Anthem has great gameplay. And graphics.
…for a Steam Greenlight Early Access title. :)
I really do not think that is true.
People never even tried Andromeda because of the whole “my face is tired” business. But that’s a whole other story.
Sure, it was a cheap joke.
I personally didn’t try it because I didn’t like the direction that BioWare was going, and considered each game in the trilogy a major step back from what I really wanted from Mass Effect, and Andromeda seemed to be doubling down on precisely those things.
Not at all, Andromeda was a return to form of the first game, which is still my favorite. But that’s a discussion for the Andromeda thread, probably.
I actually purchased Andromeda but never got around to playing it. By the time I had some free time the reviews came out and, yeah, pretty much what dive^3 said.
There’s too much content out there to need to be convinced to play some game despite the awful feedback coming from not just a few people who played it.
I loved ME2 and DA:O; there is almost nothing about those other games then and now that says my decision to avoid the rest was actually a poor choice for me. I’ve spent two years, maybe longer, trying to slog through DA2, wondering if that dang dwarf will ever shut-up. DA:I sits un-open on my shelf and Mass Effect… well 2 ended with me pretty happy, so I think I’ll just let that happy experience stay with me.
I’m not in the business of convincing people to play things. I will tell people that all the crying from the rooftops about tired faces was overwrought bullshit that had essentially nothing to do with the underlying game.
This is QT3. You think most of us really didn’t play a game just because there were some videos showing her horrific animations?
There’s a whole world out there, Nesrie. I’m assuming you’ve read the articles about the game.
Not just articles, here too. There is so much content. No one has to settle for Bioware’s half-ass attempts at any game, not Anthem, not DA4 and certainly not the empty experience that ME:A seemed to be.
Bioware kind lost of its benefit of the doubt, and it lost a fair amount of that before ME:A.
So no, you didn’t need to convince me to play ME:A… they did, and they didn’t succeed.
I have, a lot actually. Including some deep analysis and critique of the narrative structure and choices of Andromeda.
In fact one writer did a nearly novel length textual analysis of the Mass Effect series, including large segments on Andromeda. And it’s relevant because what worked for him in the story meshes with my own experiences.
And he eviscerated the narrative. And the things pointed out were precisely the kind of world building failures that would eject me from the story and reduce my enjoyment.
https://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?cat=508
Now whether you agree with the conclusions he draws, I would say he did his work, and presented a clear case why it failed. And since his favorite is ME1 due to the deep world building space opera tone it set, and explains why that works, and that is precisely what I loved about ME1, that was enough for me. I watched videos, and if it was just janky animations or poor VO lines, I wouldn’t care. It’s the disservice to the universe they created over he subsequent games that irked me.
So Shamus did get around to it. I loved his critical analyses “book” on the ME trilogy (and other random stuff there) and how cathartic it felt to critically see exactly why it left such a bad taste.
He summarizes it somewhere with:
[At the end of the trilogy,] Mass Effect 1 is no longer a story where Commander Shepard embarks on a journey of discovery that will show him how to win reprieve or salvation from the Old Gods that are coming to unmake civilization itself for reasons beyond our comprehension. It’s a story about an apathetic galaxy that doesn’t want or deserve to be saved. It’s a story where the galaxy has been wiped clean by drooling idiots who cause the problem they were designed to solve and who only win because their guns are biggest. It’s a story where Shepard pointlessly works with and then fights against a Cobra Commander style supervillain instead of keeping his mind on the more important problem of learning about the Reapers. It’s a story that ends in the worst sort of Deus Ex Machina: One that ends the story but fails to conclude it.
Thanks for the link, though it’ll get me reading for days.
Thanks for the links. I’ve watched retrospects on Mass Effect games from this guy:
I played both and they’re really good.
DA:I is fine if you have the willpower to ignore your RPG impulses and skip collecting endless garbage for crafting. Just play the story, don’t play the hoarder simulator side.
ME3 is just more of ME2. I didn’t experience the “bad” ME3 ending, I only saw the new one and it was fine. But I also like John Carpenter movies, so…
I never thought the ME3 original ending was “ruin the game” bad. And getting the gang together for the final battle, making decisions that effect them, that is what the game is all about. Even if it’s not perfect.
Depends on the person, I suspect. I know Rich Evans of RLM said it made him retroactively hate the entire franchise. And to his credit he wasn’t being hyperbolic about it, he loathes it to this day.
For me it was pretty disappointing, but so was the whole of the 3rd game really. All the things you did in the other games amounted to like… a small bonus to a number that didn’t mean anything anyway. The gameplay was solid, the role-playing/choices matter was abominable and I understand people who think it ruined everything for them.
I loved ME3 and didn’t really see what was so bad about the ending. shrug
“Nothing you did mattered at any point mattered or affected the story in any way.
Pick Door #1, Door #2 or Door #3.
The End.”