I was going to chase after the Archon, but I thought about it and then decided to finish off the exploration bit of the game before moving toward the grand finale. It’s only been 14 months since I started playing the game after all. I don’t want to rush anything.

First place on the list was an asteroid imaginatively named H-047c. It was nice to see a different type of environment after the first few planets: a shattered planet drifting around with no atmosphere and low gravity. I fell off the edge the first time I started driving around. It’s a really well-drawn environment, reminiscent of that moon where you find the original Normandy crash site in the first trilogy.

 There are only a few places where you can actually leave the Nomad, all of them encased in these orange domes.

Inside these, the activities are very similar, but there are lots of minerals to collect. There was also a Remnant vault with a special piece of equipment called the ’tiller’ that you can turn on and provide fuel for the entire Initiative. Getting to it proved to be an absolute pain in the neck, with one of the hardest fights I’ve had in the entire game.  I’ve never died as many times as I did trying to get past the destroyer guarding the controls.

For some reason only one of the health stations weren’t working and there were loads and loads of flying things in there that kept spawning. In the end, after many attempts, I had to go with the strategy of going toe-to-toe with it out of the gate and blowing the side turrets off as quick as possible. It still took an age to get rid of it.

After clearing this, I left for the desert planet of Elaaden.

I was a little underwhelmed at first, as it has quite a lot in common with Eos. I’d already done one desert planet; what was I going to find different about this one.  Elaaden, however, is a much better environment than Eos. There are sinkholes and lovely rock formations and more than a few not-so-subtle references to my favourite book, Frank Herbert’s Dune.

There is a massive Remnant creature that patrols the desert like a giant sandworm. It’s even referred to as ‘the worm’ by the locals, who are all terrified of it. I took some video captures of it which you can see here.

There’s also a secret underground cache of water.

I could almost hear Everett McGill’s voice as I looked out over it. Out in the desert, I raided a scavenger camp and found a datapad with a reference to a man called ‘Little Mouse’ who people think is the chosen one – a blatant reference to Muad’dib!

So, it was nice to get some references like that. It made the place feel a little more interesting. There is also a huge Remnant ship half buried in the sand, lots of krogan, some well-designed settlements and a great fight with three Fiends in a cave.

Elaaden gave me probably my last opportunity to go down into a Remnant vault in the game. The Elaaden vault was just as nice to look at as the others, with a really irritating puzzle just to open the door which took me far longer than it should have – that’s the drawback of trying these things when it’s past midnight and you’re knackered.

Inside the crashed ship were some other nice visuals, including this really well-drawn area with a marker flare burning. I can’t say enough how beautiful some of the environments are in this game. Despite a few dodgy animations, it really is beautiful to look at

After sorting everything out and getting the outpost built, I only had one more thing to do; take out the planet’s Architect. It took me a while as there seemed to be an inordinate time in between it exposing its legs (shy obviously) but I eventually got it. I’ve switched to a sniper rifle for the first time since starting the game and I’m enjoying the ability to keep my distance. I’m such a coward, honestly. I’ve got the Remnant VI to send after things, the assault turret, and now I can stay miles away and just pick people off. So, scratch the last Architect and now it looks like I’m all out of excuses. Time to go find the Archon and see how the game turns out. It’ll be nice to enter a stage where it’s more straight-up fighting. As I said, it’s been over a year now and I’ve still got Far Cry 5 waiting in the wings.

I think I’ll finish the game off and do one more post about it. That’ll make it a round 10 posts for the whole game – that seems like a reasonable amount to write. I’ll give my final verdict in the last post. Check out the story so far here.

The Andromeda Experience – 1

The Andromeda Experience – 2

The Andromeda Experience – 3

The Andromeda Experience – 4

The Andromeda Experience – 5

The Andromeda Experience – 6

The Andromeda Experience – 7

The Andromeda Experience – 8

Thanks for reading

Richard