Bioware's Anthem

[Rare White Ape]

Oh, and loading takes forever.

I hope that’s all fixed up in the v1.0 builds.

[Cam]

I played the demo a bit last night. Initial impressions:

BioWare: "What now, boss?"
EA: "Make a game like Destiny, but better."
BioWare: "How do you expect us to do that?"
EA: "Just copy Destiny and then do your BioWare thing... you know, work your magic. BUT NO GAY STUFF."
BioWare: "But we have this idea for a game..."
EA: "COPY DESTINY."
BioWare: "Uh, OK."

[Kchrpm]

I spent some time playing the demo today as well, and while I like some of the ideas, the limitations put in for the sake of limiting power and balancing, along with the realities of this type of game, just make me lose interest in what I know will expected to be a major time investment.

- Why can't you just fly infinitely? What's the point of making the player land for a few seconds or fly through a waterfall before continuing to fly? I can understand a status effect preventing flight, but when we're just travelling to the next mission/McGuffin, why bother?
- The Colossus is supposed to be the damage absorbing tank, with the highest health pool and a default special that forces all enemies to fire on it. But it doesn't have regenerating health. The only way to heal is from picking up health dropped from enemies, which does you no good when fighting large enemies that can destroy your entire health bar in a few seconds but who can't be killed easily.
- Server drops or disconnects have ruined multiple missions and stronghold attempts for me. The McGuffin hunts and gameplay are not compelling enough for me to want to do them yet again

I've never bought a Destiny game, and I don't see myself buying Anthem, either.

[Rare White Ape]

I unlocked the interceptor, because it has a toight booty. It’s on-the-ground melee attacks are very OP compared to just about everything the ranger can do. Plus I picked up extra armour, so I can one-man a lot of the odd little enclaves scattered around the map.

Will I buy it?

If it was a straightforward story-heavy Shooty McBooty game like Halo I would. I could even stand the requirement to be co-op.

But as a live service game, it’s in hard pass territory.

[Cam]

Yeah, I'll wait for the reviews of the actual game before buying.

[Rare White Ape]

The minute-by-minute gunplay is pretty good though. I enjoy travelling with a squad to a waypoint, killing all the goons, then booking it outta there when you need to move on. I guess the previously mentioned flying restriction is there to encourage players to actually spend time on the ground too, since there are a lot of things to find, loot, and scavenge laying about the place. But not once have I come across an underwater section just ready to travel through our in the open areas.

I was one of the few people I noticed that had played with the loadout and had a secondary weapon equipped. I chose a long arm to complement my assault rifle, so I was popping critical hits for days. It was great! Bullet sponge enemies are a common sight though. They get old pretty fast, unless you have a squad buddy that knows to have one person get in behind and attack weak points, etc, while the others ping off the front and draw attention.

[Kchrpm]

Finally got to finish the stronghold. The final boss is such a bore. Just circle the arena and shoot everything until it dies. I've been spoiled by Zelda dungeons/bosses, I guess, because these levels and bosses are so uninteresting.

[Jason]

I feel like I'm the only person on the planet that really enjoyed the demo... Maybe because I don't have enough experience with similar games? Also, I only got disconnected once, and most of my tech issues were at the beginning when XBL was down.

Anyways, onto my thoughts:

Pros:

• Beautiful environment, well done graphics in general. I'm excited to explore this space.
• Enemy variety presents some good challenges, and if you aren't leveled up, or playing on higher difficulty, requires good teamwork
• Enjoying the controls quite a bit
• Being various versions of Iron Man is neat!
• Unlike Keith, I actually enjoy limits. So I think managing cooling in terms of flying is a fun element to keep in mind when playing. Also I've heard that mods you unlock as you play can basically make you fly forever. For example, in the Demo I was using a Storm, and I had a 20% flight duration mod, so when I was hovering, I could stay hovering for a very long time.

Cons:

• Enemy variety could use a boost
• Javelin capabilities could use more variety, but I have a feeling that might be coming down the line. For example, Storm seems like it should be a Mage type/crowd control. Ability 1 has the option for a couple AOE attacks, but Ability 2 seems to just be a solo attack, both have status effects which are in line with what I'd think it should be... I think there should be an extra weapon/ability that is status heavy with little to no/damage. For example maybe the Storm 2 could have access to status weapons, like say "Ice Grenade Launcher - slows enemies AOE" or "Oil Slick Grenade - slows enemies/makes more susceptible to fire damage" or "Beacon Lure - sets an area that enemies will be drawn to". It'd help make the Storm feel like a better team player vs just laying down explosions and long distance gunfire from a distance. I'm sure Colossus and Interceptor could use more melee/defense options. And Ranger could use something as well. My hope/assumption is that this is something they'll be adding in the future.
• The map/compass system is bad. You can't select a way point on the map and have it show up in your compass. The compass doesn't show your squadmates until you get close to them, so it's hard to find someone on the other side of the map. There's a lot of small things they could do to improve that experience.

General observation, though... this is way more fun with "friends", or at least people you're in contact with verbally. For example, Willis and I did the stronghold and had a hell of a time because we were either underleveled or it was on a harder level than we intended... our whole squad died a lot. But we were able to talk strategy during the boss fight and coordinate our efforts (ie shields, boosts, combos, etc) to get things done.


So, even with the cons, I had a really fun time. It's MMOlite to me, and some of the elements of control reminds me of City of Heroes (I mainly played as a hovering "Controller" who laid down status effects and AOE attacks to support a team), so I'm pretty excited to have something roughly along those lines again. I definitely understand why people are cool on their reception to the demo, it's not the "OMG best game ever" as it's kinda hyped to be. And frankly EA/Bioware don't exactly have a good track record lately.

I was weak, and pre-ordered, which is something I don't often do with games.

[Cam]

Oh, I am interested. I really want it to be great, but yeah... EA has a bad rep right now. Plus, it is so remarkably Destiny-like that I am nervous to pull the trigger on it until I see some legit reviews of the final game. Of course, if several of my friends are playing it, I may succumb to peer pressure.

[JSGeneral]

You can hear the disappointment in this excellent reviewer's voice increase more and more as the video goes on...