‘Mass Effect’ shoots for stars and misses
Producer Mike Gamble and BioWare Montreal faced an impossible job with “Mass Effect: Andromeda.” EA handed the team a beloved franchise and tasked the studio with adding another story to a universe that already had a complete trilogy.
It’s a precarious position: Screw up, and the wrath of a rabid fan base will come down hard on the team. Succeed, and it raises the profile of the other BioWare studio.
Unfortunately, “Andromeda” turns out to be the video game equivalent of “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull,” a chapter so disparate from the rest of the series that it feels unnecessary.
The fourth game follows the twins Scott and Sara Ryder aboard the Ark Hyperion. It’s one of many Andromeda Initiative ships that have taken a 634-year trip to settle a new galaxy. Despite years of planning, the mission experiences unexpected turmoil. The ark runs into the Scourge — tendrils of dark energy that wreak havoc on the ship. And Habitat 7, the planet they were expecting to be a golden world, is uninhabitable. To make things worse, they encounter hostile aliens called the Kett.
After an unfortunate turn of events, one of the Ryders (the protagonist is based on the character players of the game create) is promoted to Pathfinder, while the other remains in a coma from the disaster on the ship. As Pathfinder, Ryder has the key role of exploring the Andromeda Galaxy and finding homes for the settlers. That takes players to different planets and systems, where they battle the Kett, rogue colonists and machines made by a mysterious beings called the Remnant. It’s a good premise.
“Andromeda” doesn’t try to replicate the success of its predecessor. Instead of focusing on a major war for survival, the campaign devotes its narrative and gameplay to exploration. For the first time in “Mass Effect,” players can jump and dash around the environment and scale walls or drop inside caves. They have a vehicle called the Nomad that lets them travel the large maps. The crafting system supports exploration and nudges players to scan the flora, fauna and structures they come across. By doing that, they earn research points that enable them to craft more powerful gear.
Meanwhile, the combat allows freedom to experiment with different combinations of abilities. That’s because Ryder has the help of an AI called SAM, which can modify his physiology and powers on the fly. If the battlefield is an open plain, they can attack with a sniper rifle and drone; if an enemy base, the Pathfinder can switch to biotic powers for close-quarters combat.
In theory, these concepts should have worked well, but the execution in “Andromeda” is a dumpster fire. The pacing is agonizingly slow and uneven. Players spend hours making planets hospitable by fixing the Remnants’ terraforming technology, while the plot advances at a snail’s pace.
Worse yet, the game is riddled with embarrassing glitches and
bugs. During chats with crew members, players suddenly find themselves in a different part of the ship. Fallen comrades can’t be revived. There was even a case where an ally inexplicably cloned himself in the same room. Such failures break the spell a role-play game is supposed to cast.
The goal is to draw players into its world, but sloppy construction yanks them right out. One can’t ignore the stunted animation or long pause while the next part of the world loads up. In a tense gunfight, the stuttering frame rates frustrate players trying to pull off that perfect shot.
In addition to technical issues, “Andromeda” has other flaws. The new cast of heroes is less interesting. The new personalities don’t stand out the way fan favorites such as Garrus, Tali or Mordin did. On top of that, the diversity of new Andomeda aliens is disappointing, and so is the wildlife, which seems to be cut and pasted from different worlds.
With a series such as “Mass Effect,” the devil is in the details. Sadly, BioWare didn’t pay close enough attention, and what should have been a promising game fails to measure up to past achievements.