Initial Impressions: ME: Andromeda (Spoilers Inside)

At least I have Stellaris for that.

 

I loved Borderlands: The Pre-Sequels take where you help Captain Chef (Cook) murder all the locals to put up his alien empire's flag.

Damn dirty humans and their savagery!

Ditto when you help the black Captain Hammerlock hunt Big Game and Jack worshipers in Deepest Darkest Pandora.

Those were some awesome colonialism parodies.

 

>Liked and had fun
Good, me too

>Colonialism parodies
Eh, hardly think that HA WE KILLIN BIG THINGS THAT AREN'T US WITH OLD-ASS WEAPONS
Is a parody in any sense. Just the chosen whacky theme.

 

So, what does C.T. Phipps think so far?

Having played the game for a couple of hours? My answer is "Yeah, this is a Mass Effect game." It definitely feels like a ME game and plays like one. Unfortunately, that's pretty much everything I have to say to say about the game so far. The enemies look like the Collectors, the Archon feels like Saren, Cora feels a lot like Ashley (not a bad thing), Liam feels like--well, a generic space marine, and it's all up to you as the Messiah to solve everything.

This isn't really adding much to the franchise.

ON THE OTHER HAND, I'm going to say this isn't a game which is embarrassing itself.

It feels oddly like a Assassins Creed game in that I'm playing this to get exactly what I expected.

It's also going a long way to making things up for ME3.

Just....not exactly by touchdowns.

Also, a lot of this feels like Halo: Guardians (without the suck) when not feeling like Borderlands in terms of design.

 

Deadly Premonition has better face models and facial animations than this game.

So apparently the handwave for the Krogans being there is that they genetically modified themselves so they could mutate a cure for the genophage during stasis...

 

As dumb as that sounds, Mordin had to modify the Genophage and re-release it because they were mutating it out.

 

You're right, it does sound dumb.

 

It's OK guys. It turns out that space hamster is back in the game. All problems are forgiven 11/10.

 

Eh, if it's an actual disease, of course you're going to eventually overcome it.

 

A good plan for cancer and AIDS treatment.

 

Well, there was this thing called the Spanish Flu....and that['s how it was solved.

Edit:

BTW, I shit you not, the third or fourth male Ryder is Eminem.

WEIRD choice to do a face model for.

 

Which was also a genetically engineered genophage.
It all makes sense now ...

 

Hey man, I'm on Team Reaper anyway.

 

What about the story so far, the design is good? And exploration, is a grind fest or you have other options to acquire materials? I read complains that the story is childish as fuck.

And what about the races? There's something different than the usual "humanoid in form" or there are more esoterical races?

EDIT: Also, the gameplay looks like ME? Because based of what I've seen in the trailers my first impression is actually the opposite, the game appears to be a reskin of DA:I.

 

All intelligent life you encounter is humanlike/bipedal (bone-armored apes are the main enemies, pink-purple cuddly cat/bunny-like beings are the "good" aliens) or "machines", nothing really original or ground-breaking.

The story is also "meh". Hostile aliens threaten the world, the player-character eventually becomes Space Jesus and must stop them before they kill everyone. A few twists and turns here and there but in the end everything wraps up pretty much as expected.

PS. My attempt at a review here. </shameless promo>

 

1. I liken the story to Deus Ex: Mankind Divided in the fact the main quest is "okay" and nothing really to write home about. The best parts of it are the beginning when everything is absolutely fucked and the Initiative is in a survival situation. That changes rapidly as Ryder pretty much plows through all the problems in the way of survival and everything swiftly becomes stabilized.

The side-quests, however, include some real gems and the Loyalty Missions for the crew are up there with Mass Effect 2. Liam's sidequest, for example, is a comedy of errors akin to Guardians of the Galaxy and WILL have you laughing your ass off. Cora's quest and the Ark quests are also all universally good. There's also some fetch quests which are no good.

In short, it's a mixed bag but I'd put it above Dragon Age: Inquisition and Mass Effect but below Dragon Age: Origin and Mass Effect 2.

2. Exploration is a hybrid between ME2 and ME1. You wander around the well-developed maps for some worlds and somewhat cramped ones for others in the Mako or scan planets in a manner almost identical to previous games. You can, however, buy minerals on planets.

3. Storywise, the Kett are a evil one-dimensional race who hate the Angara and want to conquer/transform everyone else into their kind. Also, there's a bunch of Remnant sites of super-techology which is basically stolen directly from Halo. Indeed, there's a LOT of Halo going on around here but I almost forgive it because Halo isn't Halo anymore.

The building colonies stuff and the plots of how everyone got here plus the "mystery" of who funded the galaxy exploration is great even if it's not that hard to guess who Jien Garson's Mysterious Benefactor was.

Hmmm, who was richer than God, feared the Reaper's coming, and was kinda evil?

4. The Angara are basically Twileks and a plucky resistance against the Kett evil Empire. Humanoid. However, the Remnant appear to be giant robot worms.

Edit:

Oh, here's my review:

http://unitedfederationofcharles.blogspot.com/2017/03/mass-effect-andromeda-review.html

 

Out of all the alien races in the Mass Effect series the Rachni are the only ones that actually seem alien.

 

Eh, giant psychic ants aren't as alien as hovering magic jellyfish sluts.

 

I think Mass Effect is about how the alien is basically just like us, not how it's weird and incomprehensible.

Why they have moments like meeting the Bronx voiced Turian janitor or the decent Batarians.

It's about inclusiveness.