How do you feel about/have you played Andromeda? I love the ME trilogy, and I was a quarter through ME2 doing a trilogy replay as well, but then Starfield released. I'll get back to it eventually though. I haven't played Andromeda myself, but I feel like it couldn't possibly be as terrible as the kickback it got on release.
I’ve played Andromeda - quite a lot, actually, because before I started PC gaming, and after my PS3 broke, the only way to get my Mass Effect fix was to play Andromeda.
I think Andromeda got a bad rap. Or rather, people were a lot harder on it than it deserved, because the game was rough and, more importantly, Ryder wasn’t Shepard. Ryder is a very different character and folks wanted Shepard in a different skin. They wanted Paragon and Renegade when BioWare went with a more Inquisition feel to developing how Ryder can react. Add to that how the beginning act was easily the least polished section of the game at launch, and so people just dragged it. And once The Gamers as a collective decide a game is only fit to be made fun of, that’s it.
Now, Andromeda wasn’t perfect at all. The facial animations are not the best, and I still have no idea why they thought Ryder’s running animation was ok. I also really think the writing needed at least another two rounds of editing. But. The game play is really solid, easily the best of any Mass Effect game, and there was something there in the story (it just needed some rewriting). BioWare also made the mistake of putting in more for the sake of more - Inquisition was too big, and they decided to try to make Andromeda bigger, and there’s a lot of filler quests that shouldn’t be there.
I actually really enjoyed playing Andromeda, for all I got really irritated by a lot of the things I mentioned here - and I got irritated because I could see how close they were to something really, really special, and how they needed more time to get there, but didn’t have because of the mess they made of early development. There were enough things and decisions that I really wanted to see how they played out down the line, and I’m sad I probably won’t get to.
The best way to enjoy Andromeda is to go in thinking of it as less of a “Mass Effect” game, and more as a game set in the Mass Effect universe, if that makes sense.
It seems like it was cursed with "how the heck do you follow that up?" Syndrome. And sadly the facial animations seemed at the time to be the critical anchor that all the general issues surrounded and were exemplified by.
I hope in the future Bioware steps back from adding those "MMO side quest" style side content they began including for Inquisition, it did really change the feel of the whole game having those there.
Interesting to hear about the first act dragging, I actually think this is a problem echoed by Starfield, whose first 12 hours are confusing as you don't understand where and how to access the different types of gameplay at will, and it's too early on in your character's development to be able to really fully engage and figure out the ship and outpost construction. By then the people who don't have patience or weren't interested in the game to begin with have likely already had their opinions begin to solidify.
I wonder if Bioware will try an Andromeda 2 down the line, I think that universe deserves another shot.
I wonder if Bioware will try an Andromeda 2 down the line, I think that universe deserves another shot.
Sadly, with the closure of BioWare Montreal and them deciding to go back to the Milky Way for 5, I don’t think we will. Which is a really shame, because I still think Andromeda 2 could have really been special, because the Montreal devs said they learned a lot from Andromeda and had big plans for 2 and improving things.
A lot of people also compared Andromeda to the entire ME trilogy, which really wasn’t fair to it.
BioWare had a good idea with trying to do something new, but sadly, often times True Fans don’t want something new; they want the exact same thing. They couldn’t - or wouldn’t - let Andromeda be Andromeda.
That's sad news about the studio. I suppose some people forgot that the original Mass Effect had quite a few issues and it wasn't until 2 that it got real good, and having that bar set at a payoff that was only possible through three games of narrative choices and carryover was impossible to hit for Andromeda.
I was close to the end last week, but I’ve finally finished Pillars of Eternity. It only took 8 years. I’ll not start with the expansions right away, but to do them I’ll have to load a save before the final dungeon, which kinda sucks.
I’m also taking a break from Quake 2 currently, although not by choice. It’s because of a bug halfway through the second mission pack, Ground Zero, where my game would crash consistently. Maybe restarting the level could help, but I’ll just wait. An internet comment I read mentioned that the devs are aware, and it’ll get fixed in a patch, hopefully that’ll happen soon.
Next, I finished two more games, first Shadowrun Returns. It wasn’t that good. I’m not a big fan of tactical turn-based RPGs, and this game didn’t help. As for the story, it’s like they got two completely separate scripts and stuck them together. After like two thirds or something, the game takes a sharp turn and goes completely off the rails. The first part was really clichéd and predictable, but I still enjoyed it, and I wish it could have ended there. The “class” I chose also sucked, I guess, a melee hacker (or Decker in this universe). The hacking is 90% useless in the game, and melee feels like it’s just massively disadvantaged, compared to ranged attacks. The game is also a bit buggy at times and the UI can be really clunky. I don’t think I’ll play the other two games in this trilogy unless I get really into TRPGs in the future.
The final game I finished was Katana Zero, which was a bit mediocre, with some bright spots. It’s an action side-scroller where you need to kill every enemy in a room, without getting hit, to move forward. Dying resets the current room, and you have to start from the beginning, à la Super Meat Boy. However, there was a bit too much randomness in enemy placement and movement, to really get that perfect run done. The story could be interesting, but I didn’t like the way it was told at all, however I did like the dialog system. When talking to someone you get a timed response, which you can hit, while the other is still talking, interrupting them, or wait for them to finish and choose from a few options. I really liked that. The game also looks great and has very good music. It’s pretty short, I clocked out after less than four hours, but you’re supposed to play through it at least twice I guess, because of the story. I didn’t care for the basic gameplay enough, so I’m fine with just my single run.
If you are concerned about privacy, don’t use Plex or any other software which use central servers to collect your data. They can literally see where you click on the screen, let alone what kind of hosting you use. Jellyfin on the other hand is open source and don’t phone home. Also if a software is free, it doesn’t mean it was easy to create it in the first place. So please consider donation or support the project.
The other option is Emby. It’s based on the same code, and is just another division of the same project. You pay for it, but it gets tons of support and more features as a result. Both projects have pros and cons but I’m leaning further to Emby than Jellyfin myself.
I’ve also been playing some Diablo IV. I’ve been taking my time - there is a lot to enjoy in that game. I just teamed up with my brother to finish the last act of the main story.
Mostly waiting for Lies Of P to land in a day or two. I have spent more time with Starfield, but as I mentioned in a previous comment, I think I’m reaching the end of my time with that one.
I don’t think it’s ‘bad’, but I do think it’s a severely compromised game that underwhelms more than it should for a game of it’s budget and the team behind it. There’s moments where you can see so much potential but it is always somewhat hidden by this mid 2000s design that I thought we’d moved past.
Playing:
Remnant 2, really fun!
Doorkickers 2, a new update came out with new missions I have to conquer!
Hell Let Loose got better again with the latest update, so I play that if I have the energy to shout orders into my mic (because no-one wants to be squad leader).
Sons of the Forest is coming along nicely.
Stopped playing:
Gave up on Starfield. What a mediocre janky game with generic story. Frustrating and time consuming menus. It’s not massive at all. It’s just big empty rooms behind loading screens. There has been like 5% technical development since Fallout 4. They didn’t even bother to fix the mannequin NPC faces for their game “that has been in development for 12 years” or whatever.
I cannot fathom how some people swallow that stuff and goes “10/10 game of the century” and pay 80€ for it.
Sorry for rant.
Looking forward to:
Cyberpunk 2.0
The infantry combat overhaul for Squad.
I absolutely love your description of the game being ‘big empty rooms’. I think I’ve come to the same conclusion in the last 24 hours. The space stuff and the on-planet stuff feels disjointed and unconnected. The way you traverse the universe is incredibly underwhelming (so many menu’s) and the actual game design just feels so 2008.
A new one was released in 2020 on epic games and I think it’s on steam now. It’s a remake / remaster the TMNF/TMUF games. It’s just called Trackmania but most people call it TM2020. It’s a subscription based game with tiers, which sounds shitty but the prices are pretty normal. Like the best tier is $60 for 3 years and that’s how long most people play $60 games anyway…
Player numbers aren’t that great daily on steam (considering most owners bought the epic version anyway), but all of the developer tracks plus most of the community tracks have leaderboards in the tens of thousands, even the hundreds of thousands for the seasonal track releases. There’s also a daily community highlight where players can race and compete on a community track hand-picked by Nadeo staff, so that really bolsters numbers on community tracks.
Multiplayer is kinda dead compared to the older games, but I also don’t think a lot of players play the game for the multiplayer anyway. There are even community playlists of tracks that you can play in singleplayer that go up to I think 50 tracks in size. So you can just pick one of those and play through a bunch without ever having to connect to a community server.
I tried playing Starfield again. The first time I tried, it crashed 4 times before I could finish the tutorials. Tried it again this morning, got past the first spaceship battle and it crashed.
Yeah, that’s really strange. My brother and friend have been playing non stop on the X and haven’t had an issues besides the occasional Bethesda usuals. Have you tried uninstalling and reinstalling? May be a corrupt install.
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