My Actifit Report Card: March 21 2021

I didn’t do an update for yesterday, but only because it was bedtime and I hadn’t done it and I figured I’d do the responsible adult thing and get some sleep instead of updating.

Yesterday was fairly productive; I finished a lot of little things for Exoworld, the game I’ve been working on, and did my normal amount of writing on the side. Today was largely devoted to classwork in the morning (thanks procrastination!), but I let myself have the afternoon and the rest of the day off, in part because I wrote over two thousand words just to get my classes’ requirements done for the day. I really shouldn’t count on that ability going forward, since just because I can knock out so many words in a short timeframe doesn’t mean I always will.

I’ve been continuing to read more and getting other stuff done to just use my time practically, but I let myself play a fair amount of video games today without feeling guilty about it.

My recent kick’s been Mass Effect: Andromeda, which I let pass when it first came out in part because it was notoriously poorly polished. Since I have a Microsoft Game Pass subscription and EA Play came to Game Pass, I’ve been playing a little of a handful of games to see which clicked with me, and I’m surprised how much I liked it.

One thing that I find really fun about it is how compelling the stakes are. I’m not a fan of some characters and some dialogue, but the whole “clear things out to establish a new colony in another galaxy” loop has been holding up pretty well for the few hours I’ve been playing, even though it’s not particularly robust in storytelling.

Also, unlike players who played at launch, I’ve had a largely glitch-free experience, with my worst issues being a single crash (which I may have induced by messing around with some stuff because I have an urge to tinker with every game I play) and an enemy getting stuck inside a solid object. Some of the faces are still horrific, to the point where I’m considering actually installing a cosmetic mod because I don’t want to see those dreadful visages in my dreams, but it’s a pretty game. I’m on an ice planet, and the vistas are pretty even on my “I don’t want to see my frame-rate ever dip and my computer came out before this game did” settings.

I’ve always had a love-hate relationship with Mass Effect. I liked the first, and when I played the second I fully completed it in a single 48-hour binge during my undergrad years when I could apparently get away with that without causing myself a medical emergency. The third was so extremely uncompelling to me that I never played it. I might try it when the Legendary Edition remaster comes out (if they put it on the EA Play tier that comes with Game Pass), since I’m actually enjoying Andromeda enough to consider going back to the classics.

The UI in Andromeda is pretty obviously designed for controller (though I do have a controller plugged in, so if I’m going to complain about that I should probably check that I haven’t put myself in a console mode, but I doubt EA redid the PC UI for a keyboard and mouse beyond what I see), and there are a few weird things, but it works pretty well.

This report was published via Actifit app (Android | iOS). Check out the original version here on actifit.io

Walking