Mass Effect: Andromeda - I'm Home. Fuck The Rest of You!

The Mass Effect trilogy tells my favourite story, ever. I like it better than any book I've read or any move I've watched. No other game has moved me so much with its storytelling. I can watch Atreyu's horse die in the Neverending Story, laugh about it and eat a steak. Made of horse. But when Mordin Solus made the ultimate sacrifice, I could have cried like a bitch. I didn't, because my girlfriend was in the room, but damn. What a guy!

He was the very model of a scientist salarian.

When I heard they were making a new Mass Effect I got angry. For me, Mass Effect was done. Finished. There was no need for another story in this setting. Better stop while it was still great. Yeah, yeah, controversial ending, whatever, go choke on a bag of dicks.
Then they announced it - Mass Effect: Andromeda. Meh. No Shepard, a setting countless miles and years apart from the original trilogy. What's the fucking point?

Things went quiet for a while, then we got the E3 trailer and people (rightfully) took the piss out of the goofy facial animations. Now release is around the corner, I've watched a few gameplay streams, particularly over on PC Gamer and struggled to stay awake, while the hosts kept saying things like, "I fucking hate this", "I'm bored out of my mind" and other such high praise. It all looked a bit shit. In fact, they released an article, saying that Andromeda does in fact, seem a bit shit from what they've played. And a bit more shit. Rockpapershotgun fully agreed.

It was painful to watch.

Aaaaaand you've probably heard how the internet is currently flooded with memes, because yeah, those facial animations are awkward. I won't lie, I thought some of them were actually pretty funny. Though none of that stuff helped make me want to play this game any more. Quite the opposite, in fact.

Two or three others may have joined the bashing bandwagon.

But here's the thing. Unlike certain publishers, who don't want anybody to see their stuff pre-release, EA lets you play a whole bunch of Andromeda right now, if you're signed up for Origin Access. Doing so cost me literally tree-fiddy, which I'll get back, should I choose to buy the game. Because you get 10 percent off. Should I not buy it, giving it a go will have cost me said 3,50 rather than a full 50 Euros. You can't complain about that.

10 hours with Girl-Garrus.

And yes, after my ten hours I can confirm the horrible faces. I've spent half an hour trying to create a somewhat decent-looking character, but in the actual game he looks like a cross-eyed, goofy-faced idiot. It was the lesser of two evils. The default female character has a permanent, creepy, vacant-minded smile on her face, most of the custom female options look like dumpster-crackbabies. Characters have those oversized eyes, making them look like something made by Pixar, rather than realistic beings. There's also a slightly cringey, suuuper predictable bit in the story... if you don't want ULTRA MINOR SPOILERS for something that happens within the first five minutes of the game, just skip the following paragraph.

Your space-dad is the super duper awesome N7 Pathfinder hero guy, you hardly ever get to know him and then he dies and you're supposed to take his place. That shit was already overused when every console JRPG put you in the shoes of some teenage boy, who picks up his father's sword after he fell in the war or some such garbage. Certain previews are already bitching about it, because "Durrrr, how are we supposed to feel anything if the game didn't even give us the time to build a connection with space dad, the writing is soooo terrible". Right. See how your character literally says "I hardly knew him" when people say they're sorry for Ryder's loss? That's because you're not supposed to feel massively sad or attached. Because you're not. That's the fucking point. Figuring out who your father was, is a massive part of the storyline, which is precisely why the game doesn't establish any sort of connection between you and him at the beginning. SPOILERS OVER!

You can be a hot, sword-wielding Asari ninja in multiplayer!

Without wanting to reveal any more details, I found the story interesting and felt that it drew me in pretty much straight away. I like the voice actors and most of the characters you get to meet in the first ten or so hours and Ryder comes across as a pretty cool guy/dumpster-crackbaby. The one thing I've immediately missed was the cool Mass Effect music. The star chart music from ME1. The haunting piano tune whenever some depressing shit happened in ME3. I've exited Andromeda about an hour ago and I can't even remember any of the tunes from the trial.

Despite all the bitching about the characters, Andromeda's surroundings look great, sometimes amazing. The first two planets I got to hang out on were beautiful and detailed, space looks absolutely gorgeous and while I agree that planetary scanning is slower and even more annoying and tedious than it was in the previous games, I don't absolutely hate it and it's stunning to look at.

Hair, however, looks like somebody drew over a photograph in MS Paint.

Regarding side missions, I've read complaints where people compared them to the kind of quests you'd find in a Korean MMO. And yes, I had the literal "go there and use a thing" kind of mission, but I also had two side quests, which involved a bit of sleuthing and dialogue and stories, which I found pretty interesting. Some guy seemingly shooting his superior in cold blood, while he claims it was an accident. You get to dig around for evidence, question witnesses... heck, it's not the greatest quest I've ever played, but it sure as fuck beats "kill ten space bandits" or "skin six space pigs".

Combat is fucking awesome. I went for a Vanguard build, because that was my playstyle of choice on ME3. Basically, I attack far-away baddies with a spammy, semi-automatic sniper rifle, like so:

If baddies get too close, they get to enjoy some sweet face time with Mr. Shotgun. Right to the face.

BOOM... um, bitch!

Anyone sits behind cover and never comes out like a total pussy, I teleport right at them and give them a pounding. Like so:

And if none of that helps, then I just beat the shit out of them in melee. I did that to a ridiculously huge monster, which easily filled up all of my screen. It takes some Krogan-sized balls to do that. All four of them.

I killed that thing with my hands is what I'm saying. Then motion-blurring ruined the moment.

Yes, the AI is as braindead as in every computer game, ever. Baddies sit behind cover and occasionally show their stupid heads, so you can shoot them. Your teammates may be helpful or they may just get stuck in the scenery. There's absolutely nothing to say here that hasn't been said about every other game with a combat system.

My ten hours are over, Claire is nearing the halfway point and we're both sitting here, grinning to ourselves like idiots. I'm giddy. We're playing fucking Mass Effect. We're buing the damn retail version. Claire is running this thing on an old Bulldozer CPU and an HD 7950, with settings on high, averaging somewhere around 40 FPS. That's pretty amazing performance for such a dated machine, considering the high requirements. There are occasional slowdowns, even on my i7-4790k running 16GB RAM and a GTX 1060, but it's all playable and stable. We had no crashes here, I can tab in and out all the way I want and the game keeps happily chugging away.
Look, if you're on the fence, just give the fucking trial a go. Costs next to nothing and if you hate it, all you'll lose is tree-fiddy, rather than AAA-money.

Roses are red,
the Normandy is grey,
I'm buying Andromeda,
we'll bang, okay?