I did enjoy Andromeda (especially the hilarious tired facial glitches and animation), but I didn't feel the same joy that I felt with the first three games. The missions were alright, not great. I just think that more could have been done with the story. It just felt a little too short to me, and I even did all the side missions because I like doing those before the main ones. The worlds did seem bigger, more to explore, but most of the time they were empty and only served as some kind of pace changer to make you ride around your vehicle. The interior levels were cool, but I think the ones in the first three games gave more of a mysterious and majestic feeling. I think the feeling of mystery is the main thing missing from Andromeda. I remember when I first played ME1 and I reached that one planet where people disappeared, it had this mysterious twilight zone vibe to it. I loved it. Andromeda didn't really have any unexpected mysteries for me. I already knew that I was probably going to find artifacts to help fight the bad guy and I was correct. I wish next time the Mass Effect universe would bring back the mystery and the joy of discovery.
I'm currently playing this game on the PC with all the graphical settings at very high. So far so good, graphically it's beautiful. My usual type of games are violent ones where I can cause a lot of chaos like the GTA series and the recent Ghost Recon Wildlands, but I also do like "artsy" introspective games. Hellblade is definitely not for everyone, this is a game that's not on my regular line-up of games to play.
Anyway, I can compare this to one of those "walk simulators" like Gone Home, except it's in the 3rd person perspective plus you also get to do some fighting from time to time. You walk or run (thank goodness for the run key!) from one place to another, finding little tidbits of this lady's past. At the end of certain places is a boss that you'll have to beat up.
Although there are no fighting tutorials, you can listen to the crazy voices in the character's head for tips on what to do. For example, while fighting a certain boss who suddenly became armored or very tough, I didn't know what to do. I dodged, blocked his attacks, tried to slice him from behind but nothing worked. Suddenly, I heard the voice say "Focus!". Focus is the E key on the pc and so I did, even though it sounded strange to "focus" on the boss as if my character was focusing on one of those little stone monuments that narrates stories to you along the way. Upon activating focus, I found that the boss suddenly got frozen and my attacks were now working on him. Sometimes you just have to listen to the voices in the character's head to figure things out.
When it comes to hunting for those symbols/letters, they're pretty easy. You walk around and the closer you get to an area where that symbol can be found in the environment, the symbol will be centered on your screen. Once it's centered, you then have to look around the area to find an object (or a bunch of them) that forms the shape of that symbol. You focus on the object that looks like it and you're done.
The tasks do feel repetitive, but I think the main point of the game is not really to give the player a variety of gameplay options. I see this game more of a story telling device than an actual full fledged action game. I think this is a game that only people who like listening and learning about stories can appreciate. It might be rated "Mature", but so far I haven't seen anything totally gross or offensive. I guess they meant "Mature" as in adults who like psychological stories, drama, battles with mental illness, self-discovery, that sort of thing. The only nude bodies I've found so far are corpses that are pretty much decomposed or burned.
In the end, I do find this entertaining simply because it's a change of pace from my usual game preferences. It's fun listening to the stories of what happened in this girl's life, what she's looking for, how the legends relate to what she's doing, and the voices in her head are also interesting to listen to. I just wish there were more brutal fighting moves because I find them to be pretty generic looking. It's graphically a very beautiful game if you can set it to very high and it does a good job of giving the environments a variety of moods. If you can enjoy walking simulator games like Dear Esther and Gone Home, you'll probably enjoy this as well.
Nothing wrong with this. Don't be offended/outraged by everything. It's just a game, a form of entertainment. Everybody has his/her own political statement. The important thing is they make sure the game is fun and interesting. Laugh at yourself, laugh at other people.
I want "Create a Character" in this (which they seem to only add on special sequels). I guess they're going the Toukiden 2 level design style where everything's a giant single map. I wonder how they're supposed to pull that off when there's supposed to be huge cities and fortresses involved.
US - cartoons barely have violence or blood, games have no problem showing exploding bloody body parts, for some reason human genitalia and sex are censored as if they're evil, never meant to be seen.
Japan - anime shows children in all sorts of violent situations, bloodied, tortured, ripped to shreds by monsters and fellow humans, everything is pretty much sexualized, has trouble showing with a little gore.
If mods got sold, valve gets a cut right? Maybe that's why they were pushing so hard for paid mods.
Anyway, speaking from experience as a modder (George Romero mod for Dead Island and State of Decay series), if I wanted to work on mods full time, I'd just be a full time game developer instead and join a team to make games and actually earn money. Working full time on a mod and expecting to make it a regular source of income is not a practical idea. Only certain games, mostly the open world ones like GTA, have the potential to allow all sorts of insane mod ideas possible because of the simulated free world. How many of them even exist? Even then, these games only have a "lifespan" of around 3 to 5 years, and that's if they're really good like the GTA series. The not so popular ones are even forgotten just months after release. Look at Saints Row, it's barely mentioned these days, yet GTA V which was released a long time ago still has a very active community. Just because a game is open world doesn't mean it will have the staying power, which makes trying to mod full time to earn money a huge risk. Working full time to make mods means that you are at the mercy of when the next game in the series will be released and how popular it will become, if ever.
Modding is usually done as a hobby, a labor of love, something you do for fun to escape from the stress of real life and whatever job is paying you regularly each month. Modding takes a lot of time, self-learning, sometimes you even have to build the tools yourself. The moment you insert the factor of real life money into it, you start losing the fun. You'll be more afraid to commit mistakes. You'll be overly cautious with the things that you update or release to the public. That's where you lose the magic and freedom of modding games. When modding, you have to be open to all sorts of insane ideas, even those that don't make sense. You need to be experimental and you need to enjoy making mistakes that result in crazy stuff. You do them even if you don't think anybody will like them just because you personally think it'll be fun. You don't give a damn about what anybody else will say. You are not worried about making or losing money, you are simply thinking about fun and what you want to happen. You don't have to be "perfect".
Another problem is when it comes to bigger mods where original content such as character models and levels are involved. Many people form impromptu teams for these sorts of things. Some specialize in animation, others in modeling/sculpting, others in scripting. In essence, they are pretty much a game dev team except on a limited modding level. So when money is involved, who has to be paid more? The character/level modeler who spent a week creating them? The scripting/programming guy who works continuously day and night? The quality assurance guy who has to find the bugs every day? The person who makes and edits videos to showcase the mod's capabilities? Suddenly there will be a lot of drama involved where team members will quit in the middle of development because they don't feel like they're getting a fair share. What used to be fun suddenly became work. There is a difference between the stress you get from having fun and the stress you get from having to worry about making money.
Paid mods will never bring anything good to the modders and the gamers. It will only cause all sorts of complicated problems. People who work on mods are united in the idea that they are just doing it for fun and for the love of a game, and that's why at most they only have a Paypal donation account so whoever appreciates their work can just give however much they want if they feel like doing so. Introduce money (which is something we ALL need) as a requirement to use mods and watch the chaos ensue.
You cannot suddenly insert something as important as money into the equation and not expect any consequences or major changes in how things work.
Adenosine's comments