Anthem

[SithAfrikaan]

TL:DR
I don't think Anthem is worth the money, enjoy Titanfall 2 instead.

Hey! Your senses will be bombarded with advertisements for this AAA title coming from the studio who brought us GREAT games like Mass Effect! If your Facebook is anything like mine, this "sponsored post" was on repeat on my feed daily for the last 2 weeks.
But should you buy it?
Here's my mini-review, since my addiction to playing different games any chance I get is a goodmeme at this point!
I got access to the £70 (yes you read that right) version of Anthem "Legion of Dawn Edition" which offers a soundtrack of the game, some "legendary" skins and a couple of starter weapons (that are so grossly OP you'll be using them for a long time)
I got the access because I paid for the Origin Premier service which is £14.99 per month, unlocks a huge library of games etc etc, but I got it because I wanted the £10 worth of apex coins for that other game we're all playing APEX: Legends.
This meant that effectively I got access to the £70 Legion of Dawn Edition of Anthem a full week before release for anyone else for approximately £5, but for benefit of the doubt, let's say it was 50/50, so I paid £7.50 for Anthem.
It is absolutely worth £7.50
It is not worth £70 or £54.99 (Standard Edition price)

Here's my take on it, because if my early access can protect any fellow member of dMw considering a full price purchase then that'd be the best I can do.
It does sport cool visuals on par with any game of this generation, and it does offer fun situations where 'combos' off eachothers moves feel satisfying.
It boasts that this is BioWares make or break title "return to form" for the Mass Effect giant, but the reality is difficult to sum up without sounding bitter, but I'm going to anyway!
QUICK breakdown:
You choose a character face and whether you sound male or female, you NEVER EVER SEE YOUR CHARACTER IN THE GAME, you hear your voice, yes, and you choose dialogue options that have literally ZERO bearing on anything in the story, or to your character. ALL RPG elements are conducted in Fort Tarsis "running" from npc to npc progressing dialogue that gates all progress in the game, and feels necessary since you get awarded a small amount of rep for progressing some of these 'relationships'.
For some reason you're forced to conduct all business in Fort Tarsis from first person perspective, and its obvious that they had no idea how that's supposed to feel because moving around feels like you're wading through a tar pit, you look down you see your legs running like a mad person but you go nowhere fast, I spent literally 35minutes running from person to person to smash F to progress dialogues so that I could continue the story, it could have taken 10, I didn't feel like I was being immersed better like other games reward the slow down in pace, RDR2 etc.

The game has a ridiculous difficulty system, and I don't want to criticise Anthem here as if they're the only ones to do it, because there are other culprits out there.
Normal, affords a completely basic shooter and awards loot, Hard offers a completely Normal shooter, requires that you trigger combos etc and offers the same amount of loot, but presumably a chance at getting better items?
Well this is my experience: I got my first EPIC item on EASY mode, and I consistently got 1 to two EPIC items on EASY mode for less than half the work, less than half the enemies and literally I mean, LITERALLY ZERO EFFORT,
[video=youtube;52FQsaU9d9o]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52FQsaU9d9o[/video]

the problem I've got with this is that the game is supposed to be a Looter Shooter, (Shooter Looter?) which means relentlessly grinding for better gear, cool we all love those, Borderlands did this RIGHT, but the difficulty afforded in Anthem is literally only stacking the HP of the enemies you're fighting. It takes an infuriatingly long time to kill enemies on higher difficulties and I never felt like they erupted with more loot or better loot, and definitely not loot that warranted spending so long trying to get through it. If you're going to grind loot, stick it on EASY, literally sprint around the map with the shield up as colossus, and get rewarded. Rinse, and repeat ad infinitum until you feel mighty.

But what about the gameplay/gunplay I hear you ask, well, it's a game clearly designed to be played with a controller, flight controls are far better than they were in the Beta, but you'll regularly bump into geometry or swim up against a wall struggling to turn around. It feels like there is a huge amount of input lag, and there is an auto aim system that I couldn't find a means to switch off, you can see it even in the video I link below where my "acid spit" locks onto the middle of the tank even though I'm looking at its feet. The explosions are so regular and so over the top that in plenty of the gunfights you could be stood in just giant amounts of particle effects, I'm not a fan, but I also don't like that frantic colour abuse in Overwatch so that might be just me. The gunplay feels kind of cool, the sound and punchiness of the weapons are great, but I couldn't compare it to something like Warframe, because Warframes gunplay and gameplay is leagues faster, far more visceral and in an entirely different league to this, so it's tough. It feels good, but I'm not grabbing friends and telling them it feels awesome.

Which brings me to (probably) my last point, I liked not feeling like content was gated by my item level, I despised that Destiny 2's raid etc required a certain power level to even enter, and here, I ploughed through the content upgrading along the way and enjoying every second of absolutely STOMPING on enemies, infuriatingly I actually enjoyed the little bit of actual story that it offered, but it was over in no less than 10hours flat. I don't think it is a great story, I don't think its even memorable to be honest, but I did enjoy the story, like a movie you stick on Netflix knowing you're going to fall asleep, but its cool to watch anyway (I'm looking at you Mowgli), the glaring problem that I have with that 10hours of story, is that its probably less than 3hours of story, since at least a third of my playtime was walking around Tarsis trying to talk to meaningless NPC's, (not all of them, the main story line NPC's are ok) the other third was the kinda sorta fun gameplay.
[video=youtube;UUU-39Jfv1s]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UUU-39Jfv1s[/video]

Ok this is my last point(s), APEX showed us all what releasing without the hype can achieve, and we're all loving it. Apex is set in the Titanfall world, and if you play it thinking my god I wish this just had some story, and you also keep thinking to yourself that it'd be cool to stomp on enemies in a robotic suit ala Anthem then do yourself a favor and play Titanfall 2's campaign, it is visceral Apex fun with added robot suits to pilot. It oozes atmosphere and is a lot of fun and it costs only £10.49 at CDKeys atm.

I enjoyed Anthem, but I only paid a absolute fraction of the price to do so, and I think in a years time it might be a lot of fun, but it simply isn't worth the money now. Bioware did not impress me here.

[BrotherTobious]

Great review thanks for posting it up mate

[Chaosphere]

Nice Titanfall 2 review dude, at only a tenner I may pick it up.

But seriously, enjoyed the read and thanks for sharing your thoughts. I'll steer clear of Anthem for now, too busy playing Apex anyway!

:yahoo:

[Gorliath]

Thanks for the breakdown Sith.
Played it a bit now, I quite like it but it could have been so much better. Haven't managed to catch anyone online yet so it may be improved by team play, that said I have used public matchmaking so not been solo.
The good.
Visually its awesome and the "basic" controls are fairly intuative and make it a very fun "pick up and go" title. The addition of combos and actual complementary abilities seem to be better worked (more obvious) than Destiny but given the development time that should be a minimum.
The bad.
The constant loading screesns an lack of effective mission monitoring make it a bit disjointed and difficult to progress the actual story. You talk, you get a mission, you talk to someone else and now you have a new mission but where did the old one go?
Actually using all your abilities effectivley requires good teamwork, often difficult in random groups, the matchmaking doesn't include your specified Javelin type when searching so you can end up with a team of just 1 Javelin type.
Free play is actually pretty deserted so don't expect the helpful res you used to get in the beta.
The ugly.
glitch glitch glitch. You do actually see your characters face when entering your Javelin and heading out on a mission. Well I have seen it once when the animation was actually synced correctly to the loading screen and audio. The Princess mission I did last night had the audio a full 2 seconds out of sync when she would clap her hands.

Overall, while it is a fun game to play for short periods it needs some fine tuning (or they should have finished developing it before they released it). I will continue to play it but probably won't be spending the endless hours I did with Destiny which was much more free flowing. If I had spent £70 on this I would be fairly hacked off, but I'd also be a bit more invested in making it work. Apex Legends feels like a well developed title and was free, microtransactions are not going anywhere but I don't wan't to pay £70 for something that still has that system embedded. We know they need to pay for development but if a game is good people will pay. Release a finished title for a change and people will be happy.

Got Titanfall 2 as part of access, looks really good and gets great gameplay reviews, it was hit by the BF1 hype train.

Origin Access
is good if you play a lot of titles, but only if your geting at least two AAA titles (that you like) a year with access to your old library. Thats at £89 for 12 months one off payment not the monthly rate. If there aren't the titles out there you like then just suck it up and pay the £70 for the one game.

[Chaosphere]

Thanks for the breakdown Sith.
Played it a bit now, I quite like it but it could have been so much better.

This seems to be more or less the consensus from what I've seen. Another 'live service's game that launches with a lack of content. It may be a good platform to build upon, but by the time this happens, will anyone care anymore?

Thanks for sharing your thoughts guys.

[Gorion]

I think this game is getting a lot of flak based on early access reviews.  I did not pay for early access, and played only after the game was officially launched, and I don't have the same experience as you guys had.

As someone who played Destiny2, this game is much better.  It actually has a semblance of a story, I found D2's story very lackluster.  I'm not sure how some are saying that they completed the entire story in 10 hours.  As per usual bioware games, there are tons of cortex (lore database) entries to read through, which provides loads of backstory and context.  As for fort tarsis and spending a lot of time there conversing with NPC's, well, that's what bioware games are about.  Mass Effect games had the citadel and the Normandies, Anthem has tarsis.  You can also direct NPC's into doing some things - some have a dilemma, and you can choose between one thing or the other.  After you complete a mission or two, you get the option to talk with them and they tell you how it went.  D2 didn't have anything of the sort.

As of the day one patch, flight has received a patch (underwater still feels wonky), that loot bug Sith mentioned has been fixed, and load times were patched.  I did not experience the previous load times, but they don't feel bad to me.  The free play zone is massive, and you only load once when switching between the player hub and the game map.  There is also a zone which has all the vendors and equipment related consoles which are found in tarsis, all next to each other, and you can go there directly from the mission end screen.  So once the story is done, you can actually skip tarsis all together.  I actually like the fort, earning reputation and moving the story line forward results in new zones of the fort being unlocked, and repaired.  It slowly goes from being an abandoned dump, to nice place.  Basically some stuff happens in the prologue which results in the player faction getting some bad rep, as you the player re-builds that rep, people start seeing your faction in a different light.

What I don't like is that at the moment you need to leave the game zone to change your equipment, and they need to fix underwater movement.  I think the issue is mouse acceleration.  In fact, when I disabled the built in w10 mouse "Enhance pointer precision" option, flight felt more responsive.