Anthem - New Bioware IP

[Marcus]

so trying to play the demo last night was....... interesting.

No lets say what it really was. A fucking shit show from EA with little to know feedback from them. I got lucky and managed to get into the game within the first hour and do one mission before getting hit with a stuck load screen causing me to alt F4 the fuck outta of there. My friends who I was hoping to play the game with last night didn't even get on. One was up til 4am with still no fucking luck.

managed to get on this morning but then had audio issues which meant I had to restart, then got into another mission and once again got stuck behind a load screen.

From the little time I have had to play the game, it seemed okay. I guess. Though I do have some issues with the game play, the first one being if an explosive goes off near you the whole camera shakes which throws off your aim MASSIVELY and explosives are very frequent and are very very disorientating to the point I had to look away as was that bad.

The second being the flying, it's either not very sensitive or too sensitive, I've found myself veering wildly off in one direction only too swoop back in the other when I try to correct in the thrown myself into a cliff, I think with some practice you should be able to better grasp but it's not the best at the moment.

I'm hoping my friends will be able to log in later today so we can all get on and play as I feel that will make the game marginally better.

But from the server issues and everything that has happened within the first 12 hours I'm not too impressed. This weekend was the demo for those who have pre-ordered the game and there was this much of a server issue. next weekend is the open demo where everyone will be wanting to get on and try the game out. god help the servers then.

will report back later with more findings if the game works and I can get a few hours in.

 

[Cacti]

I played the game in Alpha previously and got to play a little yesterday after I got back from my work trip in Poland. I had surprisingly few issues in the couple of hours I played. Maybe it was a lot more stable on Sunday than the other days. I got disconnected once and my audio disappeared once but that's pretty much the only issue I had.

I can't say I noticed the issue with explosions you talked about Marcus, but I may just not be bothered by these things as much as others. The game did run like garbage for me the first 30 min or so and then stabilized at 55-65 ish FPS after that. Flying felt a LOT better than in the alpha, and so did aiming. In the alpha the vertical and horizontal aiming was off, where the horizontal sensitivity was about 3x that of the vertical sensitivity. Flying is much better in the demo but it still needs some work since there's some weird negative acceleration going on, capping the sensitivity in a weird way.

I got to the level where you can select your second javelin and I went with the Storm. It's fucking badass, the animations are awesome and abilities are fun to use (the ones I've gotten so far). Overall the idea of the game is awesome and there's looks to be a lot of cool systems in place. Customization is very cool. The loot seems to be quite varied and combat feels quite tight. I'm liking my first impressions of this more than I liked Destiny when it was in beta to be honest.

Also the devs have been very communicative and transparent for a while now and I like their honesty, despite my skepticism for EA and Bioware these days.

That being said, I know I'm going to be playing the game when it comes out and give it a proper try. 15$ EA sub to try the full game is an investment I'm willing to make, if only to play through the story and see what's up

 

[Carlie]

 

[Marcus]

I ended up going back to this game on Sunday and yeah @Cacti a lot of the issues from the Saturday were solved, I was also hitting around 60fps for the most part and enjoyed it a hell of a lot more as I was running it with friends rather than just solo or through matchmaking.

I still had a few issues, the game stuttered quite badly for me even though I was at a stable frame rate, I kept tinkering with the graphic settings and such but to no avail but was as unplayable as the day before as for the shaky explosions, I don't know if it was just more day one issues but Yesterday I didn't have any problems as such, however being stun locked by enemy snipers was a bit annoying at times.

I agree and with you about playing the game properly when it is out, I got the game for free with my RTX 2060 so really can't complain about how good or bad it runs (though it should run fine with the aforementioned 2060).

 

[Hisako]

So I'm generally pretty excited for this game and after putting in a day's hard play I've taken some time to step away from it to think pretty hard about it.

I think in many ways, for some reason BioWare intentionally picked an uphill fight and seem to believe they can weather that storm. They're damned if they do and damned if they don't - there's this constant giant looming spectre of Destiny/Warframe hanging over their heads, entirely constructed by the consumer base, even if Anthem was conceived during the days of Mass Effect 3. BioWare knowingly picked "sci-fi/power suit/loot-shooter" and unerringly stayed the course even as other games won over the market.

So what they've produced they've tried their absolute darndest to place their game on the spectrum of that genre to stand out from the crowd. We can see it in the weird digitigrade legs and silhouettes, the distinct class-based design with their wacky approach to health/shield management, bigger focus on abilities and less on guns, and the weight and inertia of movement and flight (by far Anthem's biggest distinguishing characteristic).
But for so many people, Warframe and Destiny are their points of reference so when we get served "demo/beta" versions of something different by design that aren't properly tuned we get a lot of "this X sucks, Destiny/Warframe do it better and they're much more polished" and the features they do borrow are met with "this looks like a Destiny/Warframe clone" or "this looks so generic and boring".

And we can explain to people all day "well no, there's this and this and that" and all these under-the-hood things that legitimately add up to a much more distinct game, but if we have to present to the prospective buyer with a whole bunch of "well ackshully" then again, getting these people to buy into this game which isn't necessarily wowing them from the start isn't doing the game any favours.

Anthem had to release a better beta/demo than this. If people are going to go ask skeptics to pretty please go check out the demo and try it for yourself, what are they going to expect when people come back from it and go "well I had a really tough time actually getting in and when I got in I dunno it felt weird and different and there was jankiness too"? I'm glad they did a demo but honestly if we're talking about bumping up launch sales a shoddy demo is almost worse than having no demo and getting a whole bunch of people being pleasantly surprised and spreading that word of mouth to others.

Personally my beef with Anthem is not significant. I'm willing to look past its technical issues because there's a large part of it that clicked with me which in my eyes, carves its own niche between Destiny and Warframe enough that it doesn't deserve the derision it gets. But in so many ways BioWare brought this level of scrutiny upon itself and committed to it to a point where I feel like they could have sidestepped some of that shit much more cleanly.

Also, the colossus is woefully underpowered and almost less tanky than the other... non-tank classes. Shame because it has the shield bash, taunt and all the other fun animations in the game (like running through enemies Juggernaut style)

 

[Cthulhu]

Yeah for a demo it falls flat, for me the same was true for the MH: World demo - if you are doing a demo (under the guise of a public beta, urgh), make it cover the first hour or so of the actual game. Add some story, add some personality, give players a hook so that they want to continue playing, to see what's next. They've got the budget to make it a h*cking mini-game even, where the player progresses faster from being new to whatever they want to show / test.

 

[Lex]

Fucking yikes

https://imgur.com/I6zTPYe

https://imgur.com/QGfYNTd

As a Bioware fan I want this game to succeed, but this is the second game in Frostbite that seems to have the same issues. I suppose it's a little too early to call but it's not looking good.

I'm reading average load times of 3 minutes and insane shit like if someone gets too far ahead of you you'll hop into one of said load screens to "catch up".

 

[Gary Caelum]

What even counts as a "Bioware fan" in 2019?
The last game of theirs I absolutely loved was Mass Effect 2. That's nearly a decade old now. I think if you go for a decade without releasing anything I like, I generally stop calling myself a fan.

 

[Lex]

Well, I'd consider myself a waning Bioware fan at this point. I liked everything up to Inquisition but recognised the flaws in ME3 and DA2. Andromeda was a crushing disappointment and it really feels like Anthem is going to decide whether they head out to the developer graveyard with the other studios EA has acquired over the years (and I actually don't blame their decline entirely on EA anymore either, they've made some fucking poor choices).

 

[Gary Caelum]

Yikes, 70 on metacritic:

https://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/anthem

I know it's a live service so they might improve it and make it a success. But not looking great for Bioware.

 

[Lex]

That's better than I was expecting. I'll probably check it out at some point.

 

[Lestat]

I'll wait till it goes down to £20 so like two weeks after release with the way things are going.

 

[Cthulhu]

lawls, yeah similarly I got Destiny 2 for free / PS Plus at some point, entertaining enough game but ehh.

 

[lithiumkatana17]

Looks like Anthem's dropped in price on Amazon already.

https://www.gamespot.com/articles/a...days-after-/1100-6465241/?ftag=GSS-05-10aaa0a

It looks like a fun enough game from all the playing I've watched my husband do, but the story seems a little... buried? Hmm.

 

[Gary Caelum]

The fact that all of trailers for the game were 90% just flying and combat, made me suspicious about their claim that it was a story-driven game.

It was advertised very differently than something like Mass Effect.

 

[Cthulhu]

I only read reviews, but, it seems they confused worldbuilding with storytelling, . That is, there's a lot of shit hidden in the in game encyclopedia, but in the game itself they just toss random words and shit your way.

I mean who are "we" fighting again? And why?

 

[Lestat]

A lot of reports about this game ruining folks ps4's/PS4 pros.
A high number of cases where folk have said the game has just all of a sudden turned the power off on their consoles and other saying the entire console has went to shit while playing this.

 

[Lex]

Yup, that's a Bioware game :3

 

[ForceStealer]

Here's Schreier's inevitable post-mortem on the development of this thing. Bioware...sounds like a shitshow.

 

[Cthulhu]

The worst part is that they don't need to be. They've got so much money (I assume) they can take their sweet time making good games. The main problems as far as I can tell are poor project leadership / indecisiveness (for Anthem at least, Andromeda seemed to be choocing along just fine) and pressure from their publisher.

I don't understand why game companies still need publishers tbh, but then, that's a line of industry I'm not familiar with.