Looks like this month (and maybe next) we're both playing Bioware games. I'm working my way through the Dragon Age series. I intend to get the Mass Effect series eventually since it comes with a lot of strong recommendations (from friends). I'll probably wait for a sale though.
They go on sale often. In fact, you just missed a huge Origin sale where they were way cheap. I recommend getting them on Origin because the DLC is way easier to deal with there.
(But if you have them on Steam already you can *usually* activate them on Origin with the CD key, at least until those keys expire)
That sucks that I missed it. I do intend to buy them on Origin, since Steam's ME collection is limited. Steam doesn't even have ME3.
Nice review, Travis. Seems more fair and balanced than others I've read. Andromeda was high on my anticipated games list for this year. While I haven't played yet, I did watch gameplay of the first hour, after reading some reviews, and decided I should probably rent this first. I'm at 57% completion on Horizon Zero Dawn, and the complaints I see about Andromeda are handled with absolute style and grace in Horizon. I've heard other reviewers complain mostly about the writing in Andromeda, and from what little I've watched, I can see what they mean. Bioware games are typically synonymous with rich story. The beginning of Andromeda is more like cheap fiction. More Starship Troopers than Star Trek. Which is okay, I guess, if that's what you're looking for. To be fair, though, I'll give it a rent and see what else is there.
The story does seem to get better. I'm not super far into it or anything but I can kinda feel things building toward something. That something could be good or bad.
But yeah still. None of the same writers from previous games worked on this one. We're in uncharted waters, story-wise.
Okay, I'm a little over 10 hours into Andromeda now. All of the complaints seem justified, or at the very least understandable, from what I've played. Animations are not what you would expect from AAA studios in 2017, but for a Mass Effect game, they aren't awful, which isn't a great thing. It would be like saying the Wii U was amazing for implementing HD graphics, when everyone else had been doing it for a decade. It's progress for them, but a slow train moving for the industry. Voice acting in Andromeda is decent, mostly. What those voices say, however, can be cringe inducing at times. It's less horrible than some have made it out to be, but it's indeed jarring. The combination of poor dialog segments attached to unpolished facial animations is where I find the game most disappointing. These are the vessels that are telling the story. It's hard to take them seriously when they all look like they had their eyelids removed before cryo-sleep.
Shepherd's saga left large shoes to fill, and, smartly, Bioware has thrown them away altogether and are trying something mostly fresh, but safely familiar. Its a good idea, but I find the execution so far is boring. Rather than explore options in this new galaxy, you're immediately presented with ad nauseam justifications, from almost every speaking character, as to why this game had to have combat mechanics. I get that the story is about immature explorers making bold choices and finding their way, but that doesn't mean the story itself has to be immature. The overall design of story, levels, and characters feels sloppy. This could be something that improves as the game progresses, but it needs to be there at the beginning, and certainly within the first 10 hours.
UI is painful. Combat is painful (AI especially. Again, maybe better for ME, but way below average). Environment scanning is painful as well (I know you like it, Travis, but it takes me out of the game. I'll take NMS existing scanner any day. An improvement would have been to make an omni visor, or something so it could actually be a vision mode, ala the Arkham games, especially being a 3rd person game. As it is, you're constantly pulling out the scanner, because you don't want to miss anything. At least in NMS, when you do scan, it seems out of purpose rather than paranoia.). In fact, that's what I keep coming back to with my game play: an unnecessarily painful experience. And I'm super bummed about that.
The best thing I saw, so far, happened in the first 20 min or so: The "cinematic" when your shuttle is en route to Habitat 7. For a moment, it felt like a Mass Effect game. The rest of the time if felt more like "Uncharted Jr. in Space" Effect. I want to say that I'd come back to it at some point, to see how it plays out (maybe the real meat is at the 20 hour mark! I've heard that Final Fantasy XIII is like that.), but I don't see anything in there that would pull me back in.
I haven't had any UI issues and I love the combat, but I totally get what you mean about the scanner. It's not for everyone.
I don't know how far you got in that 10 hours, but if you haven't left Eos, the galaxy has yet to open up. Very shortly after Eos, it starts to really feel like Mass Effect. I'll avoid spoilers but send me a text/chat/something if you want more details about what I'm talking about.
But you're absolutely right that this is a problem in and of itself. I kinda wonder if the start of the game was written around that 10 hour trial so that you don't get stuck in something important. Eos's main plot should have ended way earlier (exploration later notwithstanding) so that the next chapter could have come by at least hour 6ish? The pacing of the beginning is way bad.
An aside, but how freakin' annoying is the sudoku you have to do for some of the hacking? Talk about taking you out of the game.
Total sudoku! I mean it's nice to see an attempt at fresh puzzle mechanics, but it's literally sudoku with glyphs.
It changes up a bit on the more difficult ones but the basics are still the same.
But jeez that's just what I want in the middle of my exploration, right? Stop playing a video game and play sudoku instead!
I think you might be on to something with the pacing of the 10 hour demo. It's so - and I hate to keep using this word, but it fits so well - painful. The pacing of the combat is intended to be flinchingly fast, and they've done well in that regard. But everything outside of that slows to a crawl, to the point where I feel like I need to take a day just to figure out the mod/inventory system. There is a reason that Call of Duty doesn't have 10 layers of character modification and nuanced weapon crafting. I don't know. I feel like you should pick one or the other, or simmer the whole thing down to a happy medium. Does the happy medium come after 10 hours?
It gets better at least, yes. I can't say whether the happy medium comes because that's going to be a moving target. I'm on hour 22 and it's better now than it was at hour 15, which was better than hour 10.
What's odd-- and I'm not just getting used to it, I watched some videos to confirm-- the facial animations get better. I kinda wonder if EA said "We need 10 hours to give early" and the whole Eos arc was a rush job. OR if they tried to pad it to make the cut-off point (right before you head into the SPOILER that changes the SPOILER and lets you SPOILER) close to that 10-hour mark.
Anyway, yes, everything gets better. The plot opens up significantly, you feel like your actions are leading to something story-wise, the sidequests seem less grindy and more things you can do while on your way to other things (while I liked them before, you had to travel way off the beaten path on Eos which was a grind all on its own). It seems like the pace averages so that you aren't just driving for 5 minutes with nothing to do.
The most important thing, character banter and the interplay of your squad gets better. It's like they figured out the characters and started writing them better. OR they padded the intro and had to write shoddy plot/dialogue to fill it in. Either way, once you have everyone, it feels like that same kind of Mass Effect character interplay.
Better and better. Still loads of problems and plenty to complain about, but I still want to stay up all night playing.
An important thing to stress here is that it's the same gameplay, just paced better. If you don't like the combat or the nomad, you won't like them after Eos either.
As for the inventory/mod system, it seems to work about as well as it did in the other games, but they needlessly change it every game so you have to get used to it. One option you have is just ignoring it for the most part. Just switch to new guns/armor you find and don't worry about crafting. Since they took out the ability to customize your squadmates' gear it's less of an issue.
This article from Forbes is great for where you seem to be scrypt: https://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2017/03/21/ten-things-i-wish-i-knew-when-i-started-mass-effect-andromeda/#3ff712be5e68
The one thing about this article though-- he mentions the first two planets being Eos and Havarld but you don't have to do it that way. I went Eos -> Voeld and based on that article, I'm glad.
Oh wow. Crafting materials no longer taking inventory slots gives me like two stash tabs! I'll have to log in to check this out. I don't want to start playing again until the necro update, I want to come into that fresh, but I gotta see this new QoL stuff.
Crafting materials not taking up inventory space is sweet! This update sounds good, but not something that makes me want to jump back in the game right now. I'm looking forward to the Necromancer. I like that there's still so much in the game that I haven't even touched. I've hardly done anything in Adventure mode, though I did try it out a few times.
I'd like to see another expansion for this game, but I won't be disappointed if it doesn't get one. I don't see the need to "wrap up" the whole Leia thing. I guess I just didn't feel that it was lacking closure.
Y'all, Leia is the princess/general in Star Wars. You're thinking of Leah :D
I blame my error on Jon, he wrote "Leia" and so I wrote it that way, too. Infectious, Jon, you see your error is infectious. LOL
> Y'all, Leia is the princess/general in Star Wars. You're thinking of Leah :D
Right, that person.
I have a way with getting people to do the wrong thing....
... suckers.
Updated Necromancer video, the "Melee-nancer." It looks pretty cool. I'm really intrigued by what they said at the end, that this could be a real expansion, possibly with a new Act, not just a simple character class addition. They also said that while there is still no release date, the Necromancer will be joining the PTR "soon." I'm going to take a guess and (hope) that this will be out by summer time. Anyway, the video is short, but worth watching!! https://youtu.be/v8Kc8vNap-E
I really wish they did a full act for the Necro update. Seems like they said there might be but Blizzard is being very cagey about it, which I understand. *fingers crossed*
But like Travis I want to wait until the Necro is out before I head back in the game to experience all the freshness at once.
Blizz seemed to clear up all our questions with a recent update. TLDR; No new story updates.
https://us.battle.net/d3/en/blog/20597129
"Is the Necromancer part of an expansion pack?
No, the Necromancer is part of a content pack which includes the class, an in-game pet, cosmetic wings, two additional character slots, two additional stash tabs (on PC), a portrait frame, pennant, banner, and a banner sigil.
It will, however, launch alongside a free major content patch that includes two new zones, Challenge Rifts, and more. These additional features will be available for all players with Diablo III: Reaper of Souls or the Ultimate Evil Edition.
How much will the pack cost?
We’re not ready to announce a price yet—we know you’re eager to find out, but we have a few more i’s to dot and t’s to cross before we can share.
When is the Necromancer coming to Diablo III?
We are currently aiming for the second half of 2017; when we have an official release date, we’ll certainly share it!"
Thanks, Jon! It sounds like what I expected it to be originally. The only part I'm not too fond of is the last sentence, "second half of 2017," as I expected this to come out during the first half. I'm still ok with that though. I have other games to play and there are also other games I'm waiting on (like Terraria: Otherworld).
I think second half of 2017 has been their target for a while now, but I may be wrong. That said, I've gotten to a point in my life where I'm kinda patient with game updates/releases.
Speaking of patience and game releases... yeah Terraria Otherworld :D
> That said, I've gotten to a point in my life where I'm kinda patient with game updates/releases.
I agree. I have so many games already that I don't need anything to launch at any particular time. So developers can take as long as they need, i'll still be around when it gets done. 
Oh shit, that rewind mode! That's awesome. Now let's get that on some Mega Man games. I'd wear out that LB button. I don't know if I'd call Duck Tales "easy" but maybe I just suck :D
I loved playing Ducktales on my Gameboy back in the day. I don't know if I ever played it on the NES, but I at least saw images of it. It looks just the same, but with color. I did find the new "remastered" version for free on Amazon's Underground or whatever they call their gaming collection. I was disappointed with it, perhaps it was the controls on the Kindle that I wasn't fond of. It looks so different. Maybe I should try the PC version.
As for the others, I don't think I played them, but I promise you I watched all of those cartoons. Darkwing Duck is absolutely my favorite! I loved that show so very much! I even had a book of stickers I collected, many of them from "Double D." Even now, almost 40 years old, I'm interested in watching "Double D."
"It's the Unknown Avenger! And he's on fire! Let's give him a hand, folks, that looks painful! We really should put him out right way, but what a show, huh?"
Needless to say I have already pre-ordered. Double Fine gets my money yet again.
Oh yeah, I forgot that part. Let me know what you think of it when it drops, I don't think i'll get it quite at launch but will pick it up.
My memory is fuzzy, but I think I beat this on the N64 and the 3DS.
Once you're past the Gerudo fortress, you're almost done. And you get a cool shield and gauntlets.
Also, you're "Gannon banned". :p
http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/gannon-banned?full=1
> Once you're past the Gerudo fortress, you're almost done. And you get a cool shield and gauntlets.
I think there is one more temple to go then Ganon.
Speaking of, thanks for letting me know. I've been spelling Ganon wrong for years. How long does being "Gannon Banned" last?
Well, I was counting the Spirit Temple as part of the Geruodo Fortress. Otherwise, if you're considering it separately, then there is one more level before Ganon's castle. It's a good level though. I always felt it was kind of relaxing in relation to the other dungeons.
You know, if you ask me, you're better off Gannon Banned. The guy who runs the official site is kind of a douche. Plus, he defends the CDI games. Better not to mix with "that ilk". 😄
Defends them huh? Wow ok. I like bad movies and I put the CDI games in the "bad movies that I think are interesting" camp. Fun to have exist but I don't think i'd play them very long.
Ha, yeah I guess it is pretty entertaining to hear Link say, "golly, I won", in the voice of a stoned surfer.
That seems like it'd be cool to watch, except for the spoilers. Although I think I'd forget about them by the time I get around to playing it. I'm thinking of playing it this summer while Vinny's not here.
I watched the videos and they were good. These and some others I've shared came with warnings that they "may contain spoilers," but it doesn't look to me like any of them contain any spoilers. So, if you're holding out on watching this video because of spoilerphobia (I created that word!), then don't. Watch the videos, they're good.
OK I had no clue you liked this genre, and that you were the person I needed to ask this question: why are these games a thing?
I'm being incredibly careful in this comment not to be a negative Norman, so I'm sorry if it feels like I'm over-defending myself.
Please note that I am not disparaging the clicker/tapper games at all. I just don't get them. I've tried Cookie Clicker and two iOS games. I adore the Katamari games and one came out for iOS called Tap My Katamari so I had to try it.
But I just don't get it. I get about 30 minutes in at most, and that's just to give it a chance to grab me, because a few seconds in and it already doesn't feel like a game. That's fine, not all genres are for everyone and this one definitely isn't for me but I'm legitimately curious about what the appeal is for those who like it.
Again, this comes off like I'm dropping a deuce on the genre but that's not what it's about. Some people can't get into RTS games, some people can't get into RPGs, and that's fine. I'm not trying to be negative and infect everything with my negativity. I'm legitimately curious.
> why are these games a thing?
In brief chunks they are like a distilled version of unmitigated progression. It feels like, for a day or so, you can quickly just level up quickly and such and it's fun to see where that goes. THEY GET OLD WAY FAST THOUGH but again, for that brief period it's all fun grind.
Really though for a day or so it's like the craziest slot machine high and I can't stop. Then when it hits me what's happening i'm like "what am I doing" and then I stop. But for a time, it's a crazy fun time.
Hope that helps.
> Tap My Katamari
Someone should win an award for that name.
I tapped to end that video. Even the music made me sleepy. Zzzz
Jon, yeah that's kinda the answer I expected. I guess I'm just missing the drive necessary for them! I've always disliked games where I feel like progression exists for the sake of progressing and nothing else.
There was a guy from the Diablo 3 dev team defending why they nerfed the amount of gold you get from busting pottery. He referenced playtesting research where if you take a game that has been well received and then put a big button somewhere that says "click me for gold/points/xp/whatever," people will click it a few times and then go on to play the rest of the game and find it less rewarding, so they keep clicking the button and come out with the impression that the game is boring.
It's interesting because these games just take the gameplay out entirely and give you that button and the progression around clicking it more efficiently, and made something that beats that research the Blizzard dev cited.
Huh. Yeah. Can't disagree there because I don't really stay interested for long with clickers.
I get into clickers for short bursts. It's the reverse engineering the progression curve that catches my fancy. I.e. that's the gameplay for me, figuring out how to min/max. Once that's done, I'm bored. There is also some attraction to seeing all the various units in the game also (if there are fun animations/sfx)
But I do that with a lot of genres -- it's the game dev in me. I did it with several early facebook games (yes, I had spreadsheets for Farmville and for Vampire Wars) and still do it in a lot of other games. I just like separating out the mechanics and see how they balanced the set :)
I also find more abstract games fun. For example Parameters is a lot of fun to play at least once (it's an abstract rpg) http://nekogames.jp/g.html?gid=PRM
Looks nice!
Its a stretch yet to call it footage from Borderlands 3 since it's just tech demos but yeah this is shaping up nicely.
> Its a stretch yet to call it footage from Borderlands 3 since it's just tech demos but yeah this is shaping up nicely.
I'd actually say it's a stretch to say otherwise. Will some of the art change? Yeah sure, but the core engine will be used for sure. Companies don't spend a zillion dollars making this stuff to be scuttled. Even if the code changes, this is the foundation and i'd bet money it will be the foundation for Borderlands 3. The reason he is saying "this isn't a game" is so fans don't get locked into a set of features and then go crazy when they are different in the game or don't show up the way they think. It's more damage control than "yeah man this is what we're gonna do for sure" which again, i'd bet money it will be.
Ehhh well, I think I agree with almost everything you said there, so we're probably talking semantics about what is meant by "game footage."
What I mean is that it's a room or two, some random objects, and a character model. There's no game yet to have footage of. For sure this stuff is being worked on FOR Borderlands 3, no question. But they're taking very basic pieces of it to figure out their lighting tech for Unreal 4, essentially.
So what I meant was, taking some assets people have built for BL3 and dropping them into a tech demo to show off lighting isn't game footage.
But again, that's semantics.
However...
> "Companies don't spend a zillion dollars making this stuff to be scuttled."
A lot of them do. Remember the PS3's Final Fantasy VII tech demo? And Valve reportedly did this a lot with games when Source 2 came out, re-creating an entire Left 4 Dead 2 level just to test the engine (and that thing looked amazing). Bethesda may have as well; they claimed at one time that the first step in developing Fallout 4 was to port Skyrim to new consoles and that they had no plans for a Skyrim port... but their plans obviously changed.
Art assets change, for sure. The base engine? It evolves for sure but i'd be surprised if the game doesn't look a lot like that when it launches. Companies change things but my main point really is in this instance I bet Borderlands 3 will look very much like that and use that tech.
I think there's some miscommunication here because as I said, I totally agree with what you're saying there.
I'm just saying that this is light effects. Yes, they'll probably use those, along with the assets. But it's *just* art and lights now. It's too early to say "footage of Borderlands 3" because it isn't even a game yet.
A video of a wheel and a door isn't footage of a new car.
That's what I mean when I say we're talking semantics.
Heh, right.
Games are composed of elements like lighting to make a final product. This is as much Borderlands 3 as my arm is me. That said, detached from my body it's just an arm... That came from me.
But you're right.
PS BORDERLANDS 3 FOOTAGE CONFIRMED! THE GAME CONFIRMED TO HAVE LIGHTS AND SIGNS!
So when I said "It's a stretch to..." what I meant was just a simple "wow this is early days so we're a long way off just yet" but here we are talking about "what even is a game?" :D
BORDERLANDS 3 FOOTAGE CONFIRMED! lol
That's really all I have to say now. I think I'm gonna put that in my email signature.
My guess is that they actually have a playable game built. I bet they've more than started that and are integrating all the parts, creating art and doing level design. I've seen what a smaller team can do with UE4(System Shock) in a short amount of time. I bet they are much further along than that demo would suggest.
ALL SPECULATION but they have teams of a zillion so I bet they are pretty far along. MY GUESS is we will see gameplay by years end. That might be really optimistic and wrong though.
They probably have the team chunked into smaller ones working on all the parts right now and lighting was the one they were ready to show off. From what I've read about UE dev, it makes things really easy to integrate like that.
If the purchases are purely cosmetic, and if they can make enough money from those purchases to keep up the servers, then yeah I like the idea and I think it'll be great for getting new players in and keeping it alive.
If you can pay for anything that gives you any edge in combat, then I don't like the move and it's going to be dominated by people willing to pay more.
It looks like champion skills will be the only thing non-cosmetic but if they're balanced well, then it's not an issue. And it looks like microtransactions aren't factoring into it either-- you just buy the champions pack or you don't-- so this seems to be a good fit.
> and if they can make enough money from those purchases to keep up the servers
They did that with Quake Zero or Quake something or other and it didn't seem to work out as well. I hope they can strike a great model here because, like Hearthstone, i'd love a free to play game I play often that has a large enough community to fund it.
> It looks like champion skills will be the only thing non-cosmetic but if they're balanced well, then it's not an issue.
So different Champs have different abilities? I guess I missed that. I figured it would be a sort of retelling of Quake 3 where everyone is the same.
They said in that article that the champ skills were different, but you could select any of them (which seems to be conflicting) and in another article I read earlier it said that they would be different but balanced.
Huh. Well having more than a cosmetic difference between Champs makes sense. That said, balancing them and only having access to one does seem odd BUT we'll see how it turns out. If it's not great we will still have Unreal Tournament which is shaping up to be great but moving a bit slower than i'd have thought.
And maybe the powers are only different in a cosmetic sense? I dunno, we don't have enough info yet, but there are plenty of ways they could do it right.
Also yeah, I had kinda forgotten there was a new UT coming. I need to pop in and see how it's progressing.
It's coming along really well. Feels very UT/UT3 ish.
Neat, that's basically all I wanted from it honestly! The user-created content is icing o n the cake. I haven't played it since around when it was first available to test and it felt close to complete at that time. I guess some things have changed!
This is just delightful. Not the most useful thing ever, but I love some of the ideas people implement with the Pi.
Sweet, Vinny got an Ocarina for Christmas.