lzim

Well I almost burned them.

I cut them bigger than I usually do but left them to bake for the normal amount of time. After the oven's timer went off they weren't done yet so I left them in for another 8 minutes.

Those extra 8 minutes don't cost anything. There's little risk. The amount of time they needed to bake though.. I just guessed that it should be 8 minutes. I could have left them in for 5 and they'd have been perfect. Or maybe 12 and they'd have burned.

I didn't finish eating them because I should be sleeping right now. I can't though.

I could play a game.. but just don't want to.

I'm pretty much done with HZD which is good because that means I could be playing Mass Effect: Andromeda.

HZD is a game that's just about perfect. Andromeda though?

I don't know.

Makes me almost feel bad about all the little things with HZD that were annoying me. I would have asked why BioWare has all these massive concepts of places in Mass Effect but you're only able to visit tiny fractions of them. I do appreciate that part of the reason for this is that having such detailed locations means too much to put into memory at once. Fine. Why is that still an issue in computers with upwards of 8 gigs of RAM? 4 times or more what was there before. Ignoring that there would be much more work to do to make the rest of the Nexus worth visiting.. I don't understand why the areas you can visit are to so tiny and the load times are so nonsensically long. Something like how is it you can go from one side of the world in most open world games to the other without load times, but changing floors in Mass Effect requires load times.

Just make even bigger places and leave them unfinished.. no one cares. It's fine. No one even expects a large sandbox while aboard a ship or station.

Kind of annoying when you had the sprawl and the shuttles that eventually came into play but you couldn't actually fly yourself around. It felt like the game fell short of cyberpunk whether or not that was what the secret sauce of the game's setting was.

I missed that you couldn't fly them because there were a couple of games with flying cars that did that mechanic very well. Something like why hasn't GTA done it yet or why it is something that's avoided in a game that has vehicles you can pilot (Mako etc). Having pods that you step into, they move around, and you step out of without a break for loading.. how's that so much to ask for? It's the least they could do to stop breaking immersion when you're expected to keep going back and forth on the Nexus in the early hours of the game.

At least then the bar would be set though. Other games would have to fix this issue too if that was the case. Just being more seamless and trying to do more to stop breaking areas apart.

But then the larger issue with Mass Effect was always that the larger issue was the scale of the game being that of gallivanting around the galaxy didn't jive to begin with. Yes the relay system helped make that scale make a little sense, the lack of planets and points of interest otherwise for a galaxy made the scale seem nonsensical and that was never reconciled.

Bloodless stare. Teeth Grinding.

What they did do though was make the deeply developed areas on the planets you could visit interesting. Taking a step back from that for Andromeda is like yanking the still beating heart of the franchise out. Not that they intended to use much from the original series apparently.

Many journalists are giving the game a pass but they are also noting how imperfect it is, some more savagely than others. I figure a few of them played the first few games so they'd know how different this one is. The more passionate ones I would understand would be quicker to savage this game. A distinction between the actual savages and the professionals. But since the games are so old, going back to the original being an exclusive to the original Xbox it is almost worth ignoring any journalist that doesn't reference those old games nostalgically. They probably don't know what it was like.

Starting with the characters alone.. wait.. no that's plenty enough. I can't take Andromeda seriously if I can't even consider the characters to be as well developed as even the first game. It's just been downhill since the 2nd.

Actually the single thing that's better than the original trilogy so far is that the planetary structures are bigger and more diverse than the cookie cutter settlements from the first game. Now.. that would be well and good except if most of the game is about setting up habitable worlds were the ones you have to start with need work.. Just mine the ones that at least are close. I'd hope that ones you have a few worlds set up you could have worlds like the first game that have shitty cookie cutter habs and mining and production capacity for whatever resources you'd need to set up infrastructure on those habitable worlds.

So like.. hang on wait. This is a story game not a base building RTS.. nevermind.

One journalist, @Legeodith on twitter, posted an article to cheat cc which had come up on Google Now with an interesting point.

Maybe they could have just delayed it using the time to add more to it. Given it more life. If there was more public exposure during it's design and development ramp up we could have pointed out some of the bigger flaws. But that's not how game dev works for games from EA's studios. They are beyond reproach and are working on a series that prints money.

Maybe.. however, as I pointed out to her that's not the problem. No amount of extra time in the oven could have helped Andromeda to avoid these bad initial reviews. Mass Effect 3 should have been delayed but instead they just rushed it out the door, eventually offering a good multiplayer update AND an new ending. So it was fine despite the uproar.

This possibly leading to the current BioWare leadership considering themselves to be beyond reproach. Nothing we, the fans, could say would have changed anything. Nothing they could have done would have changed the game to make it perfect.

We'll just have to enjoy what they produced or bin it. Few are suggesting to bin it. But also few are saying it is worth buying.

There's no way to know if the current BioWare powers that be had that in mind when they decided to make Andromeda or if it was something that evolved along the way. The result is something I just don't care for and will, for the most part to conserve what little sanity I have left, ignore.

In the last couple of days I realized why Andromeda isn't what it should be. Regardless of it being BioWare's brand to do with whatever they please.. the original series had staples. Guns to shoot, worlds to explore, characters to get to know and love and enemies to destroy. From what little I can pick up from trailers and articles.. almost none of them come through.

So would delaying the game possibly have changed it at all? No. They is fundamental stuff. There are fundamental problems with Andromeda. It's its own thing.

What seems to be at issue is how much hard work went into the original series. The first game's struggles to define itself despite a conflict of interest against Halo. Despite that conflict Mass Effect was its own game and introduced the series and gameplay concepts and method of storytelling that as a whole are still viable today.

You don't see any games masquerading as Mass Effect clones or anything.. but that's also because you don't see many shooters having great characters and story, or for that matter much of any story to justify all the killing and lack of anything else for the player to do. When the second game brought even more characters and places and things to do.. even though it dropped some elements from the original gameplay mechanics.. even more players got pulled into the franchise. The idea that hey this game, and the original are great! That's all they'll think while playing Andromeda and how it fails to live up to the other games, doing so intentionally.

WHY?!

But then the third one. As above, they could have left it in longer to bake until it was perfect. But it released per schedule and was what it was. It wasn't a bad game and it introduced multiplayer. Co-op multiplayer. There was and still isn't really anything like it. Destiny comes close with its co-operative strikes and raids but Mass Effect will always remain a more mature take on it.

It felt like a sci-fi TV show in a video game format. Recently The Expanse started to revive what it was like to play Mass Effect's original trilogy. In many ways it's more true to that kind of story telling and combat than Andromeda. Even the aspect of romance carries over.

My cookies weren't burnt but they aren't perfect either. Mass Effect was not a perfect game because it was buggy. But like my cookies each of the original 3 games was acceptable.

I'm trying to think how Andromeda could be so bad (per the reviews that say so) when it should be so much better. BioWare even had Frostbite to work with. And it wasn't their first Frostbite title. It certainly isn't their first RPG. Obviously some of the talent responsible for the art style, gameplay mechanics, even the UI and audio and such might not be the same people.. but how do you see something that was so successful and just throw everything out?

To be replaced with.. the first murder in Andromeda! I'm sorry. They've been there how long? Yeah ok fuck. A 'murder' wouldn't have taken that long even with everyone still in cryo sleep. I can't take any of it seriously.

Eventually I realized what was irritating me. Not that no games were modeled after Mass Effect's success but that Andromeda seems to be a Borderlands clone without any of the actual spice that makes that series successful. Also maybe a little too much fallout. Some real lack of idealism even though I understand they are dealing with too many shitty things happening at once for them to feel really supportive of the initiative. I'd be like, hello!! you fools!! you knew there would be a risk involved and well fuck us all we've hit snake eyes and have to deal with these shitty circumstances. Instead of putting their best selves forward some of the characters just don't seem to give a fuck.

I'd be like SLAP! Look over there. Those are Krogans. They have their shit together and they are probably the worst off species in the milky way. They are out here because they believe in the initiative. Get your shit together etc.

Like the current staff at BioWare went.. hmmm.. we could try to make another Mass Effect and fail and please few.. or fill the void that is a lack of Borderlands 3. Just rip off what that game should be and call it our own.

There's also that over 600 years little has changed. I'm like yeah I get that most of that 600 years was cryo sleep but are you telling me that the day the reaper threat was thwarted that was it?!

Like I'm not actually done with the old series. I'd started 2 by ripping the shit out of it. Might have been 1. Either way, the way they'd set up the 'galaxy', bothered me. As the series matured it was like whatever. It wasn't about how large and otherwise unexplored the galaxy was, but how close everything that was settled was to the Relay network.

With it being knocked out.. there's some kind of gap between oh shit we're fucked! to ok we're able to travel between galaxies in cryo sleep.

:/ dafuq?!

I'm not paying $70 to be caught up on some shitty reason how that became suddenly possible.

(I'm watching Ladyezkay play the game on Twitch. She stopped for a sec to order food. There's an Asari walking back and forth.. I'm guessing just photobombing or something..?)

In that respect I'm like.. Andromeda is a reset for the series or some kind of spin-off to the series that can't be expected to fix anything that the old game left hanging.

It's just I'm reminded that hey! what with all the different species getting all hot and heavy.. why aren't there any half breeds?

The original series came off as somewhat racist. But more like they never investigate that issue of how exactly are you able to romance other species? The story covers Asari in this respect by saying that's their trick. They survive by being able to mate with any other species but baby Asari pop out. The upside being all the benefits of being a hot long lived Asari. The downside being at some point the entire milky way will eventually be Asari.

And those poor Krogan. I'm not expecting human-krogan half-breeds but you'd have to think IF that was a thing that would up their genetic viability some as human females are pretty good with producing a number of viable offspring every solar cycle versus only 1 in every few dozen surviving.

It's the type of thing that the original series was good about but didn't, as a video game, have much room to flesh out.

Arguably if the Krogan DID manage to defeat the genophage by any means they'd become targets all over again. Shrugs.

Best just not to think about it too much.