The big story is that I am not yet ready to talk about Mass Effect Andromeda. I can offer a ton of first impressions, almost none of which are positive. I can also bury these impressions under the mountain of goodwill that I’m trying to hold on to, with respect to Bioware and the Mass Effect franchise. I want to give them the benefit of the doubt, because they’ve earned it. But YE GODS this game feels like a broken, buggy, unpolished mess. I don’t really understand this need to radically re-invent the wheel as far as certain mechanical things are concerned – the first 3 games had an intelligent and intuitive user interface, and while I appreciate the desire to spice things up for a next-gen debut, the finished result feels decidedly unfinished. The simple act of tracking a quest requires at least 3 button presses too many; I still have no idea how to add mods to my weapons, or how to switch my weaponry at all. Now, granted, I’ve only just landed on Eos; I’m still barely into the actual proper game. And Bioware RPGs are notorious for always starting off slowly. But this feels like a mess. I’ve already said too much.
Instead, let me talk up some other things that aren’t terrible.
First: read this Kotaku review of Everything, which I downloaded immediately after reading. If tonight’s run of ME:A remains as impenetrable as last night’s, I’m headed towards Everything ASAP.
Second: holy shit, iOS has had some INCREDIBLE games land in the last few weeks. I’d already been charmed by Little Folks and lost hours to Slayaway Camp and Tavern Guardian, but then this murderer’s row of kick-ass happened, one right after the other:
- Ticket to Earth, a puzzle RPG unlike anything I’ve ever seen before;
- Bit City, a city simulator from the people that made Tiny Tower (another game I lost many, many hours to);
- Cosmic Express, another charming (and quite difficult) puzzler;
- Pavilion, a “4-dimensional adventure game” with a gorgeous art style;
- TypeShift, a new and very addicting word game from Zach Gage;
- Kingdom: New Lands, which is some sort of resource-gathering thing with an absolutely gorgeous pixel art style reminiscent of Sword & Sworcery;
- Euclidean Lands, which mixes Monument Valley‘s Escher-like aesthetic with Rubik’s Cube gameplay;
- Beglitched, one of the weirder and more charming variants of match-3 I’ve come across;
- Death Road to Canada, the newest game from Rocketcat (one of my favorite mobile developers); and finally
- Card Thief, which is some sort of stealth/solitaire/board game mashup that’s as ingenious as it is clever.
Any one of those games will tide you over for quite some time, let me tell you.
Third: I finished Horizon: Zero Dawn at the end of last week. I submit that it’s entirely possible that one of the reasons why I’m so frustrated with Mass Effect’s missteps is that HZD does everything correctly. HZD is polished, intuitive, and graceful in all the ways that ME is broken, frustrating and clumsy. It’s a remarkable game, and I only hope that it’s not forgotten at the end of the year, overshadowed as it is by the new Zelda. Incredible world-building, fantastic production values, highly engaging combat, very involving gameplay. If the story is somewhat predictable, the experience of playing it is anything but.
Shouts From The Couch 