Playing Mass Effect: Andromeda’s

“ Clearly designed with the jetpack in mind.

We played 1-7 of the horde-style waves, on a particularly-vertical map called Firebase Sandstorm. It’s a level clearly designed with Andromeda’s new jetpack feature in mind - if you’re feeling overwhelmed on one of the higher levels, jetpacking down to safety is a comforting way out, and in that, it feels a little closer to Halo’s Firefight than Gears of War’s Horde Mode. That said, there is an auto-cover system to help you shield yourself from incoming gunfire in situations you can’t jump away from, but it didn’t always work when I wanted it to, and sometimes I’d get into cover when I wasn’t trying to at all.

Cover is really the only thing that’s automated, though, with multiplayer having a wealth of customization options. There are three difficulties, you can choose what faction you want to fight against, and choose what kind of class and race you want to fight as. Our team of four had a Human Adept, Human Soldier, Asari Sentinel and my beloved Krogan Vanguard. We had assigned skills and were already at level 10 for the purposes of the preview, and I particularly had some very ‘light’ weapons (a Carnifex I and M-8 Avenger II) that meant the recharge speed for my powers was at a full 100%. Our Asari Sentinel had some heavier, more powerful weapons that meant their power recharge speed was only at 5%, meaning, before even getting into our specific skills, classes or races, we had totally different play-styles.

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Each character can have up to four ‘supplies’, too, which are limited items that are mapped to the d-pad. I had two first aid packs to heal myself, a revive pack to pick up fallen squadmates, an ammo pack to reload when I wasn’t near an ammo box, and two ‘Cobra RPG’ units which let me fire a quick, grenade-like projectile at enemies. You can have boosters for each of your two weapons, as well, which are single-use upgrades that last for one full match. You can buy your packs for items and weapons in the store with in-game credits that you earn just by playing, or with real money if you want to, too. BioWare wouldn’t officially confirm that the packs are ‘random’, but you can get the same weapon in packs multiple times, and any doubles will lead to upgrades.

“ Like Andromeda’s single-player, the level system seems fairly flexible.

Then there are skills, which you can unlock as you gain XP, and some are tied to specific classes. I had Charge (a Biotic Power), Fortify (a Combat Power, that gave me brief damage resistance, at the cost of mobility), Nova (the ground pound I mentioned earlier - another Biotic Power) and Apex Training, which is a passive power that gave me 5% weapon damage and 10% power damage. I also had one Krogan-specific skill called ‘Rage’, which gave me bonus damage if I got multiple melee kills within 30 seconds. Because melee kills as a Krogan involved headbutting people to death, naturally, I did this all the time. You can choose what to specialize in as you go on, but like Andromeda’s single-player, the level system seems fairly flexible, and you aren’t locked into the abilities of one specific class.

We didn’t get to play long enough to do much of that customizing ourselves, but I did take a quick look at the colour tints. My Krogan was green and purple, which is something I never thought I’d see, but characters are there are also overall colour schemes and patterns to change how you look, as well as equippable armour. Every single facet of the multiplayer looked great (especially since we were playing in 4K) and ran smoothly, too, which was comforting considering how buggy Andromeda’s single player was when I tried it out a few weeks ago

Mass Effect: Andromeda is our IGN First for this month, and we’ll be streaming some of the multiplayer next week, so stay tuned.

Alanah Pearce is an editor at IGN, and Wrex is still her favourite character in the Mass Effect franchise. You can find her on Twitter @Charalanahzard.