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Two games, both of which take place in sci-fy worlds originally created by developers working for Microsoft whose company name started with B. Both offer squad based shooting with jetpacks. Both come from franchises with driving sections that make you feel drunk while steering. Both given praise by critics even though they kind of suck. Today I'm going to answer the unsolvable question: Is Mass Effect Andromeda worse than Halo 5? Or is the king of disappointing 8th gen installments in once great franchises still on top of that turd hill? Let's go over 

Jetpacks

So apparently all the changes I'm about to tear both of these games a new one over are all fine because jetpacks. It doesn't matter how little respect is shown for the franchise because Jetpacks! It doesn't matter whether the best parts of the series are gone because JETPACKS! It doesn't matter how key components that made combat work in the past are abandoned without an acceptable substitute from competent developers who understand the series

BECAUSE

MOTHER

FUCKING

JETPACKS!!!!!!

But Mass Effect Andromeda's jetpacks offer more mobility and affect gameplay aspects outside combat so it wins.

Loser: Halo 5 (Score 1-0)

Combat

So now that we went over JETPACKS! we can now analyze the rest of the combat. Halo 5 more or less plays the same, yet its combat has relied less on mechanics and more on enemy diversity and variety. In this regard, it falls flat on its face. Sure, Elites, Jackals, Grunts and Hunters are just as diverse as ever, but that's really all there are from the Covenant now. No Brutes or Drones here, which is made even worse by how the Prometheans are more or less the same. Grunts are replaced with robot dogs, but aside from that, Promethean enemies have the same weaknesses and strategies to beat them, they just glow more. The other big change? It's a squad based shooter. In a game that took out split screen multiplayer. Yes, it is natural for you to want to smash things now. 

But then Bioware Montreal decided, "Wait, we have a way to make our combat just as craptacular." And by god did they succeed! Now, for the record, I love the combat to all three Mass Effect games. I love the insanely overpowered ways you can combine powers in 1. I love the slow based, tactical combat of 2. I love the fast paced biotic/tech explosions and massive customization options of 3. So this is a results may vary kind of thing.

But my god, I have no clue what people praise the combat for. It's the one aspect people seem to like and I'm dumbfounded. Remember how you could have a number of different powers at your disposal? Gone, you get three at a time bitch! Remember how you could pause combat to issue commands to your team and have their powers compensate for your class' weaknesses? Combat pausing is gone and your team is there to divert bullets and little else. Not to mention it draws attention to how Mass Effect combat lacks the polish to get away without having a combat pause mechanic. So it ends up feeling like a mess, especially with the jetpack making combat more chaotic and a cover system that still didn't feel right 20 hours in. And while there's tons of powers to level up, the balancing is a joke so relying on the same few is the smart thing to do. 

Loser: Mass Effect Andromeda (Score 1-1)

Multiplayer

Next we go over the multiplayer, where results are surprising. See, Halo has always had multiplayer as a strong part of its appeal, with some people barely bothering with the campaign. But while on paper Halo 5 had some of the strongest offerings with plenty of new ideas and fresh takes, 343 went too far with microtransactions and made the game pay to win. Mass Effect Andromeda does not do this so we don't even need to look at anything else it did.

Loser: Halo 5 (Score 2-1)

Graphics

I can trash 343 until the cows come home for what they think is acceptable game design. But god damn do they make their games look pretty. Mass Effect Andromeda, on the other hand, somehow looks worse than the original trilogy. Don't believe me?

Loser Mass Effect Andromeda (Score: 2-2)

Characters

I can remember about three characters from Halo 5. Know what they all have in common? They were in Halo 1-3. Now, these aren't great characters, but I remember them which is something. Even so, the bar is pretty low and Bioware is known for great characters more than anything so......oh.......

Let's start with MEA's party. Liam is as boring as a Halo 5 character. Cora has a cool idea (human trained by Asari), which means she's not as boring as a Halo 5 character, but close. Vetra is okay. She's tied to a ME3 character which is cool and has some decent dialog, but not too memorable. Drack is a Krogan. Krogan are awesome, but Wrex and Grunt were much more interesting so he feels lacking. Okay overall, just hard not to compare him to his better counterpart. Jaal feels like a second rate Javik, being from a foreign species, but not half as interesting as him, both character wise and in regards to his species. Has the same issue as Drack, but not as interesting as him. Peebee is....pretty damn awesome. Weird sense of logic and morality, pretty blunt and funny. Great character overall.

So the party is three borings, two okays, and one great character. The rest of the characters? Painful. Zaeed's son is cool, but everyone else was god awful. Ryder offers cringey, awful dialog constantly making every conversation with any character painful. And these are not interesting people. They're weirdos who abandoned their old lives for weird, unrelatable reasons. We keep hearing about wanting to explore like old colonists, but those guys had financial incentives. They wanted to return and profit off their exploits, not live in these weird, less civilized worlds they'd need to start from scratch. This could have been overcome if they all wanted to escape the Reapers, but no. They're just weirdos. And the Krogan are diplomatic for some reason even though the trilogy pointed to no clan fitting that description and it makes them so much less interesting.

So I'm torn. MEA's good characters are better, but its bad ones are much worse. And there were more bad than good in that game, but Peebee is still a damn great character. Need a tie breaker, so.....Halo kept Keith David for the new games and Mass Effect Andromeda removed him. This is important.

Loser: Mass Effect Andromeda (Score 2-3)

Story

Both stories have very interesting ideas, but don't work. Halo 5 has you follow a new character somehow with less personality than Master Chief but none of his badass moments for the bulk of the game. The Chief's missions follow a much more interesting thread that unfortunately ends on a cliffhanger. The rest of the story makes no sense. Maybe if you read the novels you can piece it together, but as is, bleh.

Mass Effect Andromeda's premise is a plot hole. Seriously. The whole point of the Andromeda initiative is to colonize other worlds they saw habitable. Yet no one fathomed in the 600 years it takes to get there, things may be different. There's no contingency plan for this. For context, 600 years ago in our time, Columbus had not left for America. Think of how much things changed in that time. And yet billions of dollars were funded into a plan with no chance of financial gain for backers (unless maybe they were Asari or Krogan), no backup plan of if things go wrong to investors, and regardless of human and Krogan stance in the ME universe, races are working together. 

I mean, I don't need to go any further, do I? Yes, the twists end up being fairly predictable, the characters (as stated above) get pretty awful, and the dialog is dreadful. But that this detail was never second guessed. That's just a new level of bad.

Loser: Mass Effect Andromeda (Score 2-4)

Glitches

We both know the outcome here.

Loser: Mass Effect Andromeda (Score 2-5)

So yeah, mark Mass Effect Andromeda down for my worst game of 8th gen. Granted I have not finished it, but the thought of 80 hours with that game makes me want to puke. I wasted 20 before realizing I value my free time way too much to spend any more with that game. I'm done. Halo can at least be salvaged with 6. I'm not holding my breath, but there's a sliver of hope there. I couldn't be happier that Bioware is shifting away from Mass Effect. Let it sit for however long it needs, then go back and just ignore this mess that was Andromeda. Or just leave my with my original trilogy. I'd rather the series be dead if this is the quality they think they can get away with.