Mass Effect Andromeda was scheduled to release in 2016, later delayed due to some reasons till this year. Almost after quite a long time, we got a chance to check out a 10 hour trial in Early Access, and finally, when the full version was out, there was quite a lot of negative speculation revolving around the game graphics and quality. Players reported poor graphics that later was limited to the face animations of characters and a tidbit bugs in gameplay.
Compared to its predecessors, I found the new one is beefed up with more action and features. It is a good space combat game with a new story line, taking you deeper into unexplored places of Andromeda Galaxy. Gameplay is impressive, well when it comes to cut scenes where the characters need to express certain emotions, it turns out a bit weird. You will definitely enjoy exploring the new world if you are not hurried to end it in few days. The game has a slow pace, it doesn’t just fill you with stuff at the start. For me many things were relevant. The uniqueness I was searching for this new version was missing, either it’s related to the combat action, the objectives, some weaponry, plot, etc. Mass Effect is popular for the way they offer a space combat style game, we get the chance to checkout futuristic weapons, vehicles, etc. In these editions, things are continued from the last one but in a new way.
Plot:
Traveling to a distant galaxy is forever a vision of mankind, to discover new Golden Worlds for settlement. Mass Effect Andromeda fulfills this dream by shooting a crowd of hibernated humans into space. Landing into the new cluster, establishing habitat and combating with aliens who don’t want us to do this, is the crux of what you are going to find in this new space combat game. Andromeda Galaxy is infested with dark energy cloud, which triggers the start.
Playing as a Pathfinder, one who awakes after a long time, suddenly fell into shoes of his/her father to find a stable environment for human settlement is not so justifying. At the initial, you will find yourself a lot of talking with the characters with multiple choices backed by emotions. This does not really contribute to the gameplay instead at the start it found OK, but later this turns to be tiresome. Almost in every mission, a chunk of gameplay has a dialog part. It got annoying due to the way the characters react.
Finally, when the pathfinders are able to survive various things and locate solutions, the game crawls ahead with more action. Talking about the game subject or its base story line, I prefer to go more with combat, puzzle, and those dialog that can reveal some hidden tasks or secrets or twits. This makes things more and more engaging as I had seen in my previous games.
Gameplay:
Mass Effect Andromeda has hours of gameplay, overall is approx to be 50 hours if you are determined to play all objectives. For the campaign, you can start with choosing Scott Ryder or Sarah Ryder. This does not put much difference just a gender choice. I first thought the dialogs in the game will put some impact on the next objective but that was not the scene. These are just to gather Intel, to know more about what is happening around, etc. Choices are limited in it, mostly your missions are divided into series of basic objectives to fulfill that leads to a final combat in between or at the end. A few of puzzles were interesting, that allow you to access alien consoles.
The combat is filled with a usage of different weapons and a few special abilities that the AI offers to the character. You can equip a few of them only. I was expecting to have a bit bigger inventory. Overall the game has a good combat if you love shooting down aliens for hours. The bosses just got equip with more health as usual and a constant shooting on them will kill them. No strategy is needed.
Exploring new planets and driving through the surrounding is enjoyable in between. I had mostly done shooting at aliens, driving to post, etc. Well having fast travel points is a kind of time saver. There is also a crafting section, that you can tryout to create some new stuff for combat. There is also a co-op mode where you can carry two squad mates with you. It is not very helpful in boss fights, but good enough when you are fighting with too many aliens around. Customization offers users to do more with the characters, along with choosing weapons, etc.
Graphics:
With Exploration being the main objective, the Mass Effect Andromeda does manage to pull off the epic display of true Alien world adventure. However, Character animations are not so accurate, especially the face animations while they speak. Body animations are also not up to the mark as well. PC version still has few issues with texture and graphics quality which hopefully will be fixed with patches soon. Mass Effect Andromeda is not a huge leap visual wise than its predecessors.
Verdict:
Mass Effect Andromeda with elements of Open world game lands players into the huge map to explore, which offers you hours of action pack combat game with a good story to go with. Even with keeping the story aside, Mass Effect Andromeda will give you long hours of interesting Exploration. If you don't rush to the end, you'll actually feel the journey BioWare is trying to convey with Mass Effect Andromeda. Overall, it surly has enough freshness to keep you engage into the story.
Rating: 8/10
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