Anthem (Bioware's new property)

Oooof lucky me then.

Gameplay-wise..... its average. Flying is fun but you can't actually shoot any weapons & there's no button for descending/ascending even for in hover mode. Also the overheating mechanic got old cause you constantly have to switch between running on the ground & flying.

Gunplay is average too. Honestly I wasn't even sure what I was doing half the time, the objectives are never clear & everything feels very loose. I am underwhelmed by the ability customization. For the regular Javelin all he's got is a single arm cannon & grenades. Sure there's variety in what he can shoot or throw but I feel like they could have been more creative.

I find it average with the technical issues which I have encountered, making it below average.

I played on PC. No obvious technical problems, a few UI quality of life issues. Did really like the flying, once I adjusted sensitivity to something I was comfortable with. That alone could provide a long life to the game, maybe with a few tweaks.

Biggest problem was the same as Destiny: It really wants to be a freaking single player game. Not gonna buy at launch, but I'll keep an eye on it.

Framerate in the demo's not that consistent. You can get a higher framerate on PS 4 Pro by setting the resolution to 1080p; you get an even higher variance in framerate but it is noticeably higher overall.

Visuals also aren't as good as the e3 reveal but i think most of us are sadly used to that kind of thing.

Edited by Draghinazzo on Feb 1st 2019 at 12:34:46 PM

My demo impressions.

flying fun. enemies are fucking bullet sponges. ultimate felt unimpressive. half the team dropped after tyhe second beacon we needed had like 4 goddamn shielded elites and 25+ footsoldiers raining death at us and absorbing bullets by the hundreds.

yeah,. fuck this. at least Destiny 2 rewards me for playing elemental whack a mole on shields and the ultimates feel amazingly rewarding when they pop off.

Edited by Midgetsnowman on Feb 1st 2019 at 10:06:17 AM

I would hope that the flying is fun in this game considering it's the one thing that makes it stand out. But that isn't enough to carry it forward.

other issuyes I have with the public demo

dropping new players into a level 10 mission with a generic javelin and seemingly no explanation ingame (if you click on the one prompt they give for controls it takes you out to an external web browser) of controls, loadout, customizations, or explanation what the fuck the plot is seems like a terrible idea for getting new people onboard who hadnt already preordered.

why not just give us the level 1 experience?

I would have gone with A Taste of Power. Have the tutorial be you being a veteran Freelancer with a powerful high end Javelin who fights off a bunch of easy enemies before inevitably being ground into paste by a powerful new foe.

That;'d also be cool, but might get them accused of ripping off Destiny 2 even moreso.

But the whole 'welcome to a level 10 generic javelin with a barebones explanation what the fuck is happening" seems like., a bad first impression.

It's like Anthem's open demo period is setting out to frustrate me or something. First time I tried to play it last week (after receiving and invite code from a friend), I found out that I downloaded and booted up the game just a few hours too late of the private beta periods end.

Then, I get frustrated further after logging on at the supposed time the open demo period was supposed to begin yesterday, only to find out that thanks to living on Guam (which means I'm a literal day ahead of the U.S.), the demo won't go live until around 3am. That leads to me deciding to play Ace Combat 7 and having tons of fun flying around with an F-14 Tomcat, and frequently getting confused on whether it's Osea or Erusea who's the OPFOR (seriously, the Ace Combat series has one heck of a confusing backstory).

Come 4am, I decided to give Anthem one last, brief shot at presenting itself. While it probably wasn't a good idea since I was already tired and beginning to doze off in front of the computer, along with all of the impatient grumpiness that brings with it, I'm pretty sure my opinion would've been the same even if I was wide awake; the game's basically Destiny, but if Stark Industries was contracted to provide The Last City with a ton of Iron Man power armor derivatives. And it had the same mission design too: examine an object, follow the waypoint to an objective, kill all enemies present, rinse and repeat until you reach the end.

Dammit.... you know, as bad as EA is, I want Anthem to succeed. Because I realize that the company staked a bunch of their efforts and funding into this sucker, and if it fails to move units, which is seeming more and more likely, it's gonna drag down a bunch of developers with it, or worse, resort in EA shelving yet another development project in a vicious cycle of attempting to stabilize their product line.

Overall in quite enjoyed it. The lore reminds me of mass effects codex... though it goes into a bit of waffle territory.

The world events are more numerous and more in depth than destiny - and the environments are more vertical.

I think the webpage idea was terrible but I managed to get the gist of the controls pretty quick.

Most enemies does quick and the elites NEED flanking and weak spot hits. The shield on some enemies (blue) seems countered by specials - so clearly more team work is needed. And that's hard with limited comms.

Guns could do with a boost but the lanced have some nice variation so they feel different. Tardis is a RIP off of the tower... but more interesting and not just an engram hub.

I'm.... kinda enjoying it. Poor connectivity and one really boring boss was the only glum bit. They need to tweak the guns and implement a proper tutorial... and tweak the heat mechanics a bit.

also the complete lack of explaining any of that before you go into a mission makes for a terrible first impression.

Precisely. I'm assuming they tried going with the opening bit but the missions are fairly low challenge. But the game seriously needs a proper tutorial.

And I see why the menus are cause for frustration.

I've noticed that when I pressed start to close a a codex I opened because I got a new info, it kept repeating back & back.

I had to close it the long way through the circle button.

I think that qualifies as a glitch.

And yes its a dick move to not provide any instruction. I didn't even notice that the Ultimate is locked to the upper D-Pad till I randomly pressed it & wasted it on nothing.

Edited by slimcoder on Feb 2nd 2019 at 6:02:20 AM

Yeah.... I kept trying the Destiny gamepad presses.

Here's hoping they improve it as this game has promise. I enjoyed the quest, enjoyed the dialogue and the characters. Though one of the women is oddly unexpressive. And some of the atmospheric chat feels flat. But for the most part it's fun.

I finally did get to play this afternoon, because a couple of my friends were and invited me.

It's... okay. I don't think I have anything to say that hasn't already been said. Happily neither of the people I played with this afternoon are planning to buy it at launch, so I don't feel any pressure to get it either.

Anthem doesn't run that great on PC unless you have a more powerful GPU. Mid-range cards can't reach 60fps at all unless you put the settings on Low, and even then, it's not a consistent 60.

Edited by Draghinazzo on Feb 2nd 2019 at 2:18:31 PM

yeah, its pretty looking but nowhere near as optimized as destiny 2.

m,y midrange pc can run destiny 2 with a lot of the bells and whistles and gorgerous visuals without much strain, but I noticed the fans on my ps4 slim were constantly on full blast and I still got random fps stutters in town on anthem,

also my most frustrating bit after conferring with a friend who loves anthem but agrees with my concerns was when i pointed out you also get zero choice in your javellin, he pointed out you actually do...at level 12. so literally the fucking demo gives you this generic yellow javellin with no cool superpowers except a grenade and a rocket and a gun and expects you to play the demo long enough to level up twice before they give you access to the meat of a destiny-alike, the class choice.

I'm playing on a PS 4 & near every-time I jump the screen fucking glitches out.

Not very helpful in a fire fight especially since I've started piloting the Interceptor which is a Fragile Speedster.

Edited by slimcoder on Feb 2nd 2019 at 10:12:52 AM

It didn't take long for me to get to lv12 in the demo, really. I also assume you get the unlock sooner in the full game.

I had half my party quit during the first mission and just didnt bother continuing.

Yeah, I dunno that I'd want to play this with randos.

Do we know if there's character customisation as well as javelin customisation?

I think there is, though you’re in first-person when you’re back at the hub.

But yeah, this is shaping up to be a great concept failing because EA is shoving a studio that’s not good at the genre into making it.

Again though, if they give this enough time, it can be great. Destiny wasn't that good before some content updates, and Warframe had some absolutely bone-headed design decisions that they walked back from (for example: a limited number of revives per day, then buy more for real money). Anthem has a solid foundation, and if I was sure that they would have the months and years of serious focus necessary to polish a game like this, I would be looking forward to it.

But I am not sure they are going to give them any time. Right now this feels like a half-finished race car that is going to get in a wreck two streets from home before it can get anywhere close to the race.

yeah. especially because we know EA is, like most AAA publishers, expecting this to sell like gangbusters from day 1 and magically destroy Destiny and Warframe