Some more teasers:
The First 13 Minutes of Mass Effect Andromeda (4K 60fps) - IGN First
Lol, loved that the player’s reaction to his sister getting blown up was to shrug and head out the door.
WARNING: Somehow they managed to let some spoilers in the video – MASS EFFECT™: ANDROMEDA – Official Launch Trailer - YouTube
I have to admit the trailer has me excited. It’s a good premise for a Mass Effect game I think.
IGN and gameinformer are streaming the game right now, and Gamespot has the first 45 minute son youtube. Obvious spoilers of course.
The video series they’re putting out is a genius idea IMO. Give glimpses of the game and some pretty obvious hints, but still let us into the world before the game comes out.
Only one more week!
You mean 2 days 
Oh man that RPS hands on impressions article is BRUTAL. Damn it, everything I was afraid of:
So freaking sad.
Yet another example of EA sucking the life out of something good.
Like you I will keep my fingers crossed but I am deeply worried (I really have enjoyed the MA universe till now).
I’m in America, therefore the rest of the world doesn’t exist unless I want it to. Like Canada or Mexico during spring break
Me too! I splurged on Origin Access. And apparently the game’s 10hour preview unlocked TODAY! So I should be able to play tonight.
This article makes some points, but for every 4 opinions he has, he provides only 1 piece of evidence. I’m not about to blindly defend the game just quite yet, but I’m not too impressed with this review that basically boils down to “I didn’t like it because my expectations weren’t met based on what I assumed the game was going to be.”
Oh nice! You’ll have to tell us how you do or don’t like it. I’ll trust you more than a reviewer.
I’m not real worried about the first few hours. In my experience, BioWare likes to wait until the end of a game to piss me off. Dragon Age II, although short and repetitious, was great until the all-too-sudden end that contradicted or left unresolved a bunch of plot threads. Mass Effect 3… well… was one of the best games ever right until a sharp detour to WTF-ville, population: me.
Remember the opening hours of Mass Effect? Hours spent traipsing around the damn Citadel, the way your heart started to sink every time you encountered a lift. Could get better after a rocky start. Definitely wait for the reviews before you pay money, but then that’s always a good rule.
None of that bothered me on the first play through, because I was exploring a new world full of potential quest leads. Except the elevators, that weirdly bothered me less in subsequent playthroughs because I was taking a more efficient path and so dealt with it less often. Subsequently, running around the Citadel was a pain in the ass. I mean, for the playthrough on the PC and the XBox where I was trying to make sure I played 75% of the game with Liara, I actually came back and filled in most of that later.
I’m expecting Andromeda to start more like Inquisition, where there’s a bunch of playable exposition at first, and then a starting area where I run around disoriented for the first 20 hours. Now, of course, I’m expecting that they assume I’ll keep running back to base, and even travel between explorable areas without single-mindedly exploring the shit out of each region before moving on.
It certainly seems that way, but I’m only about 2 hours in.
I’ll say this much early on, I really liked exploring the first area and the combat feels pretty good. Enemies like to take cover so you need to move around and flank, and use special abilities to bring down shields. It’s fun so far.
That’s encouraging to hear, and also seems pretty par for the course from what I have seen on the Youtube videos. Combat looks like A LOT of fun. Have you done multiplayer yet? I imagine that’s a blast!*
*you bet your ass the pun was intended
ThinkGeek is having a Mass Effect sale, 20% off all their items.
I just bought this cool puzzle for Ms. Cups and I to do together for a pretty good price!
Just played a few hours of the trial, mainly multiplayer. There’s some connectivity issues, which probably shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone, and some audio bugs. Overall it was fairly stable, I lost connection a few times but never crashed. When it did work it’s pretty fun. If you liked the Mass Effect 3 multiplayer you should like this too. It’s the same formula, with much more mobility, and a better cover system. Hopefully they can resolve the bugs before the launch date.
So RPS was spot on it’s remarks about the UI. Infuriating is the most diplomatic term I could think of to describe it. It’s as though the UI devs working on DA:I were killed in a satanic ritual, their souls shepherded to the 9th level of hell, so as to learn the torturous ways of Belial’s UI design, and then summoned for ME:A’s development.
Crafting, if you can believe it, is even MORE painful than in DA:I. This game wants me to quadruple double click through tiny list after tiny list just to find out what I need, only to do the same to actually research or craft something.
It’s hard and unintuitive to navigate other menus too. I still haven’t figured out how to equip my team after 6 hours. And it doesn’t look like we’re able to remap menu navigation keys.
I shouldn’t have to hit escape to back out of a menu. That shit is annoying. And no one ever tells you that you can at least leave the first, main menu screen by hitting tab. I discovered that by happy accident.
Combat is fun, and pretty difficult too (playing on hard). Just had to do a little remapping of keys to make it flow better.
I didn’t know this, but they’ve mentioned it: The tactical pause from the original trilogy is completely GONE. This is a straight up third person shooter. You CAN send one or the other, or both of your 2 companions to specific spots on the map, but doing that in the chaos of combat is tough, and the AI isn’t very good, so unless you aim carefully, they might end up just standing out in the open getting killed. Useless ability in other words.