Star Wars Battlefront 2: The next utter disappointment.

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Let’s start off with the positives.

The graphics, sound and gameplay are solid 8/10 and can’t really complain.  We start the story off with a very typical Star Wars story and feel.  The characters are good and this game explains a bit more of how the Empire crumbled (not so easy).  It also explains how the Empire lost more support – by targeting Empire loyal planets.  And it was the Rebellion that came to the aid.

The Arcade single player offers a little bit of fun and multiplayer is also somewhat enjoyable.  I didn’t get the pre-order early release and starting to think that maybe I should.  Once I started playing online.. I got the huge feeling that I was lacking behind.  Every time someone killed me, they knew the maps and had some pretty good abilities (cards) on their character.

That was it.

So the flaws….

Single Player:

The story got worse in my view..  need to destroy 2 AT-ATs? Sure..  you’re in an X-Wing but let’s land and take them down.  There are dozens if not hundreds of fighters in the air right now.. surrounded by large capital ships but no one can spare a moment to help down take the 2 AT-ATs.. instead..  let’s land.  That’s right – any excuse to land.

The trailers didn’t match up.  There was certain cut scenes shown in the trailers that didn’t match how the game cut scenes went..  I was disappointed because it felt like they made a better impact compared to the game (two particular scenes: Naboo of hope and Endor).

We didn’t spend enough time with the main character nor did it really feel like it was long enough.  Instead they gave us a few maps that felt more.. multiplayer related with the Star Wars heroes…  - no joke..  they totally felt like *let’s add these in somehow*..

Multiplayer..  this is what the game is all about and it really does (did) pay to spend money.  Buying a ton of packs which encourages others to compete.. and those cards really do make a huge difference.  I’m now on rank 11 and the boosts turn your poor-average character to a average-very good.  Since boosting I’ve gone from consistently finishing in the bottom half to finishing top half.  I’ve even finished top quite a few times – especially in the fighter matches.  And there’s another problem – you can’t choose exactly what you want to join.  I’d prefer to stick to the same map over and over – to learn it.  Learning these wide maps is very difficult.. there are cracks and tiny areas you can get to.  Also how do you play with your friends? You can’t.

Arcade mode.. waste of time.  They are basic matches and only tier 3 offers any kind of a challenge.

The online store has been shut down – good.  This is not what Disney is about and EA can do it with Fifa but not Star Wars.  Especially when the majority of this game wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t for multiplayer.. EA attempted to turn this in to one cash cow which I do not believe is right. 

So.. with everything in mind.. this is yet another Star Wars disappointment.  I will say this though, it’s an improvement…  but really does explain how it didn’t take long to get this game built.  It doesn’t offer much more than the 1^st one and the single player campaign is average at best and really does leave a bitter taste after such a positive start.  This is a good game at times but thanks to EA – they’ve put little effort in turning this in to something we will remember.  You look at the normal battlefield games – the single campaign is usually created with a big effort.  Each level has meaning to the story.  Star Wars doesn’t even allow you to create your own matches and nor with bots.....

*Update*

So I’ve done a bit of reading.. turns out my review is the reflection of many.   I’ve tried to find out how much this game had in regards to budget.. but no luck.  I would like to see if it was ‘big’ because if I’m honest.. I really don’t think so.  The game isn’t as big compared to Battlefield or its predecessors..  I’d compare this as slightly better than Battlefield 1942 which had no story line. 

Would I recommend in buying it? I’d wait 6 months and then get it.  It will be cheaper and will probably come with some more DLC (probably cheaper or free).   Now I won’t whine about the cost of the game because game sellers do not want to sell something for £15 which is a brand new big game.  Believe it or not – the sellers are the ones that push the prices up.  Something gamers don’t realise… otherwise the game would be sold online through Steam only..

So EA..  thank you again for providing another ‘okay’ money cash cow game.  That too many fans will get bored of after a few weeks.  Games like Counter Strike are gone.  They offered fun, low cost and didn’t require any progressiveness to keep you playing nor allow you to dominate too easily.  The game lasted for many years.

It's sad but this is not the Star Wars game we was looking for and certainly just another cash cow game produced by EA with no real heart for the fans.

Stormblood (SB) The SideQuest

Right let’s get to the positives about SB:

The story is pretty good with some interesting and fun characters.  A few of them you may just fall in love with.  This story has everything you can expect from a typical Final Fantasy.

The new areas are very large and at times feel like a bit too large but I would always choose large over small any day of the week.  You will spend quite a bit of time getting through the new content.

Abilities/Jobs have taken a large refresh with some being removed, some altered and some new ones.  As a WHM and part time BRD during SB I have to say I can’t complain.  I’m happy with these changes and I also the new jobs seems fun.  RDM will be my choice of new one once I’ve finished BRD/PLD to 70.

I think that’s it for the positives….  That’s the sad part.  This was always going to be compared to HeavensWard (HW) which many reviews and even me had said that HW was one of the greatest expansions made.  Not only was it’s story brilliant but the amount of content was unbelievable and its attention to detail was just as good.

SB though severely lacks that attention to detail.  You will find a lot of random buildings you can’t enter.  A lot of small villages which seem to contain about 5 NPCs each and the amount of side quests in this game is just insane.  You will see endless amount of !!!! all over your map.  Even the dungeons feel like something is missing..  what is it?  No new mid boss music, no new main boss music and even the main scenario quests seem to be using same old music.  HW presented endless amount of new music – I’d love to know how much more for those who want to do the comparison for me?

The detail attention is also shown in the new zones.  Where everything feels as if it doesn’t matter.  You’ve got a few nice things to look at but the detail of the zones seems as if they needed a polish.  It almost feels like going back to expansion packs on XI that were never finished.  You’d get some new content, new jobs but you wasn’t able to progress far because SE had not finished none of it yet.  This was my biggest grumble of XI – never being able to finish anything till years later.  The expansions were always missing something.

The usual run all over the map to earn the right to fly.  I sometimes enjoy this but some areas require you to walk all over the map for a single aether.  The worst part?  The locater will not pick up the nearest one.  You could end up walking to the other side just to find out one aether was right next to you – I did this several times.

This time around it really feels like SE didn’t spend the same amount of time working on SB like they did for HW.  Perhaps it was because they spent more time making general game changes like the jobs/abilities?  Maybe it’s because they had to make changes to co-inside with everything?  Even the Duty Finder had gone through a few changes.

Then we get to the release especially Early Access (EA).  Let me get started by saying this isn’t testing BETA or ALPHA EA.  This was a reward for Pre-Ordering the game.  The idea is SE knows exactly how well SB has done before initial release.  The sooner they have numbers the better.  This was not “please test our game for us”.

So those problems: 

• The server transfer to the new Omega EU server struggled after the first few hours of release
• Transfer system completely failed
• Two days wait time if you actually managed to transfer just before the system went down
• Everyone you know had already transferred
• Server you was on is a high busy/populated server
• The server transfer was made available during EA instead of two weeks prior to release
• Severe lag – after SE said it had implement solutions to cut this down
• Unable to proceed during it’s early single player instances – SE had implemented solutions to prevent this
• Random disconnections constantly
• Server queues going up to 6000 I think the highest I had spotted (that’s right queuing before you even start playing)
• High DPS queues of 30minutes – even after SE said this wouldn’t be an issue

You’d think in 2017 when servers are not as expensive as you think (I can spend £10K on a single virtual server).  SE said several times it had implemented a lot to cut down all the above.

This was also during a time SE said they suffered a DDOS attack which in all honesty is very possible.  It’s also possible that SE should have experience in prevention because both XIV/XI has suffered this in the past.  Course I totally accept that nothing is 100% secure as the world finds out daily.

I’ve not touched base on everything – I’ve not touched crafting, not finished the MSQ but I’m very close to it.  I’ve not done all the side quests – far too many.

I believe I gave HW a strong 8/10 or even a 9/10 with little room to improve.  I would have to give SB a weak 6/10 and feels a bit like XI days.  It seems SB has suffered a lack of attention to detail and certainly feels like there’s a lot more that could have been done. 

 

• Not enough new dungeons/trials
• Not enough attention to detail on the areas
• Huge lack of new music
• Lack of new characters
• Story was good but not great
• Bad state of connection/instance problems

 

The Technical Problems

Read on if you care or ignore them if you don’t.  One thing people will always know who work in the IT profession.  The developers are not always the ones at fault but as long as they voice their concerns it’s no longer their responsibility.

I manage a large IT network of almost 1000 PCs, 1800+ users and my network must be online 24/7.  We are around 97% 1GB networking and around the same regarding decent PCs.  We will stick SSDs in most of those machines next year.  So things are not 100% perfect on the speed front.

We do how ever have the ability to increase our equipment needs with no degradation of performance from the servers.  Another words – we could handle another few hundred users connecting up and using their data areas (we call them network drives) with no performance impact.  This is VERY similar to SE and their servers connecting thousands of users concurrently.

It is my job to ask my team to say “are our servers currently stable”.  They can lie to me and say yes – in which case they’re no good to me and I don’t want them in my team.  They won’t do this.

They will instead tell me that the data storage server is currently sitting at 35% remaining which is questionable.  This means we are currently looking at Cloud alternatives or purchasing a new SAN system with 4 times the current storage capacity at least.  We also purchased not long ago a NAS server to deal with our film editing suites (around 100 students doing film studies making large DVD/Blu Ray size videos).

So I say this:  Someone at SE didn’t anticipate this amount of traffic or perhaps secured their system well enough.  DDOS attacks are usually halted by good IT staff in around 24-48 hours.   I know this because I was once part of a network that suffered this and it crippled our broadband connection.  The problem was resolved in around 32 hours suffering a day and a half of impacted lessons.

What SE should have done, is disconnected their system even if it meant the rest of us couldn’t access XIV.  I’d rather have it shut down for a day to resolve the problem and drag it on for a week

SE these are lessons to be learnt.

Update:  So now I’ve gone through the majority of SB and finished the story.  I can’t help but feel unsatisfied. It’s becoming very repetitive where a character never dies, always comes back and never really feels threatening.  Out of all this content only two boss fights stand out.  The final MSQ one – you will know what it is and the ‘different’ boss that doesn’t require fighting.  That’s it.  Also only one dungeon stood out again the last one for the MSQ.  All the others felt disappointing.  Even swimming feels almost underwhelming.  It’s brilliant to finally be able to swim but…. Could have been used more even in dungeons to travel.

Now it’s time for me to cap my gear (which I’m doing quite well on it – new AF is alright but already got about 4-5 pieces better off).  And do my next job and due to the state of DPS queues I will be doing PLD next.

 

The positives:

• I’m happy with the state of job classes
• Swimming
• PVP has greatly improved with queue times very low
• Few good characters
• A huge new City
• Possible known story for 5.0 which I hope see’s the end of… certain type of characters (all the main bad guys appearing since 1.0) and the empire.
• Improved chocobo speed
• General improvements to the game it self (from DF, jobs, menus etc)

I've probably not covered everything but this will do.

Review: Andromeda Mass Effect

If you want to skip to all the negatives please go down to the bottom of this review.  The flaws in this game are fundamental ones in gaming development, not the story, not the characters and certainly not the amount of content.

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Right.  If it wasn’t for those bad points I would be screaming at the top of my voice “WHAT A GAME”.

Instead it’s still a brilliant game.  The story is very typical Sci Fi which will be enjoyable by so many especially Mass Effect fans.  And yes – huge spoilers coming.

So the story

It’s very Sci-Fi and you certainly get the feeling that not everyone will live.  So the Ark which your character starts on arrives in Andromeda to find the Galaxy in a huge mess.  Not only do you have to deal with a weird space spreading anomaly but you’ve got a species who are hell bent on killing you with no remorse.  The previously arrived people have struggled, split and suffered a lot of deaths.  Morale is low and resources are limited.  It really does look like no one will live.

In your first mission you get a huge feeling that something much more is going on in the story.  Ancient ruins, an unknown race willing to kill and this mysterious AI SAM.  Brilliant.

Each planet has plenty to do and plenty of story, my favourite well.. I won’t go in to detail but it had a nice twist at the end.  In fact there seems to be quite a lot of future plot lines coming with teases and hints.    The impressive part is the lack of plot holes, instead it goes out of its way to show you there is more going on.  You learn one of the reasons why they wanted to send people to Andromeda but there’s a mysterious benefactor.

This is all my kind of story, esque of Babylon 5, Halo, Star Trek but more importantly previous Mass Effect games.  Remember this is Mass Effect.

The Characters

There’s too many to name on good ones, bad ones and the annoying.  The important part though is so many become memorable.  The way the characters develop really separates itself from Mass Effect while still being.. well Mass Effect.  Previously it was easy for me to fall out with them and I would wish I could kill them.  This time around they seem willing to follow you but even when there are moments of discourse they still believe in you.  The rivalry this time around only really exists with one people – The Kett.  I will add this, I didn’t like Liam what so ever.  A strange character to me that seemed out of place.

Music and Graphics.  Keep it simple – brilliant and can’t complain.  Typical Mass Effect.

Content

Beyond amazing? I managed to hit 60+hours and still had some simple tasks to achieve and mining, this game has an unbelievable amount of content.   And the important part is some of it is very relevant to finding out what’s been going on.  You find out more about why you’re out here, you find out what’s happened to the other Arks and why working together is important.  You get to establish bases on several colonies which can only be done by completing a ton of side quests etc.  Which is again fantastic.  While driving around you will find little side quests and tasks that you can complete.  The sad part is? When you’ve got to the end.  I can’t stress how much more I want from this game.

I have to add though, the only sad part about establishing bases – you can’t physically build them.  When you start asking yourself what move could they have added to a game that’s almost a master piece…. We do have something that’s worth the money.  I really hope one day in future Andromeda games they will add this feature.   What more could they have added? This is a good thing to say because I can’t think of anything else.  I’ve read a lot of comments from people who have played 40+ hours and said they did everything but somehow managed to miss obvious quests (not tasks they are a bit harder to locate, not always with a quest marker but random locations of something you found)….  Which to be makes me think did they really complete the game and explore everywhere?  I’ve still got some map locations small areas unexplored..  96% complete I currently sit.

I guess one of the reasons why I am almost in love with this game is how single player has not been neglected (content wise).  It’s a bit like giving us a film with zero story or zero character development.  You’re only in for the explosions and deaths.  This game does not neglect single player story nor does it feel like it was etched on a pizza box.  I will rarely buy a game just for its multiplayer features and find it ludicrous to spend large sums of money on a game like that.  When you look at some of the best most played MP games you look at Counter Strike which was never expensive to buy even in its time.  You got a game just for MP and nothing more.

Now we have finally a game that provides a full single player experience.  And unlike COD/BF games it provides more than 15 hours of game play.

UPDATE

So I’ve done something that I rarely do, I’ve started a fresh game (New+) which grants same money, resources and skills to carry over.  I very rarely go through single players again unless the story really grips me and I find the game fun enough.  And even after playing for just two hours I still that sense of enjoyment and need to complete every task.  For me this is quite a thing because not many games make me feel this way.  Even the original Mass Effect games only got me doing this so I could gain the best ending – nothing more.

97% complete with a 2^nd run over, again a few small tasks to complete.  Even with the carry over stats you can still die, you can quickly find your self overwhelmed and still require cover.  The ending is still satisfying – I find this better than Mass Effect 1 by far in regards to how it ended.  There’s a ton of questions you end up asking yourself.  With the original series it was all about the Reapers – nothing more and nothing less.  This game has been designed knowing there WILL be a sequel and that the story for that is already laid out.

I’d recommend this game though.  In fact it makes me wish this was a TV Series on the quality level of Expanse.  If I was rich..  I’d be funding this TV show in a blink.

Special mention notes:

The story does touch base on Commander Shephard from the Milky way, mentions the reapers and attempts to contact the Milk way.  And the good thing is it doesn’t feel like it’s all rushed like Star Wars Episode 3 in the last 10 minutes in the game.  In fact a lot of the extras you have to work for and do a ton of side quests.

Although this for some is a negative people have mention Halo, how the story is quite similar I’m not going to count it as a negative because I can relate Halo to other Sci-Fi’s that existed before.  I won’t count this as a negative, we are seeing a lot of science fiction shows, games and movies touch base on this – existence before us. In fact the original Mass Effect reminds me of Babylon 5 where ancient technology had been discovered on Mars.  It also reminds me of Total Recall and even Doom (game/movie).  So it goes to show before throwing a tantrum at its Halo similar story remember most stories today are not fresh or brand new (let’s face it, most are struggling to come up with brand new ideas) so instead they take old ideas and make them their own – something which has also been done for a long time.  A lot of story lines come from Mark Twain, you have StarGate, Star Trek which have again all touched base with civilisations that existed before us.   Again I’m sure I have missed a lot of shows and games that have done the same.

Conclusion? I’d buy this game in fact I did and it’s been a long time since I didn’t regret paying money for it.  I’ve gained the hours out of it and in all honesty without saying too much I played this game before I purchased it and if it wasn’t for questionable methods I wouldn’t have spent my hard earned money on it.

A weak 8/10 because of the animation issues and glitches galore otherwise this game would be superb.

Other Reviews

I’ve seen others mention the voice acting? Why? They are performed by above Z Lister celebrities who still work.  Some have come from Game of Thrones, one even came from an actor in Cowboys and Aliens working alongside the likes of Harrison Ford (for far more than 2 minutes of screen).  One worked alongside Jennifer Lawrence in Hunger Games.  These are real actors and actresses who are current earners and not exactly struggling for work.

The Story, The references to Mass Effect.

Why are these negative? No seriously.  What’s so wrong in continuing this story?   I think it’s fantastic when a story continues.  I hope we do get to see what happened more from Earth after the Reaper conflict.  That we do indeed find out if civilisation fully survived after it all (because let’s face it they lived but we don’t know any more than that).

I’d like to know if they give us more on the Reapers? Could they be behind the Kett? Will we see some kind of strong link between the Milky Way and Andromeda?

Probably not but who knows.

I wonder if all the people who hate this game, loved the Mass Effect series? That series had its issues, problems, plot holes and yes glitches (just nowhere near as bad as Andromeda).  People need to be comparing this game to Mass Effect 1 which was the start of story not all 3 put together.  I’m finding those who don’t rate this are angry over the way this game is portrayed 600 years later and we have no idea if our beloved characters from the Mass Effect series are alive (they’re not).  The same ones that complained about the ending are complaining how Andromeda ends?  It ends exactly how it should – no more no less.

Right the BAD STUFF

Four things sum up all the negativity in this game – GLITCHES, ANIMATIONS, FACIAL EXPRESSIONS and the AI

You will find:

Quest Glitches (I found two even after the update)

Animation Glitches (although not a ton now with the update – there’s still quite a few)

Questionable Script moments like you’re playing multiplayer with geeks/dorks instead of professional adult script writers but it’s a tiny issue…

Location Glitches

Random Deaths

Cliff Glitches

Shooting through walls (standard mobs)

Mobs hiding in walls (no joke) and still able to shoot you

Serious animation glitches where heads look like they are possessed

And don’t get me started on the EYES that can’t look at you…

Did I mention glitches? Ugh.. those glitches..  they do hit you…

The animations are a serious issue.. they don’t feel like people… and expressions… when a character looks angry they look constipated..  when they look very annoyed.. they look like normal.. when happy, in love and sad they all look normal.  There is only two expressions Very Angry or very Normal.

The AI is very poor, you will find a random guy just stand still while being shot at.  Another AI randomly move for no reason and don’t start on your own allies who at times get in your way.

If the majority of glitches didn’t exist in this game I can’t stress to you that this would truly be a master piece.  Not only the best game in the Mass Effect series but potentially one of the best games of its kind.  It makes you want more, it makes you want to find those little details and that’s before touching Multiplayer.

The good news is, the glitches are being resolved so if you have not purchased this game yet I’d wait till around JUNE 2017 to purchase it.  Most of them hopefully will be a distant memory.