Blog:ThunderKat's First Impressions: Mass Effect Andromeda

Alright, I recently saw Mass Effect: Andromeda at GAME going for £7.99 and part of their 4 for £20 deal, so I decided to bite the bullet and try it out for the first time in 2019. It's been two and a half years since the game first launched, and I avoided it like the plague at first, prioritizing Horizon Zero Dawn. But now I've played the game for about a week and a half, I think now is as good a time as any to give my thoughts on the game so far. NOTE: I may end up making a few comparisons to Horizon Zero Dawn in this blog, since they both came out the same month in my region, plus I feel that Horizon has a lot more to offer, while Andromeda feels more lacking.

Presentation
The presentation is somewhat passable, with some of the odd animation and facial ticks here and there, but it isn't as bad as it was in the initial gameplay footage. That said, you can easily tell that the game is a broken vase that was glued back together, since you can see the leftover damage from the initial build. Graphically, it varies; the environments can look incredible at times with some stunning lighting effects, but up close, some rocks can have a texture of fibreglass as if they were stage props, and they just look awful. The characters on the other hand, are a mixed bag: alien characters look fine, human characters look pretty lifeless though with their blank, vacant eyes. Even with the updates, they still don't feel like living, breathing people, and more like robots. I picked Sara Ryder as my avatar for my playthrough, and I noticed she has a permanent grin on her face, which doesn't look right. No matter what emotion she tries to convey, she is hard to take seriously, or get invested in because she is always grinning. The presentation overall is a little sloppy, and doesn't hold a candle to anything else that came out this generation, let alone in 2017.

Gameplay
Gameplay is what one would expect from a third person action game. I played on Hardcore difficulty for my first run, and so far it hasn't been too bad in terms of challenge. Sure I died a lot, but the core mechanics are pretty solid for the most part, and combining the use of firearms and bionic powers does keep it interesting. I especially enjoyed the Remnant VI power as it provides extra covering fire when you are pinned down. I didn't like fighting Remnants though; they are a pain in the ass to fight, especially those damned breachers! They are so annoying since they sneak up on you and knock you out of cover to get bombarded by an Assembler or Observer. Even the one intense encounter I have had in the game so far, which was against a giant Remnant Artifact, was spoiled by poor checkpoints. I died in the final phase of the fight, and I was furious when I discovered I had to do the whole fight again! That was 20-30 minutes...gone! And none of this is getting into the technical issue the game still has: the game often freezes momentarily (with full camera control for some reason), frame rate issues, characters popping in and out of frame, weird graphical glitches, characters getting stuck in poses, and even menus have been unresponsive! Keep in mind that I'm playing the game fully patched, and there are still some serious technical issues, which are just inexcusable. Even Horizon Zero Dawn was more polished Day 1 (save for a humorous glitch were a Stormbird threw a fit and died afterwards, but story for another day) than this game is in its current state! While the gameplay is kind of fun, it is slowly getting repetitive due of a lack of enemy variety. If I'm not fighting Kett or Remnants, I'm running back and forth between worlds turning in the next mundane side quest. Encounters don't feel satisfying because of this. One of the reasons I enjoyed Horizon Zero Dawn so much is because the enemy variety was quite high; despite being machines, they came in many forms, and required different strategies to fight them, since every single machine is a threat, even the weakest ones. Taking down larger, stronger machines felt rewarding, it felt satisfying, the feeling that you beat the odds and conquered a foe mightier than you are; I don't get that from Mass Effect Andromeda since I feel like I'm fighting the same enemies over and over again.

Story
The story I really didn't give a second thought. I like a good story, but I find it hard to be engrossed when very little happens that is remotely interesting. My biggest problem is I have only done a small number of top priority missions, but there are so many side missions that it's difficult to keep track of them! The main missions themselves have so many objectives within them that they drag for way longer than they should, to the point where one mission can take hours to complete. And the side missions aren't that compelling either; it usually involves tracking, killing, scanning, chatting, over a weird mix of all the above, often taking place across more than one planet. I can't remember what has happened in the story so far because it doesn't keep me hooked the way Horizon Zero Dawn does, which handles side quests much better I felt. It also doesn't help my case that the characters are just as uninteresting as the story itself. I don't feel any kind of emotional connection to my squad mates because none of them are compelling, and for a heavy focus on story, not having likeable/compelling characters is a massive red flag for me. On top of that, I groaned at some of the dialogue; some of it tries too hard to be clever or funny, only to end up cringe inducing. I also hate how conversations have a tendency to overlap. I get an important piece of story exposition, only to have my squad mates, or SAM, talk over the top of it, and it really annoys me, like having someone talk over you.

Overall thoughts so far
I'm glad I waited two and a half years to play Mass Effect: Andromeda. It may look nice at times and the presentation is better than it was launch, it is still an unpolished mess. This game has a lot of emphasis on story and characters, and since neither of them are interesting, I find it difficult to give a care about what is going on and only want to shoot aliens. I didn't even talk abut the alien Sudoku, which is alright (I do like a little Sudoku after all), but with no other puzzles to break up the gameplay, these are far and few between. There is some fun to be had, but it will get tiresome after a while. I have played worse, and this game isn't necessarily bad in its entirety, only the story, characters, and technical performance let the gameplay down. If you see this game anywhere, save it for the bargain bin, or rent it for a couple of weeks. Or just get Horizon Zero Dawn instead; that game is vastly superior in every way.

Kat's rating: Passable

