The combat is where Andromeda shines. As in the earlier Mass Effects, you are a mix of super-soldier and quasi-Jedi who can rush into just about any situation, smash numerous enemies, and survive. Depending on how you customize your Ryder, encounters can play out in a number of varied but satisfying ways. I focused most of my upgrades into capabilities that enabled me to charge into combat and then do melee strikes and shotgun blasts. But you can also play it as a Gears of War-style cover shooter where you have Force-like powers to lift enemies out from behind obstacles. Or you can also play as a sniper demolitionist, or any number of other combinations.
Andromeda makes you feel cool. It helps that you character has a jump pack that enables them to burst forward, backward, left, or right at any time. It also helps that a lot of the powers look smashing or have devastating damage animations. For example, the concussive shot you get early hurls at your enemy with a cool curve-ball effect, and when it lands, it often flings foes into the air.
During the campaign, fighting was easily the most fun I had with Andromeda, even if it’s not what I came to the game for.
Pulpy science-fiction
Science fiction may often seem like the default genre of all video games, but it’s quite rare to get something that feels like it’s in the tradition of Star Trek. These days, most futuristic sci-fi comes with apocalyptic connotations. In that environment, it is counterintuitively refreshing to get something like Mass Effect: Andromeda that feels like its story might fit well in a cheap paperback extended-universe Babylon 5 novel at the grocery store.
After Ryder wakes up from their 600-year sleep and begins fighting with new aliens, you quickly discover that your trip to this new galaxy isn’t going as planned. Each of the major species from the Milky Way came to find new home planets in Andromeda, but only the Earthling vessel has safely arrived — and even your ship showed up late. On top of the missing arks (of course the ships are called arks), the planet humanity has chosen as its potential new habitat is covered in life-threatening radiation and is under attack by some kind of manifested artificial dark-energy cloud.
It falls to your father, the chosen Pathfinder, to sniff out a viable new planet. You join him on his exploration of the first world, where you encounter and kill the Kett, an ostensibly Andromeda-native species that is a mashup of Klingons and the Borg. You also stumble across a vault from a “Remnant” species that has technology can instantly terraform planets … convenient, that is.
From that predictable setup, it comes down to you to spearhead humanity’s exploration of Andromeda while also evading the Kett and helping out the other aliens — both those from the new galaxy and your old home.
This isn’t great storytelling. I found a dozen gaps in the plot and premise that don’t add up. But I was also happy to spend some time in a sci-fi world like this one.
Satisfying multiplayer
The other stand-out feature of Mass Effect: Andromeda is its cooperative multiplayer. Players fight off waves of enemies like in Gears of War’s horde mode. You and three friends can get together and take on multiple difficult tiers where you mostly kill aliens but occasionally have to defend or activate an objective.
It’s a simple addition, but it’s one that is fun thanks to the combat and the varied playstyles. It is a riot to see that roles that the other players on your team are taking and choosing a character with abilities that complements them and fills in any gaps they are leaving open.
What you won’t like
Rote missions
Mass Effect: Andromeda feels small and boring. It works like the series always has; you go around the galaxy, find characters, and take on missions. What that really comes down to is following a waypoint, talking to someone or fighting someone, and then getting a new one to follow.
In the first three games, the window dressing of the conversations and the galactic traveling was enough to make appear more than what it was … or maybe in the past, I cared more about the conversations and the destinations I was traversing the galaxy to reach.
In Andromeda, all of those trappings feel like limitations.
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