ANTHEM - failed Destiny clone from BioWare

[Gerrard]

Well the flying controls are improved at least, the loading times also seem better.

Need more Iron Man clones.

 

[Belegarsson]

Whoever had the idea of putting 4 challenges that include filler grind tasks like this into a main mission need to be thrown off a cliff.

 

[Norfleet]

Javelins Repaired? There's a career in javelin repair now? Do you go and damage your own javelins just so you can repair them or something? Who would otherwise use javelins in a game? I'm picturing people getting trash-tier javelins just so they can throw them against hard objects that damage them so they can then repair them.

 

[Belegarsson]

That's just a fancy way to say "revive downed teammates", it's because downed state is called "javelin malfunctioned" in the game.

 

[fizzelopeguss]

Every character is insufferable in this game.

 

[Swigen]

Why do they all have reverse jointed legs? Yore not human in dis gaem?!

 

[markec]

Why do they all have reverse jointed legs? Yore not human in dis gaem?!

You need some visual detail to make the armor design not be identical to amour in Destiny.

So instead of being creative they just added chicken legs.

 

[fizzelopeguss]

The power armour is the least of the problems, tbh i think they all look solid apart from storm - which is just a gay wizard class for gays.

TBH power armour is pretty faggy anyway, the future is all about drone warfare niggers.

 

[Duraframe300]

Every character is insufferable in this game.

True, everyone tries to out Bioware himself.

 

[BlackAdderBG]

Haven't seen any characters or story, but I bet all my brofists there is one woman mentioning "my wife".

 

[Duraframe300]

Haven't seen any characters or story, but I bet all my brofists there is one woman mentioning "my wife".

Sexuality has taken a backseat so far (though not that far into the story). But every charachter is your typical Bioware archetype taken to an extreme.

Worst one is your crypher (basically your handler) who Whedon's it up so much that you want to punch him in the face after your first conversation.

....

No, scratch that. Worst one is your charachter who is that times a 1000. There are pseudo *personality* choices, but they dumbed down even conversation wheels to exactly two options. Which both are meaningless with no actual difference between them.

 

[fantadomat]

Why do they all have reverse jointed legs? Yore not human in dis gaem?!

Because all the engineers are diversity hires.

 

[fantadomat]

I don't know if this was posted but here it is,the ending. That DLC hook at the end .

 

[TheChickenKing]

I've been playing the trial with a friend. They seem to have fixed most of the major issues with performance and glitches that were present in the beta/"demo" to the point where I question why they released that "demo" at all. Devs talked about it being an old, different build of the game which would indicate that it wasn't even technically a beta, just a really shitty version of the game that barely worked. Really bizarre.

In any case, I think the core gameplay has a lot to like. Flight feels great, the combat is simple fun, and I enjoyed stomping around as a colossus. No idea if there's depth or particularly good loot to keep anyone around long-term, but it could definitely be a fun coop romp. It is pretty funny just how much they get wrong compared to their competitors, though. There's way too much dialogue mid mission, so if you're playing with friends, the radio chatter will be trying to talk over you the entire time. Obviously some dialogue is appropriate just to keep the story moving and help communicate objectives and whatnot, but the constant babble is an insanely bad choice in a game that constantly tells you to play with other people. It's one thing to have a bunch of dialogue back in the base, when you don't need to actively communicate and you're relaxing between missions, but the constant poorly-written jokes are incredibly difficult to stomach when they're being screeched out every three seconds while you're trying to talk.

Another major issue, though this is something they might be able to fix with a major rework, is the pointless amount of downtime between missions. Warframe, Destiny 2, and The Division all have downtime where you're looking through your inventory, hanging out at a hub, etc. but it's never overly cumbersome. Anthem constantly forces the player through loading screens and continually interrupts the flow of gameplay to bring you back to the hub to slowly walk around, equip items or turn in quests. I think part of the idea was to keep people out of their inventories during missions and really let the gameplay take center stage, and in the interest of fairness, I don't feel like this issue is as much of a big deal as it might sound on paper. You don't end up spending a lot of time doing annoying shit compared to shooting things, which is good, but there's still a lot more of that time-waste-y stuff then I think anyone would care for and it seems like it's trying to fix a problem that doesn't really exist.

TL;DR BioWare doesn't know how to make a multiplayer game, their UI designers and whoever designed the hub experience should be fired, but the shooting/flying is a lot of fun. Probably not worth 60 bucks, but worth a look if you like low personal investment coop with buddies.

 

[Dexter]

For me it's curious that the "AAA companies", so-called, keep messing up in the genres that used to be their element - brainless shooters and MMOs. So far we've seen EA screw up multiple games in a row, Bethesda's 76 clusterfuck. I wonder what's going on? Are they tightening up budgets, dev teams' numbers, and development time too much out of pure greed? Have developers gone overconfident and lazy?

Diversity Hires. Also forcing BioWEAr and other EA studios to solely use Frostbite Engine even though they had decade-long experience and working tools for Unreal Engine.

Why bother giving PC users special access if you're happy to give them the middle finger with the port itself.

Origin.

Compare it to Warframe(which I've spent well over $500 on), which rakes in cash by being non-predatory with their microtransactions.

Imagine readily admitting you've paid upwards of $500 for Microtransactions in a game and not feeling a sense of shame or having a "WTF am I doing" moment, but actually feeling like you've accomplished something and bragging about it.

:BuildTheWall:

 

[Morgoth]

This short film is an embarrassment. I'm glad Blomkamp's Aliens sequel was canned. This guy proved to be a one trick pony with District 9, after all.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Imagine readily admitting you've paid upwards of $500 for Microtransactions in a game and not feeling a sense of shame or having a "WTF am I doing" moment, but actually feeling like you've accomplished something and bragging about it.

please don't respond to my posts if you're poor, it might be contagious

 

[fantadomat]

Imagine readily admitting you've paid upwards of $500 for Microtransactions in a game and not feeling a sense of shame or having a "WTF am I doing" moment, but actually feeling like you've accomplished something and bragging about it.

please don't respond to my posts if you're poor, it might be contagious

respond

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Imagine readily admitting you've paid upwards of $500 for Microtransactions in a game and not feeling a sense of shame or having a "WTF am I doing" moment, but actually feeling like you've accomplished something and bragging about it.

please don't respond to my posts if you're poor, it might be contagious

respond

I don't think humans can catch diseases from bulgarians

 

[Dexter]

Imagine readily admitting you've paid upwards of $500 for Microtransactions in a game and not feeling a sense of shame or having a "WTF am I doing" moment, but actually feeling like you've accomplished something and bragging about it.

please don't respond to my posts if you're poor, it might be contagious

Imagine thinking that spending hundreds of dollars on useless Microtransactions in a Free2Play game makes you rich and not pathetic and then repeatedly bragging about it.

 

[fantadomat]

Imagine readily admitting you've paid upwards of $500 for Microtransactions in a game and not feeling a sense of shame or having a "WTF am I doing" moment, but actually feeling like you've accomplished something and bragging about it.

please don't respond to my posts if you're poor, it might be contagious

respond

I don't think humans can catch diseases from bulgarians

Sooo you won't get rich then.

 

[fizzelopeguss]

Fort Diversity is every libs dream, this is what they want to inflict upon the earth.

 

[Morkar Left]

This short film is an embarrassment. I'm glad Blomkamp's Aliens sequel was canned. This guy proved to be a one trick pony with District 9, after all.

I don't know, looks interesting to me!

 

[Morgoth]

https://www.pcgamer.com/anthem-review/

Anthem review in progress: combat and exploration are fun, but nothing else is

By Steven Messner 34 minutes ago

BioWare's latest is a loot shooter bogged down by a forgettable story and repetitive missions.

In the pantheon of excellent videogame sound effects, the metallic ka-ching! that indicates my team pulled off a combo in Anthem ranks just below that iconic M1 Garand ping. It's a punchy crescendo and a reward for smart teamwork, afflicting enemies with an elemental status effect from one ability so that my team can "detonate" it with a second one—triggering a massive burst of damage that melts all but the toughest opponents. In those moments, as my squad uses our abilities in concert to trigger combos one after the other, Anthem is fun. But that fun stops the moment the battle wraps up and I'm forced to deal with all the tedium and frustrations of Anthem's other activities.

Anthem is a bog-standard multiplayer loot shooter like Destiny 2 or Warframe. I team up in a squad of four (or go it alone, if I want) and head out into a stunningly gorgeous open world to complete missions, shoot a lot of enemies, and get some loot. The twist—because there's always a twist—is that Anthem tries to weave these overly familiar systems together within the kind of sprawling narrative that BioWare is known for. After missions with other players I'm left alone to explore the cobblestone streets of Fort Tarsis, my home base. It's here that I pick up new missions, change or craft equipment, and converse with a variety of eccentric characters. But here's the thing: Fort Tarsis sucks.

This house is not a home
Fort Tarsis is completely unlike the buzzing, claustrophobic bazaar first shown in Anthem's announcement trailer. There's no sense of life to it, just a city full of mannequins miming fake conversations that look ridiculous if you stop for even a moment to watch them. While plenty of other games feature lifeless NPCs like this, it's especially noticeable because Fort Tarsis is experienced from an intimate first-person perspective. It's easy to see through the illusion when you have a front row seat.

Fort Tarsis is also annoying to navigate, scattering its quest-givers to every corner and then restricting you to a slow jaunt. Like everything in Anthem, it's gorgeous, but after walking the same hallways several dozen times, I wish it didn't exist.

Much of that is because, unlike past BioWare games, Anthem mostly fails to communicate why places like Fort Tarsis and the people who inhabit it matter to me. During the intro, I'm simply told that I belong to a loose guild of pilots that fly Iron Man suits called javelins to help people and silence dangerous relics scattered across the world. Then, one day, a relic explodes and creates a world-threatening supernatural storm. Our guild, called freelancers, can't stop it and now people don't like us anymore—for some reason. This is all dumped on me in a minutes-long intro sequence that feels completely toothless.

Unlike Dragon Age and Mass Effect, which both have clever twists on familiar genres and establish emotional stakes early in the story, Anthem doesn't create that same sense of purpose or understanding. So even though I'm trying to immerse myself in this world by reading all the bits of lore and conversing with every character I can, the whole thing feels superfluous.

That wouldn't be a problem if, like Destiny 2, Anthem didn't insist that I interact with its story. After every mission, I'm dumped back into Fort Tarsis where I have to walk its overly long hallways for the hundredth time to have a largely one-sided conversation with some eccentric character or another. Fantastic voice acting and gorgeous character designs make these conversations tolerable, but I feel like a douche—instead of listening to what these people have to say, I'm usually just fawning over how pretty they all are.

Though they'll chatter in my ear during missions, these characters are usually left behind in Fort Tarsis when I adventure out into the world. I never really get the sense that we're on an adventure together like the crew of Mass Effect's Normandy, which makes their predictable revelations feel artificial and forced. Each time I return home to Fort Tarsis, I know Owen, my sidekick, is waiting for me so he can all-too-willingly peel back another layer of his troubled backstory. I should feel sympathy for all the things he's endured, but I'm mostly just counting the seconds until I can get back in my javelin.

But, once again, Fort Tarsis somehow finds a way to even make readying my javelin for combat and taking on missions feel tedious. Instead of being able to access my equipment anywhere I want, I have to physically walk to a machine called the Forge and sit through a short loading screen just to swap guns or try out a different javelin. And even once I'm suited up and out in the world, a lot can get in the way between me and the satisfying ka-ching of Anthem's clever combo system.

The world beyond the walls

Once I'm actually in my javelin, Anthem becomes a lot more enjoyable. Not only are the lush forests and ancient temples of the world outside Fort Tarsis painfully gorgeous, it's incredibly fun to traverse them. Javelins have limited flight capabilities that let me soar through the air with grace and ease (thanks in part to much improved mouse and keyboard controls from what was in the beta). It's thrilling to nose-dive down waterfalls or weave through crumbling ruins, strategically flying close to bodies of water to cool my jets and extend my flight time.

Bastion is a big and wondrous place, and when taking in the sights of enormous alien constructs, I find that sense of mystery that is so sorely lacking in the story. The best way to explore this world unhindered is using free-play, which drops you into Bastion without a specific objective so you can harvest materials for crafting or complete world events that pop up occasionally. It's fun to just ignore all of that and fly around, though.

If you can't tell, I'm not enjoying my time with Anthem.

Missions and dungeon-like Strongholds send you into the world with more purpose at the behest of characters back in Fort Tarsis. And while Anthem's combat is a lot of fun in the moment-to-moment action, the actual mission objectives are boring and repetitive. More often than not, my squad is killing waves of enemies, defending some objective, or gathering glowing bits of energy and dropping them off at a specific point.

Characters back in Fort Tarsis communicate via radio, trying to add bits of context to my actions, but, like the story, it's just white noise that I don't care about. Does it really matter that I'm saving the world by turning off this volatile alien machine if all that it requires is gathering and returning the same glowing orbs again and again? Though my time with Anthem has been relatively bug free, I've had to abandon missions and start over multiple times because objectives failed to register.


The saving grace in all of this is that fighting enemies in Anthem is a lot of fun thanks to the combo system. Each of the four javelins I can pilot has a very distinct style inspired by traditional RPG classes. The lumbering Colossus, for example, has a giant shield and can taunt enemies to draw their attention for a short time. My favorites, though, are the Storm and Interceptor—the mage and rogue of the group—as each kicks significant ass in very different ways.


As the Storm, I'm a fragile but formidable mage that can spam abilities to set my team up for combos (or detonate them all on my own). I love hovering over the battlefield, raining down fire balls and thunderbolts, hearing that satisfying ka-ching as I vaporize entire groups of enemies. The Interceptor, however, is wickedly agile and excels up close in melee combat. Unlike Destiny 2 or The Division, cooldowns on abilities are much shorter, and I love that I'll often go a whole fight without firing a single bullet as I rotate through my different abilities.


Even then, there's a lot that annoys me about Anthem's combat. Losing all your health puts you in a downed state where your team has to revive you. In most areas you can revive after suffering through a loading screen (more on those in a bit), but that sometimes means having to sit and wait minutes in areas where respawning is restricted. If the fight is particularly intense or I died in a bad spot, it can be impossible for one of my teammates to revive me. I get that part of being good at Anthem is to be careful about positioning, but it's frustrating to sit there helplessly for such a long time. It'd be nice if I could at least crawl to a safer location—especially during those missions with restricted respawns. And if one player forges ahead of the party, everyone left behind will be given a certain amount of time to catch up before they're teleported forward. This wouldn't be so bad, but doing so requires having to sit through a loading screen.

That's just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to my frustrations with Anthem's loading screens, which are so painfully long and numerous that it's baffling. Different parts of Bastion are tucked behind loading screens, and missions will frequently send you to these places for just a minute, before turning you around and having you sit through another loading screen as you exit them. When finishing a mission, I have to sit through an overly long after action report and then a loading screen to enter the Forge just to see and equip new gear. Then there's another loading screen just to enter Fort Tarsis where, more often than not, I'm going to immediately turn around and queue up a new mission which triggers yet another fucking loading screen. It's maddening.


If you can't tell, I'm not enjoying my time with Anthem. The combo system is a clever innovation that rewards teamwork and aggressive but smart use of my javelin's abilities, but that's about the only worthwhile thing I like about Anthem aside from it being gorgeous. I prefer my BioWare games to be ugly on the outside and beautiful on the inside. Hopefully the story takes a sudden turn that sparks my interest and makes all these characters and bits of lore matter, because there are better RPG shooters I could be playing instead.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

the EA checks musn't have cleared yet

 

[Ezeekiel]

the EA checks musn't have cleared yet

Maybe they confused EA and Blizzard/Activision and were all "revenge for the 800! NEVER AGAIN! Our lukewarm review will show them!"

 

[Lone Wolf]

Anthem constantly forces the player through loading screens

I have a very good computer. These are the worst loading times I've experienced in any game over the last ten years or so.

They're infuriating. One saving grace: this game is very Alt-Tab friendly. Begin loading a mission, Alt-Tab, browse, and then you'll see when it's loaded in the background.

Otherwise, I've experienced a few bugs (esp. in freeplay and cutscene heavy story missions with a squad) and some real annoyances: being downed in a Stronghold is ludicrous. You might be watching your squad's silhouettes prancing around for ten minutes, before they all get downed or get around to repairing you. In that time, you're staring at a screen.

And, as far as I can tell, you can't leave the session while downed. As in, Esc does nothing. Maybe you have to hold it down, I don't know, haven't really experimented.

 

[rusty_shackleford]