Eric and I bring on a guest host, Ron Talbot, to discuss Mass Effect Andromeda. We all took an afternoon on release day to play single player and multiplayer in the same room. We all came away impressed at the overall mechanics but less impressed with the user interface and numerous bugs. And while the character generation system seemed to need more cooking, we still managed to create some interesting characters. We also have thoughts about the idea of early release schemes, and how they might adversely affect the overall impression of the game for potential players.
We also spent a little time on multiplayer, and discover Bioware avoided screwing up a good thing. Multiplayer in Andromeda feels like Mass Effect 3 multiplayer with just a few twists. And that’s a good thing.
So Eric buys a pair of Apple Airpods and has fallen totally in love with them. He thinks that the Airpod team somehow epitomizes the old Apple magic that seems to be gone from the rest of the company. He also wrapped up S.A. Corey’s Leviathan Wakes, the first novel in The Expanse series, and loves it. And on the purely tools front, Eric’s migrated from Arduino Uno to Mini Pro for maker projects.
I’ve been giving a go with Razer’s Black Widow X Chroma, which uses the Razer Green key mechs while eliminating the cruft that comes with the standard Chroma — it’s just a barebones IBM keyboard layout, though I do wish for dedicated media controls. The Ryzen 1800X system survives Andromeda Day with a big thumbs up — the system experienced a single crash the entire afternoon, which bodes well. On the reading front, I’ve started on John Scalzi’s The Collapsing Empire, which has an interesting take on faster-than-light travel and its implications. I’ve also been rewatching Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the seminal Joss Whedon series that still seems fresh after twenty years.