Game Review: Mass Effect: Andromeda - Effectively bland

Mass Effect trilogy is considered to be one of the best games to ever grace our screens; it had engaging characters, exotic aliens, your own spaceship, and above all a captivating storyline. It seems like the Bioware crew did not want to explore the previous storyline because of all the complexities involved, so they did the next best thing - start Mass Effect all over again. It takes place in a new galaxy, Andromeda, with a new lead, and new characters, approximately 600 years into the future.

The game unfolds in pretty much the same way Mass Effect has in the past - you are in a new galaxy where you have to explore new planets and there is an alien race that is essentially your enemy. While in the original Mass Effect there were several alien races to explore, this one only introduces two new ones.

There are some things that have improved a lot though, for one, the combat is excellent compared to the original Mass Effect - you can jump now. The combat is also fast paced, though your crew, who is supposed to help you during combat, is pretty much useless. You can't do much with them as you can't reequip them and can only ask them to stand ground or attack a particular alien.

Exploration is also a lot more fun. You can actually explore six planets on ground level with your six-wheeled nomad vehicle. The explorable planets are huge and they are a lot of fun to ride around in. The world also looks very pretty.

That said, the character animation is deplorable to say the least, the voice syncing makes you feel like you are watching an awful English dub of a Kung-Fu movie and the characters are often looking out in the distance while speaking to you. While the voice acting is pretty good, the dialogues are just shoddy and very lazy. In fact, we would go so far as to say the entire main plot of the game seems like an after thought. Even the side quests are just fetch missions repeated over and over again.

There are a tonne of glitches, though some of them have been fixed with subsequent patches, you will still encounter them from time to time. The sex scenes, however, seem to go fantastically with hardly any glitches. The sex scenes also border on porn, so you might want to think twice before handing over this game to a child.

Despite the flaws, the game is still playable and you will have a lot of fun exploring new planets, solving puzzles, upgrading and giving your shipmates "the business." Multiplayer is entertaining thanks to a good combat upgrade and the card drops.

We are being hard on Andromeda because it doesn't live up to its pedigree and that is disappointing. If this was some random game called Andromeda and not Mass Effect Andromeda, things would have been slightly different. The question, however, is if it is worth the asking price. Certainly not, but it is a halfway decent game that you might want to pick up when it is available for cheaper and most of the bugs are ironed out with patches.