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Red’s Read on Anthem - MMORPG.com
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
Red’s Read on Anthem - MMORPG.com
Red Thomas takes advantage of his Premier Origin Access to check out Anthem, the latest result of Bioware and EA tag-teaming efforts. Red gives his impressions of the game and makes a few predictions on its sustainability.
Comments
I want a mmorpg where people have gone through misery, have gone through school stuff and actually have had sex even. -sagil
Really enjoying the game. Not without flaws, but I get why they are there/were designed that way.
Playing on an Xbox One X with SSD, so load times are no bother and the visuals & framerate (4k/HDR) are fantastic.
The comparison to Monster Hunter is an apt one, though Anthem is far more approachable.
Anthem also borrows liberally from both Destiny and Diablo.
The structure is very Bioware - talk to some people, learn more about the world, tons of lore/characters etc. then hop into a mission and blow stuff up in beautiful, particle-effect rich combat.
After that mission, back to home base, more story, more conversations. Kind of has that Monster Hunter vibe in equiping/crafting gear and consumables for the upcoming mission before heading out, giving that "you need to prepare" vibe vs. a more "standard' game where you could swap out gear/abilities on the fly.
The Diablo influences are definitely in the loot. Your items define your "build" and thus play style, with the "class" (Javelin) providing the framework.
As for glitches/bugs, I've seen a few, but far between. A few connection drops. Thankfully Bioware figured out enough to make sure even with a mistimed disconnect or game crash, you can most-often hop right back into your session, and any loot & even XP is transferred to your character regardless.
Spot on with soundtrack, voice acting, and visuals. Also, amazing just how much better the facial animations are than Mass Effect: Andromeda. I like Andromeda, and Anthem borrows heavily from the combat design of that came too (shields, armor, combos, status effects etc.)
I foresee end-game as being an escalating Destiny-esque loot grind for more Power level, with a Diablo-esque twist on crafting/looting gear to make your build and escalating difficulties.
Real staying power is going to come in the roadmap. Without PvP and without Raids, Bioware is going to have to pump out new world events and contracts and weekly/daily activities, along with new quest chains and Strongholds. Oh, and new Javelins.
The store for cosmetics is thus-far a non factor, though I did by some new arms for my Colossus. You can also buy crafting mats for in-game currency, but I haven't seen a need yet, though I'm sure that may change when I hit max level and starting crafting in earnest.
Treating as a "play through once and enjoy the game" type of experience, I'd give Anthem a very solid 9/10, Bioware knocked it out of the park.
As a continuing, ongoing "lifestyle" game-as-a-service title, only time will tell, but it's going to have stiff competition (for me and many others) from the Division 2 in a few weeks.
Well no - Red had Origin Premier Access. As did several other people who have posted about the game - and enjoyed it as part of their Origin package.
Only EA will know whether they saw a bump in Origin memberships for February - maybe they could be directly attributable to Anthem. What about people who joined because of Anthem but then stick around in March etc. - impressed by what they can play for the cost? Are they Anthem sales as well? At what point does the cost of developing Anthem become a part of Origin Access's marketing cost?
For all the stories about how well - or not - Anthem is doing I think we will have to wait for EA's next results before we get a real idea.
The combat is actually exceptional. Like, far and away the best third person shooting combat in years, if not this console generation. As someone who prefers third person shooters to first person, I really appreciate this.
Movement and flight feel great and weighty (with a controller, at least.)
The graphics, sound, and OST are excellent.
The visual customization is without equal.
Being able to slot different combinations of powers goes a long way towards keeping gameplay fresh, even if these powers are certainly not created equal.
Separation of cosmetics from power is welcome and needed.
But now onto the bad....
The loading times and screens are an embarassment. Loading screens after respawns and the (pathetically short) group proximity tether are a joke.
The weapon skins are unappealing, uninteresting, and not integrated into the same awesome customization system that Javelins benefit from.
Limited number of Strongholds and no starting Cataclysm.
Locked into a single Stronghold while leveling, alongside no Legendary Contracts until the story is completed - made more frustrating by the repeated locking of story missions behind freeplay grind. I actually did not struggle with the infamous Tombs story gate at all, but I am currently stuck on the 3 Titan Hearts gate.
Inconsistent difficulty. It's either just right or suddenly spikes to enemies mowing you down instantly and with pinpoint accuracy. The game does a poor job at conveying required gear thresholds for its random difficulty spikes in Story missions in particular.
I blew through the 30+ hours of storylines over the weekend, and am now in the "endgame" mode, grinding dailies with my morning coffee while I wait the new content drops, and playing 2x weekly with my brother, who has a much slower pace and will likely take 6 weeks to get through the storyline.
I'm keen on seeing how their events play out over the long term. Combat is exciting and it's a fun "wake up" for me every morning over coffee. Been hitting the Strongholds and Legendary Contracts on Grandmaster 1 level while working on kitting out my Masterwork gear slots and grinding out those legendary deeds
There is a number from Japan: 75k-ish physical copies sold during its first week. To compare: RDR2 sold almost 140k during first week, 70k-ish during this week. So Anthem performs like a single player game released 4 months ago.
Thank you for your time!
Worth noting that RDR2 is not available on PC? I don't think comparisons like that work here as I, like many I'm sure, got Origin Access and downloaded the game.
Good review Red I agree with a lot of it. They have created a great framework for the game moving forward and are listening to players as to how to improve it. If they have the time and money to continue development I think it will grow to something special indeed. The flying and the combat are big fun!
If Anthem racks up half the sales of RDR2 - globally - then it will be a huge success.
With over 70% of EA's sales being direct we don't really know though. Yes 3rd parties like e.g. Superdata come out with stories but EA won't be giving them sales data - which could influence the share price and so would probably constitute (in the US) an SEC breach. Nor are 3rd parties getting credit card statement data so ...... we are somewhat in the dark.
My point though was about EA's Origin Access. People who sign up for the annual pass may not bother to "buy" EA games ...... but they are paying EA money. This makes it very hard to judge how well Anthem - and other EA games - perform.
If I had to pick something to complain about it would be the bland weapon design and the loading. I get having a long load time when you're going to the fort from a mission or the other way (Destiny has similar load times when going from orbit to a mission or the tower), but the loading screen when you get behind your team, or from the forge to whatever. Sometimes it feels like I spend more time looking at loading screens than I do looking at the game world.
I didn't need to even see the final game release or have anyone tell me about this game,what i saw in the tidbits of marketing told me this was a cheap effort,a cheap game.After seeing the released game,i was like wow,it is worse than i thought because we already saw everything the game does in about 2 minutes of marketing.
For myself it is sad to see how gaming has become nothing more than a fast cash grab.There has always been marketing,some more than others,however somewhere around 2003ish when DSL was common in homes,a lot of really bad consumers arrived to support all these crappy games and make bad developers rich.
I guess part of it is just the internet is so big now and it is so easy for devs to market their product.In the old days of 56k,good games were sold by word of mouth,it took a few weeks to get around and sales continued for a month.Now the games are pretty much sold by day 2,played for a week then disappears.
The biggest financial losers to me are the websites dedicated to specific games.Why bother to make detailed game information,like the WIKI sites if the game is dead in a week or two?This is exactly what i have been seeing,a lot of unfinished Wiki sections because people quit playing so fast nobody cares anymore.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
RDR2 not available on PC makes it look even worse for Anthem: it sells on three platforms at once while four months old RDR2 performs the same on just two platforms.
Thank you for your time!
The game is beautifull and the gameplay is amazing but after you finish the story theres only repeatable content like boring contracts, 3 (only !!!) bosses to farm, freeplay and quickplay that is the same missions all over again. I don't think there is enouph to keep you playing right now. Maybe later after 2 or 3 month if their planning to add new content like new boss fights or maybe raids?
Besides that the game missing pvp that i believe could help to keep players playing.
Also, maybe just consider that this is just a genre of gaming. You can't really look at Anthem and make a broad statement about gaming in the macro sense, because even the entire genre is an incredibly small portion of the whole.
You're saying marketing, but it's linked to the idea that this is a cheap game.... I'm not sure what they spent over all, but it's definitely not a cheap game. Not as complex mechanics-wise as what I like, but it's in no way a cheaply developed game. The only cheap part is that the lack of story content, but it's not really that sort of game.
If you're going to talk about the industry in the big sense, I think you need to call out things that cross genres like revenue models, art styles, UI design, and stuff like that. The type of gameplay you get in these looter-shooters is at best only similar to what you'd find in other games. For instance, in Battle Royal games there's no equipment progression as you start fresh in each match. In Survival games, you have to worry about food/water and basebuilding, which doesn't exist in Anthem. The list goes on, but the point is that this is a specific genre, and what I think it is that you (and frankly, myself as well) don't like is pretty specific to the genre.
1. LAG/ Rubberbanding!
it has been the flagship of Bioware's multiplayer games, from Mass effect series!
2. Server issues / Disconnections
Freeplay is fun, until you get that box at the bottom "You have lost connection to the server", and you lose all your loots.
Other than those I can cope. I have played for a while, just until I hit level 3 loyalty with the freelancers, and I'm done.
This issues would seriously piss me off.