Bioware's "Anthem"

I only played ~30 mins today, but I enjoyed what i played. combat feels good, world looks cool, and main PC is voiced (male or female). Only mechanic I didn't like was melee, it felt a bit slow and too long a timeout between melee attacks. Who knows if they have the content to last longer than 72 hours of play. I'll play a bit more today but I like what I see, it reminds me a mix of gears of war and destiny 1, the game is third person (TPS) not FPS and not sure if you can switch but I prefer TPS really anyways. Its very Bioware-ish in that things are directed / scripted heavily but as long as the content isn't dumb as fuck (Andromeda) I'd be happy. Game was super, super easy but I wouldn't expect the tutorial missions to be tough. Can't really judge full game until we see end game content and I doubt Bioware is gonna reveal much of that now.

For $15 you could sub to Origin Prime in Feb and get access to anthem and battlefield 5, don't really see how that isn't a great deal. I imagine you will exhaust the content easily within 3 weeks, then could resub down the road (or buy the game) if it gets more content. I did play on xbox one X and found it perfectly fine, not sure what FPS it runs at but didn't really see any visual issues and it controlled great. Not sure if I'd play on X or PC at launch, probably PC as I'd like to upgrade my PC next year sometime but I'm sure it'll run fine on my 1080ti.

Ok, so this is a game for console people that like Warframe but don't like weeabo shit...

It looks ok and controls like trash but once you muck with the settings it's not awful but you can clearly tell it was designed with a controller in mind. PC Master Race for life! The tiny bit of character interaction I saw seemed better than that last awful Mass Effect game though we got a lot of people of color if that's gonna be a problem for some.

Never played Destiny and I'm not currently playing Warframe but I don't see why I'd switch if I'd already invested time or money in either of those games. Granted it's just an alpha and this is only a 2 hour review.

So for those who have been following/playing, what is the progression system in the game. Is there loot you find? Craft? Do you get higher item levels and become stronger? Just wondering what the drive is for continued playing...unsure if they've outlined their roadmap yet...

Welp, I've just finished playing, and it looks like you got two areas. Quest areas and freeplay. Quest areas are like the mission that you're forced to go on. Then, they've got dynamically spawning world events outside of the quest areas in the freeplay zone.

The freeplay zone is boring af, and I don't even know WTF they're saying in the quest zone. You'll hear things like, "I'm hearing the Anthem of creation!@#$#!#!#@@! I'm losing control!@#!#" Well, WTF is the Anthem, and why the fuck should I give a shit? The interface is confusing af. As for the crafting, we dunno yet. They won't let us into the forge, and I couldn't find a way to change my weapons, at least. Hit every damn key on the keyboard. Found a way to access the forge, but unfortunately the Forge has been restricted.

The entire game's a shit show.

the demo doesn't really have any of it but there are levels, solo content, and 4 player content although its unclear if there is matchmaking or DIY ala destiny raids. the loot is supposed to be designed like diablo with random perks and stuff on random drops but i doubt they will get it right at launch, every service game I've seen like this (division, warframe, destiny, path of exile, diablo, etc) takes like a year to tweak loot drops to be "better" and to me a huge question is whether bioware can do it quickly or will they be bogged down by bad decisions
BioWare answers our biggest questions about Anthem | PC Gamer

its much more like destiny/warframe as you said in that there aren't class roles or anything, which I think will end up being another limiting thing as almost always there ends up one subclass being way OP compared to others in PVE.

How is the gameworld handled, is it pathways you can't go beyond connecting you to bigger open areas, like Destiny? Or is it one big zone that you can fly around?

In Quest Zones, it's like a pathway.

In Freeplay, it's like a big zone with dynamically spawning world events.

the game is pretty much like destiny in every way, except your dude can also fly and that is pretty fucking awesome. i feel like iron man, and i really hope insomniac (spider-man) makes a iron man game next

areas are really huge and use verticality as part of the mission, you pretty much have to fly to get stuff done. flight isn't infinite, you eventually overheat but can cool yourself off to keep flying.

on my X i did start noticing a lot of FPS lag at the end of the first mission and in the free roam area, this was at 4k. the tutorial mission was just fine but everything after that would lag/stutter occasionally. hopefully thats just optimization work to do and not inherent engine issues. makes getting it on PC the smarter move I think, especially with no PVP (don't have to worry about cheaters).

the game does have a rich journal/log similar to mass effect, better than the original destiny grimoire stuff too

one concern is gonna be matchmaking. It looks like most of the "real" missions require 4 players, and while there is matchmaking in the game its not good. For about 10 mins i tried on and off to matchmake for the first real mission (lost arcanist) and it wouldn't find anyone else no matter what difficulty settings i choose. and it wouldn't let me start it solo. while i'm sure it'll be fine for the first month or two, after a while people stop doing the basic shit and it would suck as a new player not being able to do fuck all because everyone else is high level. hopefully there are just bugs in matchmaking, because otherwise its a really, really basic matchmaker.

Well, I mean, it is a beta test (let's be real here... WTF does an alpha test this close to launch?)

I dunno. The game keeps crashing on me, and I haven't found the gumption to click on the big O at the bottom of my screen. Even for shits nor giggles.

Ive enjoyed what Ive played, more than expected really. I mean, the bar was pretty low so it was easy to be pleasantly surprised. The game is gorgeous, the art team definitely did their job. I took a screenshot of a brick wall at one point cause it looked so good. I will echo previous comments about the guns feeling a bit neutered. The gunplay is fine but I could be throwing rocks at stuff and it'd have the same oomph. I like that you can just take off and fly pretty much anywhere, even during combat and in missions. Boss dude getting too close, just fly off across the room. The voice acting was pretty solid as well.

They definitely need to work on load times though cause they are cripplingly long. I did also find it weird that you play the game in third person, yet when you're running around in the hub area, its first person. I didnt try hard to see if you could change that pov, so that may be fixable. No real point in picking a face if you cant actually see it.

I tried 6 different times to play the game over the past 2 days before I finally got past the initial load screen. Played through the tutorial sequence. It was fine. Tried to play a mission and the game just stalled/spun for 15 minutes.

It is hard to have much of an opinion about it with what little I was able to play. It kind of felt like Titanfall 2 to me, but the weapons felt neutered. It certainly did not 'wow' me or do much to peak further interest.

yeah the weapons felt a bit GTA 5/RDR in how little impact they had, hopefully they have sniper rifles and stuff. I assume aiming and stuff on PC is pretty good with kb/m, it was ok on xbox some pretty heavy aim assist. yeah the switch to FPS in the social hub is just weird and I don't really understand why.

flying away is pretty awesome, sadly I bet a lot of the boss fights will have a "your jetpack gets disabled" mechanic since it does make it way too easy to just run away. Also wondering how the AI is gonna be, as I recall enemies in mass effect andromeda were pretty terrible and that also had jet packs and stuff