Mass Effect Andromeda

[Disgustipated]

PS with Tali it was all about the body

And the voice. I'd have sex with her based on voice alone.

As for pausing in ME games, I like it. When you are controlling multiple characters, pausing becomes a necessity, at least for me. Yeah I know they do their own thing, but every once in a while I need them to use their powers on a tough enemy, but usually I let them do their own thing.

I have to agree on the silly food thing in Skyrim though, Witcher series was strange with food as well. I realize they want to have uses for food, but I think Pillars of Eternity handled the food thing the best. Food gave you bonuses you could take into combat, but you couldn't use it in combat to heal.

And of course I'm not a FPS player, I come from RPG games, so I need to pause sometimes to take stock of the situation. I could play on easy, but I'd rather not.

 

[sherbz]

This is why I prefer turn based over real time. I do enjoy both, but I think the whole pausing thing acts like half way house between an action rpg like shadows of mordor and a conventional turn based system.

 

[Camikaze]

One of the hallmarks of ME combat, though, was the feeling of fast-paced intensity. That's impossible with turn-based combat, but not impossible with small pauses.

 

[Akka]

Your loss. It's not Mozart by any means, but it's large and expansive frequently quite gripping.

The problem with following a great serie is that you can't just be mediocre. A new franchise can expect to be judged on its own, a follow-up is always living in the shadow of its precursors, and it can makes something average feels pretty bad.
And on the opposite hand, ME3 just destroyed the ME universe (not literally), and spoiled it by proxy. It makes Andromeda twice doomed : crushed by the weight of ME1 & 2, and blemished by the link to ME3.

So well, my loss, but I doubt it's a big one.

 

[civvver]

Trying to decipher what you mean by ME3 killing the series. It really was a fine game, just not the pinnacle that ME2 was. Andromeda though I too will wait for a significant price drop, I don't see anything there that screams play me over just going back to 2 and 3 and doing another play through.

Pauses I liked so you could setup combos with your team. They're totally unnecessary on normal difficulties, only needed on some of the highest ones. I'm not sure if it was possible to do in the games to set hotkeys for your squad mates abilities or not. Cus then you could hotkey the combos you want. Without that you pretty much have to pause or lose that aspect of the game. And it's a very cool aspect, one a lot of players seem to miss from Andromeda.

 

[Disgustipated]

I feel ME3 was far superior to ME2, at least in emotional involvement. The ending I could do well without. The dark energy ending probably would have worked better. The thing is they kind of written themselves into a corner. They made the reaper threat so deadly, that it was impossible to take them out via conventional means. Which means you need a plot device thingamajib to take them out. Which is what we got. I think the ending was about as good as they could have made it. I would have preferred all your companions go up with you, however. And interject with their own personal opinions with how you should use the device. But after such a dark game, I would have preferred a happier ending. Sometimes there's such thing as too much darkness (I say this even though I enjoy dark music, movies, and games). So a happier ending with your companions who survived would have been nice for me.

ME2 just had a terrible beginning (cheesy plot device I won't spoil) and ending. The middle was pretty good, however. And the ending sequence is pretty good up until the final boss.

 

[GoodSarmatian]

ME2's beginning wasn't that great, but the final mission was one of the best final missions in any game, as was the ending. Only the boss battle was a bit silly.

 

[Arakhor]

ME2's greatest sin was the 3-4 minute "bloody icon" stuff, plus the cheesy plot device and then more cut scenes until you finally get to play for real like 15 minutes later. If you couple that with the CYOA graphic DLC to set your ME1 choices, Miranda wouldn't be yelling at you until well over half an hour after starting a new character!

 

[Disgustipated]

Angry Joe has a pretty good list of the pros and cons. This review kind of convinced me to wait (although Bioware is notorious for not lowering their prices on games).

 

[Arakhor]

There's a new patch out today, I believe.

 

[Akka]

Trying to decipher what you mean by ME3 killing the series. It really was a fine game, just not the pinnacle that ME2 was.

ME3 had several great moments, but its plot and direction was a colossal dumbing down of the world and scenario, breaking the good points of ME1 and ME2 to make the typical dumb fantasy-SF Hollywood blockbuster and ruining the legacy.

 

[civvver]

Fair point, what you said isn't untrue, I just disagree with the scope of it. They did dumb the plot down, but it wasn't game breaking to me.

 

[Disgustipated]

33% off right now (on Origin), it's getting hard to resist right now at $39.99. I've been watching some Let's play videos, and it's not quite as bad as some of the reviews would have you believe. Although still too much fighting and pointless stuff. I'm still on the fence whether to buy this now.

edit: ouch on the system requirements. 55GB of free space I can't do right now. Frustrating. And I only have 8GB of ram instead of the recommended 16, not to mention video card and processor speed is below recommended. I can meet the minimum, but I may have to delete Inquisition or something else. Hmmm. Games now days are getting too large.

edit: I ended up buying it, but after downloading all night while I slept, it only got to 40% (although I think my computer went to sleep which may have suspended the download). I have the slowest internet connection (5 gigs) because Cox cable internet is so expensive. I'm also putting it on my F drive since I don't have enough room on my C drive. It's a sata cable too, so hopefully it won't be too slow.

 

[civvver]

what cpu and gpu do you have? I'm interested to see your settings and fps. I'm still running a build from 2010, though I've upgraded ram to 12 gb and my gpu to an r9 270, my cpu is still an ancient i5-760. But it seems to handle most games fine, my gpu seems a lot more like the bottleneck.

Just go buy another hard drive dude, unless you gotta have this on ssd. You can get 2tb ones for like $50.

 

[Disgustipated]

Actually running off my backup hard drive worked especially well. Although it takes a while to build shaders when loading the game, but I suspect that has to do with my video card, not my hard drive. This game doesn't seem to run any slower than Inquisition which I have on my 10,000 RPM hard drive where as Andromeda is on my 7200 RPM hard drive.

Of course I've stopped playing as I'm bored of the game already. I mentioned some of the problems in the off topic thread about what game you are currently playing. I may eventually finish. But the game is just too large, and the story isn't engrossing enough for me to finish. Getting Eos to 100% viability bored me to tears. Havarl wasn't bad, that planet is about the right size, not too big. Eos is just a pain, and this planet alone caused me to stop playing.

The game itself runs pretty good. I don't mind sacrificing some FPS to have graphical settings up higher, I did it with Inquisition too. In fact, my current video card I bought just so I could play inquisition at high settings.

Processor: AMD Phenom II X 4 945 processor 3.00 GHz
8.00 GB of RAM
64 bit OS (Windows 10)
Geforce GTX 970 (4 GB of RAM on the video card)

This computer I built in 2009. The only changes I've made have been the video card mentioned above, and adding a 10,000 RPM hard drive as my main hard drive (my previous main is now my backup and where I keep most of my media like videos and songs). I'm still not ready to go solid state hard drive (I hear they have a limited amount of rewrites). Overall I'm happy with running the game on my backup hard drive, and any future games I'll probably put there. As I don't like having to delete games to add new games. I already deleted World of Warcraft, but I don't intend on playing that game again, that game takes up a huge amount of HD space.

 

[civvver]

Oh I see, still a 10k drive vs a standard 7200 one shouldn't be that drastic, not nearly as much as an ssd to mechanical.

My cpu is a tad better than yours, my gpu is much weaker. Glad to know I won't be cpu bound though since that upgrade is a lot more expensive since I'd have to do mobo and ram as well.

 

[sherbz]

55gb is pretty intense. Most games are only 10-15. Having said that though, I've never really run into storage problems.

I am tempted by this. But I think I might wait until all dlc are out. I wish this was on steam (same as with all origin only titles). I only really check steam, and sometimes gog, for sales and stuff. I would like to get Inquisition and this. But probably won't because I will miss the sales.

Shame really. I recently upgraded my rig. So I'm packing an RX 480 and i5 7700. I also have 16gb of ram. It's so quick that on most games I simply don't have time to read the hints on the loading screens. So I'm at a serious disadvantage

 

[Arakhor]

Shame really. I recently upgraded my rig. So I'm packing an RX 480 and i5 7700. I also have 16gb of ram. It's so quick that on most games I simply don't have time to read the hints on the loading screens. So I'm at a serious disadvantage

That's the sort of disadvantage they tell you not to quote at interviews, e.g. "my biggest weakness is that I'm obsessively punctual" or "I'm a total perfectionist".

 

[civvver]

55gb is pretty intense. Most games are only 10-15. Having said that though, I've never really run into storage problems.

I am tempted by this. But I think I might wait until all dlc are out. I wish this was on steam (same as with all origin only titles). I only really check steam, and sometimes gog, for sales and stuff. I would like to get Inquisition and this. But probably won't because I will miss the sales.

Shame really. I recently upgraded my rig. So I'm packing an RX 480 and i5 7700. I also have 16gb of ram. It's so quick that on most games I simply don't have time to read the hints on the loading screens. So I'm at a serious disadvantage

It's not that crazy for triple A, graphic intense games. They have been getting crazy big the last few years, I'm sure a lot of it is graphics, quicktime sequences and stuff, but also because nearly all games are digital downloads now. You would never be able to deliver games like this physically, but that limitation is gone. Dvd's are toast, they could only hold max 4.7 gb on one side, even blu ray is 25gb on one side, but digital download, on a 30 mbps connection 50gb is like 3.5 hours download. And gamers often have double that speed.

Examples, arkham knight is two years old and requires 45 gb of hard drive, 55 recomended. Shadow of mordor is 2.5 years old and needs 44, recommends 57gb. Rise of tomb raider is smaller than I expected at 25gb. Witcher 3 is 35gb. Fallout 4 is 30. Cod black ops 3 is 60 gb.

So andromeda is on the high end, but not anything new. You just can't have all your games on your main ssd, gotta get like a 4tb backup drive.

 

[sherbz]

I only use my SSD for Windows and utilities. I have 2 TB mechanicals for files and games.

That's a fair point on triple A games. I guess I'm a bit nieve as I don't buy that many triple A games. Not unless I really really want it.