Forums > Submission Feedback > Zydrate's Mass Effect: Andromeda review

As a person who does understand how computers and game design work, I will argue that there is quite a bit of a difference between an open-world Bethesda game and a Mass Effect game. I will also argue that it is completely fair to rip on EA/Bioware's plethora of bugs while merely laughing fondly at Bethesda.

Here's why.

Bethesda's games, as aforementioned, are truly "open-world". They are vastly complex and have tens of thousands of moving parts, most of which can interact with one another, and not all of these can be reliably tested. They are full of variables that can potentially have impacts on just about anything else in the game world, thus it is natural and expected for those games to be full of jank, bugs and unexpected hilarity. Bethesda, unfortunately, cannot address this easily. If they were to properly playtest their games to iron all of these problems out, it could take years upon years, and they still might not be able to catch all of them.

The Mass Effect games, by comparison, are not so open-world. Their structures are pretty linear all things considered, aside from a few story branches and choosing which planets you want to travel to at any given time. The conversations are scripted, containing canned text and animations and do not have errant variables interacting with them from the open world. A wandering monster isn't going to interfere with a conversation you're having with someone onboard your ship, for example. It's just not that kind of game. You also can't kill and maim your own followers just for the hell of it to see what happens. Most of the variables in Mass Effect games are tightly controlled and there's a lot less of them.

Thus, the bugs and jank in Mass Effect: Andromeda can be laid entirely at the feet of BioWare, though I suspect that EA has a lot to do with it. EA is notorious for releasing games before they're ready, for the sake of pleasing their shareholders. Notable examples include: Black & White, Star Wars: Battlefront, The Sims series, the Battlefield series, and countless others.

It's good that they're releasing patches, though. I really want to check this game out at some point when it's a bit more serviceable. I hope it shapes up to be somewhat polished in the near future, because right now it's simply not a finished product.

placid like acid

"...right now it's simply not a finished product."

I can concur with that statement but it's still fun and that's what I'm here for.

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It does look fun. Especially the combat, which I really disliked in the first game (and was one reason why I never played any of the others). It actually looks quite polished and the powers look neat. I will pick it up at some point. Who knows, maybe I'll write my own review later on, too...

placid like acid

I've decided to put ME:A on hold for now. I had a mission on Eos glitch - a story mission. I'll download gigabytes of patches for a while, but in the meantime I'll play Persona 5, a game that let me play it with no updates so far, and a game that is remarkably polished for this day and age.

Then back to Zelda. Then Mass Effect.

I loved Fallout: New Vegas, but I know the first month or two on that game was troubled. I can do the same for this game. I don't like the way these "release first, patch later" launches are going, but it seems to be the way it is now.

I can avoid death by not having a life.

I'm having some major performance issues. I tapped into it on the review but just made a blog post about it. It's very irritating.

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