Counterpoint: DON'T buy Mass Effect: Andromeda. (Gaming)

by cheapLEY , Wednesday, April 05, 2017, 16:59 (2799 days ago) @ Korny

You've acknowledged the hyperbole, but still, it bears calling out that the biggest issues in Horizon's animations is lip-syncing (which received a patch shortly after launch, and will reportedly continue to improve), whereas in ME:A, the animation issues are more prevalent, from lazy, untouched mo-cap to wonky character movements and cringe-inducing algorithm-based facial animations, it really pulls you from the experience. When the attention to animation detail in HZD is good enough that articles have been written to highlight it, I can live with the occasional lip-syncing issues.

First of all, I don't find that gif impressive at all. The fact that they thought about that shows an attention to detail, but it damn sure doesn't look natural to me. It looks goofy. I'm more talking about facial animations, though. There are a few instances in Horizon where the facial animations are outstanding, but I'd say they're few and far between. They're mostly good, but not amazing, and occasionally downright awful.

I haven't seen any of the real goofy shit that's showing up in gifs, so, despite what the internet would have you believe, it's not like people are crab-walking everywhere.

I mean, I can live with a few bugs, and the occasional enemy standing ten feet above the floor, but the countless little things that show a lack of polish really do cause you to feel like you're playing an unfinished game, and that's before you really run into any big issues.

But why not just wait until they fix a number of the issues and it drops in price?

I haven't actually seen any terrible glitches or bugs that have pulled me out of the experience. I'm not saying they're not there, and I can't pretend like I'm even very far into the game, so I maybe it'll happen.

In any case, I'm not trying to tell people to go buy it right this instance. I'm more just telling folks not to forget about it. I very nearly wrote the game off entirely, and probably would have skip it altogether if Raga hadn't been talking about it. His posts literally convinced me to give a shot. I just don't think it's as bad ass the internet is making it out to be, and it's well worth playing, whether now or in a year.

Like I said, it's a downgrade to previous ME games, and while I mostly understand the story reasons for cutting a majority of the species from the game, it kills a lot of the love that I have for the series, and it contributes to the sense that it was made by a far-less talented team than the one that handled ME3.

I don't disagree with that at all, and it's my main issue. The game feels emptier than a Mass Effect game should. The best I can say is that it makes sense within the story, and what the game is doing grew on me enough that it doesn't bother me as much.

It's better than the hot mess that was Mass Effect 3 by miles.

People whining about ME3's ending aside, it was a pretty outstanding and polished game out of the gate. The gameplay was on-point, characters were likeable, the stories and side missions were great, and the closure to almost all of the characters was a fitting culmination of what you'd done before (pretty much all of these points in Andromeda have received criticism in one review or another).

I'd strongly disagree with that. Technically, it's a fine game, but I'd argue that ME3 feels just as rushed as ME:A does pretty much all the way through, despite being technically more competent. I don't think ME3 wraps up any storylines particularly well (aside from Tali and the Geth stuff, which I liked). I'd love to point to specifics, but I actually can't remember just about anything that happens in that game, which I think speaks volumes, as I can still recall just about every ME2 loyalty mission. I can recall being incredibly disappointed with ME3 as a package, an especially disappointed in the story (regardless of the ending).