ANTHEM - failed Destiny clone from BioWare

[fantadomat]

What kind of idiot decided to remove this.

The slime that killed ME games and biowaste as a whole.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

Seen on AnneMunition's chat

ashleasacht: where is the fucking AI??? They just standing there

WashMatic: @ashleasacht She was shooting mines...

 

[Pika-Cthulhu]

People are being unreasonable, EA wont shut down BioWare over this, they will gut the studio, fire all the staff, take all the IP and then rebrand BioWare into some shitty mobile dev studio making shitty romance RPG's for phones wearing the name like some buffalo bill skinsuit monstrosity. Its a fate thats better than BioWare deserves.

 

[Gerrard]

Seen on AnneMunition's chat

ashleasacht: where is the fucking AI??? They just standing there

WashMatic: @ashleasacht She was shooting mines...

Yeah, because these games are known for their great AI in the first place. The need to feel outraged in these lemmings is fascinating.
I can already see CockUp's video a year from now "Is Anthem the greatest comeback in videogame history?".

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Seen on AnneMunition's chat

ashleasacht: where is the fucking AI??? They just standing there

WashMatic: @ashleasacht She was shooting mines...

Yeah, because these games are known for their great AI in the first place. The need to feel outraged in these lemmings is fascinating.
I can already see CockUp's video a year from now "Is Anthem the greatest comeback in videogame history?".

Destiny 2 has pretty good AI. Maybe I'm just not used to modern FPS AI because I don't play any, but I was pretty surprised when I got pinned down by heavy fire and flanked by another group of enemies.
The shooting parts of Destiny 2 are pretty good — not surprising considering the developers behind it.

 

[thesheeep]

Yeah, because these games are known for their great AI in the first place. The need to feel outraged in these lemmings is fascinating.
I can already see CockUp's video a year from now "Is Anthem the greatest comeback in videogame history?".

Destiny 2 has pretty good AI. Maybe I'm just not used to modern FPS AI because I don't play any, but I was pretty surprised when I got pinned down by heavy fire and flanked by another group of enemies.
The shooting parts of Destiny 2 are pretty good — not surprising considering the developers behind it.

In the 8-12 hours I attempted to play Destiny 2 before it bored me out of my mind, I also noticed that.
For something that can basically be described as a limited-MMO-pew-pew game, the AI actually doesn't behave stupid. They take cover, they flank, throw grenades behind cover, etc.
I was just playing Rambo and that got me killed a few times. Of course, death is entirely meaningless in the game as you just respawn a few meters away - one of the many things that make the game boring as fuck.
But the AI is one of the few aspects about the game that really aren't negative.

 

[Lone Wolf]

After a decent amount of playtime, I can make a few conclusions about the game:

- The loading times have been bettered by 1.0, but still need serious work. At the very least, the Alt-Tab friendliness helps, but there are too many loading screens.

- The loot system is very shitty and Destiny-esque. Item variability is nil. Yes, there are effects on Masterwork/Legendary items that synergize well with builds. There are also inscriptions that seriously boost late-game survivability/damage, and they're a grind. None of that changes the fact that, essentially, every build (2-3 per Javelin) is after 1-2 key weapons, 6 components and a few ancillary items. Once they've got them, there is no further purpose to item hunting, beyond trying to get the perfect inscriptions (good luck). For a while there, people were filling out their slots with a ten chest run in Freeplay that (if done at GM1+) would guarantee multiple Masterwork items every half hour. A bunch of people basically completed the Masterwork collection, before Bioware nerfed the chests to drop only Epic and below (useless to anyone at gearscore 400+). Components are probably the worst culprit, though, with a grand total of ~8 unique to each class. Their most important effect is the one that's always there (not the inscriptions), so, basically, you're just swapping out one item rarity for another, or swapping out lower level items with higher ones. You'll always use 80-100% of your class uniques.

- Combat still feels good, especially if you're decently itemized. Enemies are bullet sponges in higher difficulties unless you're properly set up, in which case you can melt them almost as fast as you can at easier difficulties. Nonetheless, one of the fastest ways to get geared is to play Strongholds at Easy (LOL). You can basically finish a Stronghold in five minutes with a solid team, and Masterwork stuff will still drop (Legendary won't and the full pool of Masterwork stuff is locked behind GM1+).

- Key characters are, in all honesty, really well done. Haluk, Owen and Faye are well characterised. BW has done sterling work on expressions, lip syncing and body language. Lots of other characters are utterly shitty, wooden and immersion breaking, but the main trio is as believable as any in gaming. They're not larger than life, which to some people means 'shitty', but I found them to be realistic and authentic. The writing is very hit and miss, but conversational stuff is pretty solid (with the aforementioned characters). The Proper Noun Soup needs to fuck off, though. There are much better ways to do exposition and flesh out the world.

IF these dudes can

a) Improve the loot system (no +ammo for weapons you can't use on class items, fewer useless inscriptions, MORE VARIETY);
b) Improve loading times/instances
c) Introduce more story content
d) Broaden end-game activities
e) Expand the game's biomes beyond 'humid jungle peppered with ruins'
f) Insert more character customisation/RPG mechanics (perks, feats, pilot classes, whatever)
f) Do the above quickly

then the game might be worth significant amounts of your free time. It is fun to fly around and blast shit. But they can't hang their hat on that, because it will also get old much quicker than they might believe.

Verdict after ~20 hrs: B, with a tilt toward C+ beyond the 15 hr mark (around the time you exhaust story content)

(The 5/10 reviews I'm seeing around the place are vindictive as fuck. No chance. That grade is reserved for colossally shit games, and Anthem just isn't in that category, even in its current state. If 5/10 meant 'middling to average', fine, but we all know it doesn't in a system where 7/10 is 'okay')

 

[Dexter]

Why don't you like our games anymore?

 

[rusty_shackleford]

The writing is very hit and miss,

But I guess they never miss huh?

 

[Space Nugget]

02/21: 67 on Metacritic, 65% on GameRankings, and 63 on OpenCritic.

02/23: 60 on Metacritic, 58.12% on GameRankings, and 60 on OpenCritic.

 

[Rahdulan]

I'm just surprised by sheer lack of shill reviews. Maybe even big sites out there already figured out this one's mediocre at best if you squint real hard and game doesn't crash on you too often.

 

[Turbo normie]

It's just a rating. We want them to sink and crash, so I won't dance till we know how poorly this shit sold.

 

[Loostreaks]

After a decent amount of playtime, I can make a few conclusions about the game:

- The loading times have been bettered by 1.0, but still need serious work. At the very least, the Alt-Tab friendliness helps, but there are too many loading screens.

- The loot system is very shitty and Destiny-esque. Item variability is nil. Yes, there are effects on Masterwork/Legendary items that synergize well with builds. There are also inscriptions that seriously boost late-game survivability/damage, and they're a grind. None of that changes the fact that, essentially, every build (2-3 per Javelin) is after 1-2 key weapons, 6 components and a few ancillary items. Once they've got them, there is no further purpose to item hunting, beyond trying to get the perfect inscriptions (good luck). For a while there, people were filling out their slots with a ten chest run in Freeplay that (if done at GM1+) would guarantee multiple Masterwork items every half hour. A bunch of people basically completed the Masterwork collection, before Bioware nerfed the chests to drop only Epic and below (useless to anyone at gearscore 400+). Components are probably the worst culprit, though, with a grand total of ~8 unique to each class. Their most important effect is the one that's always there (not the inscriptions), so, basically, you're just swapping out one item rarity for another, or swapping out lower level items with higher ones. You'll always use 80-100% of your class uniques.

- Combat still feels good, especially if you're decently itemized. Enemies are bullet sponges in higher difficulties unless you're properly set up, in which case you can melt them almost as fast as you can at easier difficulties. Nonetheless, one of the fastest ways to get geared is to play Strongholds at Easy (LOL). You can basically finish a Stronghold in five minutes with a solid team, and Masterwork stuff will still drop (Legendary won't and the full pool of Masterwork stuff is locked behind GM1+).

- Key characters are, in all honesty, really well done. Haluk, Owen and Faye are well characterised. BW has done sterling work on expressions, lip syncing and body language. Lots of other characters are utterly shitty, wooden and immersion breaking, but the main trio is as believable as any in gaming. They're not larger than life, which to some people means 'shitty', but I found them to be realistic and authentic. The writing is very hit and miss, but conversational stuff is pretty solid (with the aforementioned characters). The Proper Noun Soup needs to fuck off, though. There are much better ways to do exposition and flesh out the world.

IF these dudes can

a) Improve the loot system (no +ammo for weapons you can't use on class items, fewer useless inscriptions, MORE VARIETY);
b) Improve loading times/instances
c) Introduce more story content
d) Broaden end-game activities
e) Expand the game's biomes beyond 'humid jungle peppered with ruins'
f) Insert more character customisation/RPG mechanics (perks, feats, pilot classes, whatever)
f) Do the above quickly

then the game might be worth significant amounts of your free time. It is fun to fly around and blast shit. But they can't hang their hat on that, because it will also get old much quicker than they might believe.

Verdict after ~20 hrs: B, with a tilt toward C+ beyond the 15 hr mark (around the time you exhaust story content)

(The 5/10 reviews I'm seeing around the place are vindictive as fuck. No chance. That grade is reserved for colossally shit games, and Anthem just isn't in that category, even in its current state. If 5/10 meant 'middling to average', fine, but we all know it doesn't in a system where 7/10 is 'okay')

You haven't played it on higher difficulties? Like with Diablo and similar games, "Normal" is warm up, and Anthem's combat completely collapses from that point on.
It is the worst shooter I've seen when it comes to enemy/environment "readability".
Hell, it outdoes retarded enemies-fall-from-the-sky encounter design from Dragon Age 2...in that game, at least you could "see" where they'll spawn.
Here you have enemies just appear randomly around you out of thin air, you cannot see them ( because of their poor visual design and visual effects overload), you cannot hear them because they give no audio indication to where they are...while it plays like mini horde mode, where everything one-two shots you.
It's obvious they couldn't figure out how to design combat with open world and flying mechanics in mind...similar issue is in Andromeda ( mentioned in podcast by one of their ex employees).
I don't see how they'll fix this, this needs complete redesign.
Plus they're going up against Warframe/Division, with much more content/studios with years of experience for support of these ( type of ) games.
Loot and activities can be improved, but core issues will kill the game in long run.
Warframe will hold on to same size/audience ( more suited for less "casual" experience, deeper mechanics/learning curve), Division 2 will be biggest success in this "genre".

 

[cvv]

So Warframe is:
1) Free
2) If you decide to put real money it's affordable, especially with all the daily discounts
3) Has 7 years of polish and content put into it (took me many, many weeks to get to the end game)
4) Looks as great as anything else
5) Instead of a braind-dead mass-market fast-food Disney-like story, dialogues and overall feel it has a very unique, engaging aesthetics and writing
6) Is the most fun to actually play (there's nothing as exhilarating as jump-flying at a breakneck speed through the corridors, mowing fools with your katanah)

If you're a fan of lewters-shewters, why would you play anything else?

 

[rusty_shackleford]

If you're a fan of lewters-shewters, why would you play anything else?

Story and possibly wanting a looter shooter that is more focused on combat with individual enemies over hordes of enemies.
Warframe's story is all over the place. A lot of it is straight up missing from the game because it was only available in events, so the star chart will be confusing as fuck to new players. It also contradicts itself a lot because the story got a lot of revisions over the years until they got more serious about it.

 

[Rahdulan]

If you're a fan of lewters-shewters, why would you play anything else?

QUALITY BIOWARE STORYTELLING™

 

[Infinitron]

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

ANTHEM REVIEW
Anthem is deeply flawed and frequently frustrating, but it sure is gorgeous.

Anthem is a deceptive game. From the first moment I stepped into its world and started meeting its characters, I was stunned by how gorgeous everything and everyone is. The jungles of Bastion are jaw-dropping, an alien landscape full of fantastic vistas and wondrous ruins. Likewise, Anthem's characters are alluring at first glance. When I first met them, I was fascinated by how lifelike their expressions were, and the voice acting for most of the main characters is charming and expressive. They're a likeable group of people that I was excited to get to know.

That's the problem with Anthem: It coasts entirely on the momentum of its stunning first impression. Once that new game smell began to fade, I started to see Anthem as a derivative, buggy, and at times exasperatingly soulless world that fails to weave BioWare's unique storytelling with a co-op RPG shooter.

This house is not a home
On a hostile, alien planet, the human race has etched out a meager survival thanks to the noble efforts of a loose guild of exosuit-wearing warriors called Freelancers. A long time ago, a mysterious alien race shaped the planet by harnessing the Anthem of Creation, a mystical energy that permeates everything. Then those "Shapers" disappeared and left all their Anthem-infused power tools still running, which causes all sorts of apocalyptic accidents that Freelancers are tasked with preventing—or trying to, at least.

It all sounds exciting, but Anthem's story feels half-finished and disjointed to the point that even its charming cast of characters can't save it. Fort Tarsis, my home base that I return to after missions, is a narrative prison where the story and characters are locked away from everything else, our conversations having all the intimacy of phone calls through glass. Most of these characters never physically accompany me on missions and are always standing in the same spot. They feel like charismatic quest givers in an MMO—all that's missing is the golden exclamation mark above their heads.

I never really get the sense that we're spending quality time or enduring hardships together, which makes these regular insights into their lives predictable and too easily won. When I should have felt a resolve to protect them, I was mostly indifferent—which is more than I can say about Anthem's villains, who are given so little screen time that I barely understand their mission, let alone their motivations.

As mission after mission blends together, I rarely have a clear understanding of what's happening or why it matters. The story provides a never-ending supply of MacGuffins to chase—Shaper relics, ancient suits of armor, mysterious rituals. Anthem is so full of mysticism and ambiguity that it feels like an excuse to not adhere to the logic of its own world.

Fort Tarsis is also filled with secondary characters who have isolated stories I uncover bit by bit each time I visit. These residents feel superfluous and our exchanges are often awkward and hamfisted, like the time I pretended to be a delusional mother's dead son to help her reconcile his death. Yeah, I was confused too. Talking to these Fort Tarsis locals doesn't open up interesting avenues in the main story or change how I interact with the settlement in any meaningful way. It makes me long for BioWare games of old when choices I made had consequences.

I'd ignore all this to focus on combat, but after every mission I'm dumped back into Fort Tarsis even if the first thing I'm going to do is turn around and start another mission. Quest givers are cruelly scattered to each of its corners, forcing me to slowly walk its unchanging streets hundreds of times just to pick up quests, turn around, and immediately walk back. The entire settlement feels like a waste of time, and that's exacerbated by Anthem's incredibly long load times.

Even on an SSD, loading screens can take upwards of 50 seconds, and I often have to wait through several back to back loads just to get where I'm going. It's common for missions to be interrupted by loading screens between zones and when I respawn, and there's even a short loading screen just to access The Forge where I can change my gear.

The Heart of Rage
Things are only marginally better once I hop in my javelin and head into the open world. The jungles of Bastion are ridiculously pretty and soaring through them with my squad before each mission is sublime, but the missions themselves are boring and repetitive.

Whether I'm doing a story mission, a randomized contract, or one of Anthem's Strongholds (20-minute dungeons that work like Strikes in Destiny 2), there are maybe half a dozen mission objectives that Anthem cycles between again and again and again. It doesn't matter if I'm silencing a Shaper relic that could destroy the world or looking for a lost scientist, I know that at some point I'm going to have to defend a specific point for 30 seconds or use the radar on my HUD to find hidden objects and then bring them somewhere. Nearly every mission follows the exact same structure: fly a few minutes to a location, complete the objective, and repeat that process two more times until the mission is over. Though Anthem's world feels large at first, by the end of the campaign I had fought in the same handful of arenas and caves plenty of times.

And that's when Anthem's missions aren't glitching out or breaking entirely. Though BioWare's day one patch promises to fix some of these issues, I'll believe it when I see it. I've had roughly a dozen missions fail to work correctly, forcing my party to abandon ship and start over from the beginning because an objective wouldn't update or an enemy wouldn't spawn.

Missions that task me with shutting down the highly volatile Shaper relics are especially disappointing. Characters back in Fort Tarsis regaled me with crazy tales about Shaper relics inverting gravity or teleporting people into alternate dimensions—all cool stuff that I'd love to experience. I never do. The first Shaper relic I silenced summoned ice dogs. Ice dogs. I've silenced dozens more since then and it's always just an excuse to summon some mundane enemies to kill—as if I haven't done enough of that already.

It's a good thing that Anthem's combat is mostly enjoyable, at least at lower difficulties. Each javelin is like a typical RPG class, with three types of abilities you can augment as you loot more gear. I'm particularly fond of the Storm, who channels the elements into explosive area-of-effect spells that can obliterate entire packs of enemies. Every javelin is fun to play, though, and their abilities erupt with all the flash and force of a nuclear bomb, making for some spectacular moments of pure carnage.

The heart of Anthem's combat is the combo system, which requires that teams work together to first afflict enemies with a status effect from one ability, called a 'primer', before hitting them with a 'detonator' ability that triggers a combo and deals massive damage. It's a lot of fun to pull off—not least because the ka-ching! sound effect that indicates a successful combo is so goddamn satisfying.

Layering these abilities is necessary to efficiently deal with enemies on higher difficulties, so it's baffling that Anthem leaves the combo system almost entirely unexplained except for an entry in the tutorial section of the in-game encyclopedia. If I went into Anthem without knowing anything about it, I might not even realize it exists.

That lack of clarity extends to Anthem's entire loot system. Gear has boring, aimless stats that are often incomprehensible. A day one patch has made stats slightly more readable, but I'm often left guessing at their meaning. None of them can be adjusted, however—if you find a gun you like, but the stats are no good, your only option is to go looking for another version of the same gun. There's not even a screen that shows the cumulative total of my javelin's various stats. Designing a build is so cumbersome, it makes me wonder why gear even has stat modifiers in the first place.

Honestly, it doesn't matter anyway. I was 34 hours into Anthem before I found a piece of loot that actually excited me. It's a Masterwork-tier light machine gun that makes me detonate a combo on nearby primed enemies when I reload. Until that point, even the "Epic" gear I had received was just a linear power increase with more boring modifiers like "+1% Heavy Pistol Damage." Anthem's loot is so shallow it could've just been a skill tree.

Now that I'm deep into Anthem's endgame, the gear is getting more exciting at the cost of combat being more aggravating. Calling it an endgame might be giving Anthem too much credit, since the only thing that changes is that I have more challenging missions (that are still repetitive) and two new Strongholds—one of which is actually just the last story mission. The biggest difference is the addition of Grandmaster difficulties, three extra tiers of difficulty that scale up enemy health and damage to absurd degrees but offer a greater chance to earn exceptionally powerful gear like my Masterwork-tier machine gun.

Playing on these difficulties really begins to expose the deep cracks in Anthem's combat and approach to endgame. On lower difficulties, fighting is enjoyable because I can be hyper-aggressive and fly around diving at enemies like a robo-hawk. But on Grandmaster, enemies are so fatal that even a single hit can knock me into a downed state where my team has to revive me.

That kind of challenge requires a level of precision that Anthem just doesn't have, and it's made me acutely aware of how janky combat is. Enemies will pop in and out of existence constantly or be locked into animations long after I killed them—I've even had mini-bosses vanish into thin air midway through a fight. Sometimes my ultimate ability meter appears fully charged but actually isn't, causing me to charge headlong into a group of enemies foolishly jamming a key that isn't doing anything. Leeroy Jenkins would be proud. And while the shooting sounds punchy, there's often this minute sense of delay between shooting an enemy and damaging them that's off putting. It feels mushy.

Enemies rarely telegraph their deadlier attacks, which means I'm constantly being one-shotted by hits I didn't even see—or worse, attacks I did see and dodged but that killed me anyway. This all but spoils the fantasy of being in a killer, sexy exosuit (a sexosuit, if you will). Instead of flying around like Iron Man laying waste to my enemies, I'm hiding behind rocks scared to stick my head out in case some untelegraphed, unseen attack is going to flatten me instantly. Grandmaster difficulty just doesn't play to Anthem's strengths, making the whole endgame feel sluggish and dull.

Working against its own strengths is a theme in Anthem. There are so many loose threads that I'm constantly asking myself "why?" Why is there an overly-detailed mission summary screen that tallies experience points after I've reached level 30 and no longer need those points? Why do I have hundreds of crafting materials that can only be used to create weak gear I'll never need again? Why are major details of Anthem's combat never explained? Why does a loot system even exist if almost everything below Masterwork is practically the same but with slightly higher numbers?

BioWare has already detailed some of what will be coming in the next few months. As a live service game, it's reasonable to expect that Anthem will change a great deal the same way that Destiny 2, The Division, and Warframe have. BioWare certainly seems keen on responding quickly to feedback, which is promising. But I'm not going to hold my breath.

THE VERDICT
55

ANTHEM
Anthem's disjointed story, boring loot, repetitive missions, and shallow endgame are all disappointing. At least it's pretty.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

If you're a fan of lewters-shewters, why would you play anything else?

Story and possibly wanting a looter shooter that is more focused on combat with individual enemies over hordes of enemies.
Warframe's story is all over the place. A lot of it is straight up missing from the game because it was only available in events, so the star chart will be confusing as fuck to new players. It also contradicts itself a lot because the story got a lot of revisions over the years until they got more serious about it.

Still, Warframe has certain things that set it apart in the crowd in this department, like how its aesthetic is more influenced by European comics and manga/anime (the most obvious influence being Bio-Booster Armor Guyver, even if they eventually settled on Warframes working like Detonator Orgun). I'd say that presentation alone sparks a certain level of interest in things.

 

[Seethe]

 

[Gerrard]

Since you guys became so fond of game reviews and metascores in the past few days

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Fun fact: In snowniggerland selfie sticks are called "kjánaprik" (silly stick) because you look silly while holding one.

 

[cvv]

Since you guys became so fond of game reviews and metascores in the past few days

You seem strangely butthurt by everyone shitting on this brainless mass-market turd. Are you a Biotard?

Do we have an actual Biotard on Codex? I thought even out there they went extinct years ago.

 

[Gerrard]

Retarded hypocrites annoy me greatly, yes. They should be hanged by the balls.
Doesn't matter whose game it is.

E: and I already mentioned that the last Bioware game I played was KotOR.

 

[cvv]

What hypocrites? Who's being hypocritical? Show me!

 

[Space Nugget]

Retarded hypocrites annoy me greatly, yes. They should be hanged by the balls.
Doesn't matter whose game it is.

E: and I already mentioned that the last Bioware game I played was KotOR.

The whole point is: the game was HYPED for months, during the beta this was the next great thing, "it only needs some adjustments", they said... and now, not even the usual shilling suspects are sucking up to it. The reviews and metascores ilustrate that reality.