The format of these posts is simple: let’s discuss a specific game or series!
Let’s discuss the Mass Effect series. What is your favorite game in the series? What aspects do you like about it? What doesn’t work for you? Are there other games that gave you similar feelings? Feel free to share any thoughts that come up, or react to other peoples comments. Let’s get the conversation going!
If you have any recommendations for games or series for the next post(s), please feel free to DM me or add it in a comment here (no guarantees of course).
Previous entries: Metroid, Journey, Resident Evil, Polybius, Tetris, Telltale Games, Kirby, LEGO Games, DOOM, Ori, Metal Gear, Slay the Spire
Mass Effect Andromeda is mostly hated, but hot damn, it’s disappointing that it was, because it brought back all the best aspects of the original Mass Effect and iterated upon them greatly. Open world planets to explore with a big, fun to drive vehicle.
I would say it’s main failing was the story and the companions, which was generally forgettable, but the world building was quite good and the environments were beautiful.
For all the failures of the facial animations and dead eyes upon release, the actual game itself is really beautiful when it comes to scenic vistas and so on. Part of the trouble is you spend a large mount of the early game stuck inside samey indoor environments with these dead eyed NPCs, so when it came out, the opening of the game gave people a bad view by focusing you on the games worst offenses right out of the gate. That’s a hard hill for a lot of people to climb over, understandably so.
I just think it was incredibly disappointing because it was in many ways a way stronger game (gameplay-wise and environment-wise) than Mass Effect 2/3. It was a huge step up in quality for the franchise, but because of a botched story and facial animations, it nearly killed the franchise entirely.
It was also one of those games that suffered from Gamergate bullshit. Complaints of Sarah Ryder not being attractive enough and complaints too many LGBT characters. I remember when I used to think EA was lying that they thought they won Worst Company from The Consumerist because they had anti-LGBT people doing write-in campaigns against them. I believe them now, even though it felt like they were hiding behind that at the time. Because those are bullshit complaints.
Also, is it just me or did Baldur’s Gate 3 prove you could do a modern version of one of these games in the classic isometric overhead view style?
I’d love to see a Mass Effect style game in a modern isometric overhead view turn-based tactical combat type situation, like X-COM but more like an RPG than a tactical combat game with minor RPG elements.
One thing that really soured my taste with Andromeda was the very clunky, but for some odd reason still necessary platforming. It always ground things to a halt for me and reminded me I was playing a video game, which is not a fun feeling. Like recognizing that actors are on a set in the middle of the movie.
They also did not really explore what different species could look like. It just felt like any group I could’ve seen in the Milky Way when they had given themselves an excuse to do literally whatever they wanted. Like halo 4 choosing to have me fight the not-covenant again after 3 rounded the story out and gave them a mechanism for dropping the chief literally anywhere at any time.
I also found most of the squadmates to not be very memorable. It felt like they were going out of their way to make sure they didn’t resemble any of the previous ensembles.
That being said, I think the game did an incredible job of not falling into the usual paradigm of “this is the good option, this is the bad option.” There was a lot more nuance to some of the decisions and it really had me stopping and thinking about how I wanted to proceed.
Still, I never finished the game. Got several dozen hours and it was enjoyable enough, but a lot of dropped balls.
The thing that I loved about Mass Effect was the characters.
Andromeda’s characters were straight up uninteresting or plain annoying.
Andromeda has the biggest difference I’ve ever seen between low graphics settings and high ones. I wonder if the lack of recognition for its beautiful environments isn’t mainly that they just weren’t beautiful on most people’s systems.