Mass Effect: Andromeda released, in some countries
Blastoff!
Given that hot takes, early access impressions, reviews, and (not very positive) Wot I Thinks have been flying for a week, it feels like Mass Effect: Andromeda [official site] has been out for days. Nope! Today is the official launch day of BioWare Montreal's sci-fi RPG, rolling out through Origin across... certain corners of the world. For some ludicrous reason, the European launch isn't for another day or so - even digitally. Wah wah. But much of the world can now blast off to explore a new galaxy with new spacechums. Here's the dramatic launch trailer:
Andromeda leaves the Milky Way far behind on a mission to find a new home for humanity. Also left behind are the Reapers, now focusing on new enemies and allies. It's quite a disappointing game, John will tell you. As per his Wot I Think:
"I've a very strong feeling that people are going to buy this anyway, and many will milk from it what they can in order to feel rewarded. That’s great. But as a follow-up to the previous trilogy, it’s a timid and tepid tale too heavily reliant on what came before, too unambitious for what could have been, trapped in a gargantuan playground of bits and pieces to do."
If you're lucky to live in the right part of the world, you can now nab Andromeda now. If not, visit its Origin store page and the countdown at the top will tell you how long you need to wait. Here in the UK, that's 11pm on Wednesday. It's all so '07.
EA certainly are capable of simultaneous worldwide launches, as we've seen in recent months with Battlefield 1 and Titanfall 2. And yet, for some games, releases still suffer divisions which don't matter in digital distribution. If you fire up a VPN and pretend your computer's elsewhere, you can play Andromeda now. But nope, officially in Europe we're still waiting because of a daft hangup of physical releases.
Oh, and both AMD and Nvidia have released new drivers to boost performance in Andromeda.