This weekend we saw swarms of players attempt to log into Bioware’s VIP demo of Anthem, this year’s hot new 3rd Person Looter Shooter. Server issues plagued Anthem’s first publicly playable build of the game, resulting in players spending far less time in-game over the relatively short VIP demo than they would have liked, myself included. However, I feel that I’ve played and watched enough of the game to jot down my thoughts, both old and new.
The elephant in the room here is the instability. Very few people could actually get in to play very much of Anthem the first 24 hours of the 2 and a half day demo, and those that did met frequent crashes and load errors. I personally was able to play about an hour and a half on the first day of the demo, and several hours the next two, but most of my time was spent staring at the 95% load screen that many others faced, resulting in a force quit and rejoin maneuver that was less than ideal. Despite this being called a “demo” and not a “beta” it’s worth noting that the demo was reportedly a six week old version of the game that was then branched off to become the demo, and was the first time game had been tested by this quantity of players. Bioware is well aware of the issues and is actively trying to improve the experience by this upcoming weekend’s open demo period.
Server issues aside, the Anthem demo had wild ups and downs. The game’s biggest draw is its combat and movement systems. Suited up in armored flight suits akin to Marvel’s Iron Man, players step into the shoes of freelancers. Freelancers use these armored flight suits, known as Javelins, to fight back against their enemies in the world of Bastion. The Javelins felt surprisingly natural to control and before long I was soaring through the skies with ease. Each Javelin is equipped with two weapons, two abilities, an ultimate ability and some Javelin-specific tools. Alternating between quick flight, ability combinations and seamlessly firing my weapons while hovering above the battlefield honestly felt incredible. When things really got going I was swooping in and out of the battlefield launching explosives that, when combined with frozen or electrified enemies, resulted in bombastic combos that felt powerful and satisfying.
When combat wasn’t going well it really didn’t go well. Most of the Javelins, even on normal difficulty, feel like they’re made of glass. Almost every encounter features enemies that can drop half of your health in a single shot or immediately overheat your Javelin sending you careening towards the ground, or both. In a game that leans heavily on its movement and flight mechanics, I was grounded an alarmingly large amount of time. Even when enemies weren’t forcing me to hide due to health or heat constraints, I found that my Javelin’s flight systems overheated far more often than I’d like. It’s clear that with upgrades that Javelins will be able to fly for much longer, but even at the midpoint of the leveling system players won’t be able to fly for more than 20 or 30 seconds at a time. With how many enemies have the ability to drop your shields, ground you or otherwise rip control from the player, many combat situations didn’t feel like I was playing in a sandbox so much as I was skirting on the edge of the game’s mechanics trying to avoid being spotted by any enemies.
Furthermore, it’s very apparent that not all gear is created equal. During my playtime I found that on both normal and hard difficulties that all but the easiest of enemies were bullet sponges. Most weapons felt pointless to use against elite enemies, especially those that had rapidly regenerating energy shields. Automatic weapons felt particularly weak, often unable to sustain enough damage against shielded enemies between reloads that I was unable to down them at all. Abilities are great and all, but without properly chaining abilities between teammates combat felt like a slog and guns nigh useless. Furthermore, the feedback received when shooting at or being shot by enemies left a bit to be desired. I often had no idea where I was being shot from and this, in tandem with so many enemies being tanky cannons, often resulted in frustrating downs. A lot of the game’s systems felt like they were very affected by my connection to game servers as I often found myself being unable to use any of my abilities near the beginning of fights despite them being fully charged and shots would seemingly pass through enemies or enemies would disappear entirely. What exacerbates Anthem’s weapons problems is that you can not change gear in the field, so if you’ve decided to experiment and end up not enjoying a specific weapon or piece of gear you’re out of luck until you’re back home. Any loot that you pick up mid mission can not be investigated or equipped until you return back to base.
This, combined with a few other issues, made certain classes of Javelin feel vastly superior to others. For example the Ranger Javelin, the de facto “default” model of Javelin, relies heavily on basic impact and explosive abilities, well-rounded stats and weapons. Without specialized gear and compensating teammates, the Ranger is at a massive damage disadvantage as it is rarely possible to achieve combos from its own suite of abilities without special gear upgrades. On the flip side, the Storm Javelin has increased hover time, strong defensive shields and various elemental attacks, single-handedly solving most of the issues with combat. The other two Javelins, the Colossus and the Interceptor had similar power gaps. The Colossus is supposed to be the tank of the Javelins, wielding a large metallic shield and a large armor pool. but both its health and special shield ability still feel paper-thin against even moderate enemies. Because of its lack of an energy shield, this Javelin is the only one without the ability to regenerate some form of health during combat without finding health pickups from downed enemies. Low health and no form of self-regeneration make longer encounter feel disadvantageous in the Colossus. The Interceptor, which is supposedly the most agile and least resilient of the Javelins felt infinitely stronger because of what felt like immunity frames while meleeing up close and dodging. Something certainly felt wrong about a twiggy ninja-like Javelin feeling more resilient than a large shield-wielding tank, especially when the Interceptor can largely throw caution to wind and dive straight into the action.
Many comparisons have been made between Bungie’s Destiny and Bioware’s Anthem, and while many of those comparisons are moot due to the vastly different nature of the combat systems and the perspectives, the game is structured in some incredibly similar ways. Fort Tharsis is essentially a single player hub where freelancers can explore, chat with NPCs, pick up missions and contracts, as well as customize their Javelins. From Fort Tharsis players can form lobbies of up to 4 players and launch expeditions. These expeditions are comprised of missions, strongholds and free roam areas, similar to Destiny’s story missions, strikes and patrol zones. The missions featured in the demo were mostly enjoyable save a few difficulty spikes and odd combat areas. There were definitely gaps in player knowledge and character bonding, probably an intentional move from Bioware as a way to avoid spoilers, but things felt interesting enough. I’m interested in seeing if Anthem can successfully make me care for its character cast. One thing that I did notice is that despite beautiful character models and animations, something about the way that characters speak and move felt a bit unnatural. Voice lines are spoken quickly with few natural pauses, characters rarely look you in the eye and things often approach that uncanny valley of mirrored human interaction. It’s worth noting that freelancers can only select and embark on missions from within Fort Tharsis, where the game goes into a slowed down first person perspective.
Free roam was disappointing in the state that it appears in the demo. What Bioware has shown us is essentially a beautiful natural landscape filled with verticality, wildlife and explorable bodies of water with little else to do other than Anthem’s version of public events. While these public events were fine, one of these events was even extended into a sub-area of the open world similar to a lost sector or a short dungeon, they are limited and fairly easy. Even if exploration is your thing, the open world feels much smaller than it actually is due to how spread thin actual activities are the and ability to literally fly through it all.
Grabbits are cute, though.
Of the content available in the demo, the Stronghold “Tyrant Mine” is probably the most substantial. Full disclosure, of the 7 times that I attempted this Stronghold I was only able to complete it once due to server issues and program crashes. That aside, Anthem Strongholds are similar to Destiny’s strikes. However, if Tyrant Mine is indicative of anything, Strongholds seem to be quite a bit longer and more enjoyable. That said, the Tyrant Mine wasn’t without its issues as it had some particularly drawn out portions. Two of its combat encounters had many of the issues that I mentioned earlier, featuring bullet sponges and stunning enemies galore, and . The stronghold was essentially split into four parts. The first two encounters included collecting various floating lights called “echoes” that needed to be deposited in a specified area to silence a “shaper,” an ancient piece of technology abandoned by the gods of Bastion. Next up was another fetch and deliver portion with the added twist that flight was disabled while holding these artifacts. After a bit more exploration and enemy clearing came the boss fight. The Swarm Tyrant was a massive Skorpion, not the type found in the American Southwest but a race of bug in Anthem that come in all shapes and sizes. The Swarm Tyrant encounter plastered a large health bar smack-dab in the center of the screen and the boss itself featured unique critical areas, a varied but learnable moveset and multiple phases, fulfilling most if not all of the requirements for a pretty fun boss fight, even if it felt a bit drawn out due to underwhelming weapon damage and large health pool.
All in all, Anthem has the makings of a great game. Some encounters felt frustrating in terms of ground-time or difficulty spikes, and many of the tools provided to players felt underpowered or useless, but not much else beats the games highs. With additional balancing and more time spent min/maxing gear, I’m sure combat and movement will shape up nicely. I worry though about the content that will be available at launch. We already know that the game features no PvP or traditional endgame content like Raids. At the moment, besides a few specific quests known as contracts, there doesn’t seem to be much else in the game aside from missions, strongholds and free roam. While these activities were fun in the demo, I can’t imagine finding myself wanting to repeat them over and over, especially with how frustrating some encounter and enemies can feel. Despite there being objectives in Strongholds and missions, these don’t feel particularly challenging or coordinated and are easily completable by a matchmade team of random players. While Bioware brags about that fact that any and all activities can be matchmade, which is admittedly great for the solo player who doesn’t want to be at a disadvantage, this leaves me worried that objectives and encounters won’t be more complex or challenging than basic shooting, fetch-quest and defense objectives.
Despite all of these issues, it’s clear that Bioware has encapsulated a satisfying and bombastic sci-fi fantasy. I only hope that they can polish the game and provide enough content to make for a title with some longevity and quality. Anthem is scheduled to release on February 22nd for Xbox, PS4 and PC.
