Mass Effect Andromeda

Third time is the charm I guess, because you're getting another review from us about Mass Effect Andromeda. I personally don't mind being a bit late to the party, it just means I don't have to fill you in about all the basic since you'll be pretty familiar with it.

So, let me not waste anytime and just dive right in. Mass Effect Andromeda is the sequel to the Mass Effect trilogy. But for all intents and purposes it more like a spin off within the same universe which was a double edged sword in my opinion because it was both familiar and unfamiliar at the same time while not really making it feel like the full narrative weight of the last three games was being taken into account.

Overall the narrative set up on the game was alright, it wasn't great and it wasn't bad and its very obvious the game is trying to set up an entire new trilogy if not more. This again is both a problem and an advantage, the game was able to explore a number of new topics and create entirely new potential story lines without actually exploring any of them to deeply. You are just left with tons of questions afterwards like who are the Kett? How are the colonies going to work together? What about the Quarian ark?

Why does he have that circle shape on his head? Is he even a he?

But taking a step back and just looking at the experience of the narrative within the game itself. I personally enjoyed the story, I felt the urgency of my actions and I enjoyed the characters I was interacting with. For the first time in a Mass Effect game I actually like my entire crew. This isn't to say that I actually liked them on a personal level, but that I understood them as characters and their actions and dialogue made sense.

Moving on to the actual gameplay. This without a doubt has to be the Mass Effect with the best combat in the entire series. The weapons are varied and you can feel the differences between them (although I didn't think the mods did much) and the actual movement in the game felt natural. I personally really liked not having to press a button to crouch. Much like all the previous Mass Effect games though I found it to be pretty easy, I was playing on Hard and I still beat the game in only around 30 some hours. One thing I didn't like though was the fact there were so many filler and fetch quests, I'm supposed to be the Pathfinder not a fucking errand boy.

We can't end without talking about the elephant in the room. What about the graphics? In my opinion people are right about the fact that facial and body animations in Mass Effect are an issue. Characters from a distance don't have faces and the quality of those animations in cut scenes were dramatically better in Mass Effect 3. This is something that Bioware should be ashamed of in my opinion. However, the backgrounds, environments and combat graphics are the best in the entire franchise without a doubt. So, while I agree that facial animations are an issue in the game, it is not near bad enough to stop you from enjoying the game.

I enjoyed Mass Effect Andromeda overall, it didn't have the staying power any of the previous titles did with epic moments in the game. But I still liked it. There were issues with the game such as quest bugs that cause you game to crash which the development team still hasn't fixed and the facial animations, however, I was able to look past them and still have a good time. I would by no means call this game a masterpiece, but I think it did the series justice and has set up new story lines for them to take forward. I'm looking forward to the next one.