuesday..).
Granted I didn't get to Eos yet, so we'll see if the questing style bothers me.
My thoughts are in the community thread. Maybe more predisposed to like it than most, but the long and short of it is that my take was almost as glowing as Shinobi's and it's made me forget all about Horizon (though I'm sure I'll exhaust the 10 hours and be back on Horizon prior to Tuesday..).
Granted I didn't get to Eos yet, so we'll see if the questing style bothers me.
One thing though. Maybe I'm reading it wrong, but you're mostly just stating 'it's not as bad as everyone says it is' without really getting into what you actively like about it.
One thing though. Maybe I'm reading it wrong, but you're mostly just stating 'it's not as bad as everyone says it is' without really getting into what you actively like about it.
Ha! You're not entirely wrong.. Some of it is hard to exactly quantify. I know a lot of people said the opposite of this, but to me it just "feels like Mass Effect" in almost every way. I did mention a lot of positives though.
I'm happy enough with the characters and writing so far; to me it's par for the Bioware course. Yeah that Addison line that's been passed around is downright horrific. But in my experience that's an extreme outlier so far (if it becomes closer to the norm as the game progresses that'll be an issue).
As I said I'm liking the movement and mobility (animations included) and the auto-cover system already felt natural after only a handful of encounters. CTRL for mantling feels weird but I'll get used to it, or remap the bindings (or just overuse the jump jet).
The story has already entirely grabbed me.
Where are the arks? What happened to the nexus? Where did the Kett come from and what are they doing? Who are the remnant? How did all this stuff change so much in the time since the "prescans"? Is there more to Alec's story than what we've seen?
Of course they could take the piss and fuck up all these plot lines, but so far so good. What's probably the most surprising to me at this point is all the "horrible writing" claims. Scenes that other people claimed were horrible I didn't mind (other than the aforementioned Addison scene; her face is also by far the worst in the game I've seen; the rest range from okay to good; none are great or highly impressive; but hers stands alone as horrendous).
So I dunno. It's a little surreal; absolutely feels like I'm playing a different game than some of these people. ¯\_(ツ_/¯
Ha! You're not entirely wrong.. Some of it is hard to exactly quantify. I know a lot of people said the opposite of this, but to me it just "feels like Mass Effect" in almost every way. I did mention a lot of positives though.
I'm happy enough with the characters and writing so far; to me it's par for the Bioware course. Yeah that Addison line that's been passed around is downright horrific. But in my experience that's an extreme outlier so far (if it becomes closer to the norm as the game progresses that'll be an issue).
As I said I'm liking the movement and mobility (animations included) and the auto-cover system already felt natural after only a handful of encounters. CTRL for mantling feels weird but I'll get used to it, or remap the bindings (or just overuse the jump jet).
The story has already entirely grabbed me.
Where are the arks? What happened to the nexus? Where did the Kett come from and what are they doing? Who are the remnant? How did all this stuff change so much in the time since the "prescans"? Is there more to Alec's story than what we've seen?
Of course they could take the piss and fuck up all these plot lines, but so far so good. What's probably the most surprising to me at this point is all the "horrible writing" claims. Scenes that other people claimed were horrible I didn't mind (other than the aforementioned Addison scene; her face is also by far the worst in the game I've seen; the rest range from okay to good; none are great or highly impressive; but hers stands alone as horrendous).
So I dunno. It's a little surreal; absolutely feels like I'm playing a different game than some of these people. ¯\_(ツ_/¯
Yeah some of the story setups are pretty intriguing. Although some of the stuff is a pretty obvious 'receive Ark X after completing story quest Y' style setup, seemingly in place not to overwhelm the player too much at the start.
I do feel like I would've preferred a story setup that would entail more of a break from the norm. With this setup, we'll mostly encounter a bunch of uninhabited planets and aliens we've already seen before sent over from Earth in cryo.
The writing isn't terrible, I agree, though I'd call none of it good.
After playing more, I don't hate it as much as I did the opening hour, but it still falls well short of Dragon Age Inquisition to me, let alone the true Bioware greats. But it's unreasonable to expect anything of that caliber anyway.
After playing more, I don't hate it as much as I did the opening hour, but it still falls well short of Dragon Age Inquisition to me, let alone the true Bioware greats. But it's unreasonable to expect anything of that caliber anyway.
I'm not sure any game will ever reach the level of my initial experience playing KOTOR. It was my first Bioware game and it absolutely blew me away (doesn't hurt that I've always been a massive Star Wars fan).
As I mentioned my only significant concern remaining at this point is that things will devolve into something too close to DA:I style questing. If that doesn't happen (or isn't too egregious/obtrusive) this one seems on track to stand alongside the trilogy in my pantheon of all time favorites.
I'm not sure any game will ever reach the level of my initial experience playing KOTOR. It was my first Bioware game and it absolutely blew me away (doesn't hurt that I've always been a massive Star Wars fan).
The one thing I've noticed with a lot of Bioware games is they tend to have a really great starting area with a lot of tension and questions to answer and make you go "oh shit, look at all these stakes, they're piled so high!" like the ship in KOTOR and Eden Prime in ME1 and the Conclave exploding at the start of DA:I, and I feel like we had something similar in this. But right after that explosive start, we always have this meandering momentum killer bullshit. I hated Taris, the Citadel was...pretty, but on subsequent playthroughs I felt the momentum die pretty quick, and DA:I threw you into the Hinterlands. The Nexus feels similar. Like, I expect that the game will pick back up and be great, but the second half of the first act in a Bioware game always seems to screw with my sense of momentum and pacing.
I love the combat but this might be the first Mass Effect game that I do not play on insanity. With such a huge world and so much to do it just feels like I get bogged down in really difficult encounters.
My main problem is that I've yet to play a shooter that managed to do high mobility and high difficulty well at the same time besides Vanquish. Insanity kind of feels like it defeats the purpose here because even though I am a vanguard with healing melee, charge, and backlash, I get completely shredded by even basic enemies and still have to resort to cover most of the time like everyone else. In ME3 I never used cover after getting charge and nova, and I prefer that wild style.
So after playing this for a while I am disappointed that they built the Nexus like the Citadel from Mass Effect 2/Mass Effect 3 instead of how it was in Mass Effect 1.
Instead of having small areas seperated by loading screens it should have been completely onterconnected and traversable by foot with an option to fast travel via trams rather than it being the only option. And I don't mean the entire Nexus which is huge and not really possible, just the playable areas that are in this game that you can already visit, it really really goes a long way to make you feel like you are in an actual place and this is why ME1 is my favourite in the series since the feeling of going around Citadel was unmatched.
And we know that unlike Mass Effect 2 and Mass Effect 3 it is not due to an engine/hardware limitation since the game itself has large areas in missions. In ME2/ME3 they ran into this limitation because they spent the resources improving the graphics and performance over ME1 and as such made the cutbacks, it was the same reason why you could holster in ME1 but couldn't in later games...but no such case here.
After the trial has left me very.... uncertain about this game, could you tell us how the other planets are? Personally I found Eos in the trial really boring but it does seem that this is only a very very small bit of the main quest on that planet. Overall I just find it a boring planet. Can you tell us anything about what we don't have in the trial?
After the trial has left me very.... uncertain about this game, could you tell us how the other planets are? Personally I found Eos in the trial really boring but it does seem that this is only a very very small bit of the main quest on that planet. Overall I just find it a boring planet. Can you tell us anything about what we don't have in the trial?
This has been posted here and there, but this is more encouraging: https:/www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2017/03/16/this-is-why-its-a-bad-idea-for-games-like-mass-effect-andromeda-to-have-piecemeal-embargoes/
Please take this in good humor - and as a comment on the general over reaction to MEA, not on Shinobi, who I am glad took the time to write up his impression and answer questions.
What I noticed immediately in the starting area/level is that plants are just static and don't move when you walk through them. After having played games like Uncharted 4, Horizon ZD and Zelda, hell even Force Unleashed had it, it's just something I find unfortunate and wish MEA had this as well. Maybe the engine can't do it?
You'll probably need to wait for reviews in a few days to find that out. EA Access lasts just 10 hours long and is gated to only the beginning of the game.
man it sure looks like they reduced all the cooldowns on biotic abilities I'm seeing so many streamers just spam them without any consequence, realize its on bronze but jeeze no risk at all charge every mob.
I just played some ME3 multi and man was I bad at it always score so low.
man it sure looks like they reduced all the cooldowns on biotic abilities I'm seeing so many streamers just spam them without any consequence, realize its on bronze but jeeze no risk at all charge every mob.
I just played some ME3 multi and man was I bad at it always score so low.
A far as I know the cooldowns are actually longer on average in Mass Effect: Andromeda, in ME3 you could could get throw on a sub one second cooldown for example.
I just played an hour of it and wow its bad. Im hoping SONY can refund my money on the preorder since I did the spend $100 get $15 back by preordering it.
Its just not the same ME I used to love and is super boring, boring characters, story and writing, and bland and graphics/animations are so bad its funny. The gameplay is also bad, doesnt feel fun.
God I really wish Horizon was longer than 44hours :/
I must have not been paying attention to that stuff. Have some good links to some of these comments?
I am not sure why people are giving Shinobi any sort of shit about "being a shill". Ayone with a lick of sense about GAF knows that he, in general, is very positive about large release games to the point of almost fanning hype. It is the reason why the whole Yin/Yang thing existed for a while.
