Recent reviews by youthful_avenger

This is actually pretty good, despite being pretty bad.

I will try and justify that statement.

It's very hard to explain why it's fun, the gunplay feels off - weapons have no weight to them, and plasma weapons make you feel like you need to lead your target, leading to infuriating misses. So the shooting is *(ironically) a bit hit or miss, but what else is there? Maybe it's the story, but that has it's ups and downs too.

There's a lot of content. There's lockpicking, hacking, stealth, shooting, crafting, inventory management, exploration, levelling, gun upgrades, dialogue trees, optional objectives, multiple endings, romances - all of these are done serviceably at worst, and well at best. I think this is what makes it good, there's so much stuff going on, and none of it ever feels bad. Even the gunplay felt better when playing infiltrator mode after the main campaign - the problem there is more likely to be the spongy enemies.

The soundtrack is very, very good - it's a shame the terrible default audio mixing makes it so it's the only thing you can hear. Dialogue is completely drowned out with the default settings - I turned all other sounds down to 75% and STILL couldn't hear characters at times.

The checkpoint system can at times feel a little sucky, but the game isn't that hard anyway - I played on max difficulty and only had 1 frustrating experience in a 12 hour playthrough.

And it's also a great tie in for the first two films.

Overall it's probably a 7/10, far better than I expected, and good enough that I've purchased the DLC to play more.

It's an insult that Andromeda currently sits at a 'mixed' rating on Steam. The game is genuinely great!

No, it's not on the same level as the original trilogy, but very few games are. As a standalone title, it's a solid 8/10. The main issues holding it back are occasional patches of weak writing (though the voice acting often compensates) and a few too many bugs and performance issues. Plus, the unskippable cutscenes for takeoff, landing, and moving around the galaxy can become seriously infuriating over time.

Combat, however, is a highlight. Despite a lack of enemy variety, the powers combo well together, and the guns feel varied and useful for different situations. The N7 Valkyrie assault rifle is a bit overpowered, turning the Insanity difficulty into a joke, but hey, I still had fun.

Where the game stumbles most is with its characters. Compared to the original trilogy, they feel weaker overall. With the exceptions of PeeBee and Drack, most of the squadmates come across as somewhat bland — though they're still better than Jacob. That said, the interactions between squadmates, both during missions and in downtime, are a nice touch. Bioware excelled here, with 15 possible combinations of squadmates, there’s a lot of unique dialogue to discover. While I frequently had PeeBee or Drack on my team, I found myself rotating through the others just to hear more of their banter.

The explorable planets are stunning and vast, even if they are a bit sparsely populated. Thankfully, fast travel is available if you’re not in the mood for a long drive. Navigating with the Nomad is surprisingly enjoyable — turns out Bioware can make a decent vehicle — though I do wish it had a higher top speed. Each world is filled with side quests (likely to compensate for the relatively short main plot), and they’re generally interesting enough to keep you engaged.

My advice: don't jump into this right after finishing the original trilogy. Give it some time, then pick it up. It's absolutely worth the sale price, and considering the amount of time I got out of it, I'd have happily paid full price too.

I had no idea what was going on half the time and I just finished playing the first one. 7/10.

Pretty fun FPS with annoyingly OP enemy AI. They can easily spot you at ludicrous range and through walls.

Buuuut you're more OP so it's fine. As with the first game, fighting humans is way more fun than dealing with aliens.

If you're not in tears within the first five minutes, then something is wrong with you.

For a game from 2006 it still has a lot of charm. Even if it's poorly optimised. Oh and prepare for major motion sickness in the 'Core' mission.

Overall it's fun, but quite a bland experience in 2024.

The best out of the first 3. Still not Until Dawn levels of quality but much closer this time.

In terms of characters, Jason in particular is very well written, and Salim is also really good. The other 3 main characters are serviceable, but nothing special. I did manage to kill one of them off pretty early, so I'm under the impression that I missed out on some content there.

The plot is significantly more coherent than the previous two entries and has good pacing throughout. Dialogue is a bit hit or miss, I didn't care for the unnecessary love triangle thrown into the plot, and there's the odd bit of daft dialogue about the Iraq war (the game is set in 2003, but the dialogue is written with the knowledge we have now) but it's not enough to detract from the experience.

Overall it's a good horror film in the format of a game. Just don't play on the top difficulty, unless you want all the characters to die because you can't do a QTE in 4 milliseconds.

Need for Speed before it went to ****. A solid 8/10, something braindead to play when you have nothing else to do.

It's a fun game for the most part, terrible port though - capped at 60 and has massive input lag. Mods can fix most of the issues.

AI rubberbanding has and always will suck.

The stupid camera showing me something idgaf about, then returning me to my car as I'm hurtling towards a wall at 200mph. Sure the cinematic angles do look pretty cool, but there absolutely should be an option to turn it off. It causes more problems than it's worth.

Well it's better than Man of Medan... But that was a 5 on a good day.

It did a pretty good job of being creepy for the majority of the story, and manages to tell a mostly coherent plot.

The ending is pretty bad (personally I was 90% of the way to predicting the ending but I don't think many people will have the same experience), it always felt like I knew more than the game expected me to know. There is also a massive drop in quality towards the end.

Supermassive are really trying hard to recapture some of the magic of Until Dawn, but it is only able to reach those heights for brief moments before weak dialogue, or ridiculously predictable jumpscares ruin the moment.

Seriously, expect a jumpscare every 10 minutes, it's way overdone.

Buy it on sale, expect a slightly above average interactive horror game and it's probably worth it.

Didn't see that coming...

Thanks to this game I now know how to be an overbearing "nice guy" and socially inept! 2 of the 3 stories are poor, hence the negative review. Honestly though the second one is pretty strong and the game is cheap enough that it's not a waste of money - I'm not refunding it and I didn't like it.

The first story is laughably bad with you being forced into a relationship for no reason other than the fact that she is the only female in the vicinity. And judging by our characters responses it's also the only female he has ever spoken to. Both characters here were completely unlikable to me. Honestly mate you're better off being single, she's toxic af.

Story 2 is better, maybe even actually good. Both endings to this are great.

Story 3 is a waste of time.