Second Chances

It has been awhile since I've played Mass Effect:  Andromeda--a game that is extremely divisive among many gamers.  I decided to take a break from running my female prison empire in Prison Architect to re-visit a game that I felt slightly ambivalent about...alright, more than slightly...but it's Mass Effect--a series that I love!  There have been several patches since I last played so I figured it was time to check out the hopefully much more polished version.  It really doesn't seem to matter how much the game is patched and improved--the vitriol is still virtually coagulating anywhere I see news related to Andromeda.  There are some very angry nerds who will toss gasoline onto that fire any chance that they get.

Before I even started my new adventure in the Heleus cluster I found out that these new patches have caused some slight graphical hiccups.  Whenever I started the game I was greeted with a black screen for a semi-long period and then it would finally start.  Once it started it would only display in windowed mode.  Clearly this was not going to work.  After some searching for fixes that were on my technical level (the very basic level) I found that the problem was easily fixable.  If you run into this problem all you need to do is change your display resolution in Windows to something different than normal and then change it back.  Granted this was an easy fix but not much of a good re-start.

For my current playthrough I decided to go with a male Ryder just to compare differences in experience.  In the past I have shown nothing but ardent loyalty to the female version (mostly because the character was acted so much better) and was skeptical about how Scott Ryder would pan out.  So far I am enjoying the male character--he's way better than male Shepard.

While designing my Ryder I ran into a personal quirk that is totally hypocritical.  When designing my female characters I always try to create someone who I would think of as realistic--no long, flowy hair because long hair gets in your face and blocks your vision; no super makeup-tastic facial manipulation--what lady hero has time for eyeliner?  These kinds of thoughts go through my head.  However, when designing my male characters my thoughts are "he must be beautiful!"  And all my male characters end up looking like male models.  I know how wrong it is--but check out my hot Ryder--->

Too pretty to be shot at.

My lady Ryder was more of a logical-thinker who didn't act impulsively.  This time I decided that pretty boy Ryder should be more of an emotional jokester who acts before they think.  It has been well established that the dialogue writing for Andromeda wasn't on par with the other games and there have been some very cringey moments--after the fight to rescue the Moshae on Voeld while you're bargaining with the Cardinal there was a line that literally was "I'm gonna fuck your shit up."  Ugh, why?  They really couldn't come up with something less juvenile?

I also decided that I was going to play through the story a little differently.  The first time around I tried to do a bunch of the exploration based stuff before the main storyline.  This time I decided I was going to advance the story much more before I embarked on planetary settlement.  In this choice I noticed that the game is very different if you just focus on the story.  It feels much more like the Mass Effect games of the past.  I found myself paying more attention to what was actually going on as opposed to playing a few hours of story and then many, many hours of empty exploration.  Sadly the exploration part of Andromeda still feels like a weakness--I keep finding myself getting bored and irritated.  Tasks that require items to spawn at random "camps" around the map are annoying.  I told myself I would complete more of the "tasks" this time--probably a mistake.

I'm trying to keep my eyes peeled for any of the big changes that were patched in since the last time I played.  I have noticed that the facial animation is better--I haven't witnessed any weird grimacing or really "off" expressions that were widely panned in the early days.  Foster Addison does look like she's having a better time.  I'm glad they fixed it.  Despite fixing the glaring animation issues there are smaller minor issues that could still use some tweaking.

I'm doing my best to keep an open mind and to try to find the diamonds in the rough as I play.  Unfortunately for Andromeda there seems to be more rough than diamonds.