So I saw the Anthem Demo was out, downloaded it, played an hour or so of CoD and then was like okay, lets take this Javelin for a test run
So about That Load in Issue
Off top it was a COMPLETE disaster. Somehow, someway EA started a demo off for it's PRE-ORDER and Monthly/YEARLY EA Access subscribers with a game that wouldn't let you load the game at all at first. Like literally, the game Started to load and went NO WHERE... I think you got to about 94% and it just hung there, like a sock on the door handle SOMEBODY was having fun in there but it just wasn't you. I was streaming so I can go back and pull the footage off but basically it was a good 45 minutes of waiting.
That was Friday night, so Initially Anthem was a NO BUY. Okay it wasn't gonna stay like that right, because Anthem was supposed to be Bioware's savior after the DEBACLE that was Mass Effect Andromeda and here they are going out like that. Now it wasn't an EVERYBODY problem because I saw some folks streaming it I just didn't know how to get around it friday night and it was getting late anyway. Saturday I loaded up Anthem, got into the Fort Tarsis area and did the pre-op for the mission and then when I went to go out in the suit itself HANG UP.
BUT THAT RESTART THOUGH
Well as I had heard from Chareese on the GWG podcast supposedly if you restarted it (which I had done on the first night but that was pre console) fix so it hung up again at around 94 or 96% I closed out the game, restarted it and when it booted up "you have an expedition waiting" WELP let's get it. And let me say this: The game is amazingly beautiful. I am gonna try and yank some screen shots and gifs off of it later if I can. The fort is amazing and ONCE I FIGURED OUT HOW TO GET MY IRON MAN ON(once you hit A to jump click the left thumb stick to start flying, hold it down to fly quickly) face paced, big explosion do NOT try to fight things on the ground and the higher vantage point can be your friend.
You start out with the Ranger, it has basically a Death Blossom attack for an ultimate, hits enemies with a homing missile, as well as a lower level multi missile attack. You get a assault rifle to start as well as an energy sword for your melee attack. Initially I was just quick jumping everywhere and trying to shoot people while on the ground. NOT SMART but until I figured out how to fly that was all I had. Once you get to flying though you will have so much fun unfortunately(to me, I mean I guess you can't just Tony Stark it IN THE FUTURE CAUSE REASONS but like WTF BioWare) you overheat your jet pack too fast, maybe with future upgrades you can increase your heatsink and fly longer but in the demo it was about 1 to 2 minutes.
Movement was pretty fluid, and as long as you weren't in free play you had an icon to tell you where to fly to. The few missions that I played were in stages of like 3 or 4, beat a group of baddies, fly to the next spot, beat another group of baddies, fly to the next spot possibly collect some random item, fly to the next spot after that. Pretty smooth as long as you were just doing the BASIC Missions, the strongholds were harder (which of course they should be) and you need to mind your distance, sight lines and group make ups but if you could keep your damage and team mates up looks like they are doable.
You start out with the Ranger, it has basically a Death Blossom attack for an ultimate, hits enemies with a homing missile, as well as a lower level multi missile attack. You get a assault rifle to start as well as an energy sword for your melee attack. Initially I was just quick jumping everywhere and trying to shoot people while on the ground. NOT SMART but until I figured out how to fly that was all I had. Once you get to flying though you will have so much fun unfortunately(to me, I mean I guess you can't just Tony Stark it IN THE FUTURE CAUSE REASONS but like WTF BioWare) you overheat your jet pack too fast, maybe with future upgrades you can increase your heatsink and fly longer but in the demo it was about 1 to 2 minutes.
Movement was pretty fluid, and as long as you weren't in free play you had an icon to tell you where to fly to. The few missions that I played were in stages of like 3 or 4, beat a group of baddies, fly to the next spot, beat another group of baddies, fly to the next spot possibly collect some random item, fly to the next spot after that. Pretty smooth as long as you were just doing the BASIC Missions, the strongholds were harder (which of course they should be) and you need to mind your distance, sight lines and group make ups but if you could keep your damage and team mates up looks like they are doable.
Issues
- Party chat did not work in free play or missions
- Constantly having to reboot the game to start an expedition
- Getting Randomly kicked out of a match
- Control Layout not easily reached IN GAME
- Save Main story people Random Dialogue was scarce
To me in this day and "In Game Party Chat" should be second nature, unless I am just talking to a bunch of friends in an Xbox party who may not all be playing the same game it should be a no brainer. I connect with somebody as an impromptu team and boom I should hear you. Now I understand sometimes you just bump into people so maybe some proximity chat should be available, Sea of Thieves uses it at times, but this is a demo hopefully that is an issue they are ironing.
The reboot thing is damn sloppy. I did 5 missions in Anthem, I had to reboot my game like 6 times to do them, yes the main Demo Missions (the initial fetch quest, the secondary fetch/escort quest, and the third find and battle quest) if I finished the mission and returned to the fort I had to reboot my game to leave in the Javelin. and yes once again it would ask if I wanted to join my waiting expedition.
The HUD for the controls tells you about your gun, You powers, and your melee but flight, weapon switch, and grenade usage(which I never figured out how to throw a grenade) I had to find in the forge menu later, which since most games you just hit the menu button and there is layout so weird.
This is a demo so I am not gonna hit them too hard for random people in the city not really talking to you and the stores being open, but for a company known for it's story driven content and random interactions you would have THOUGHT they'd have had a few rando's live
The HUD for the controls tells you about your gun, You powers, and your melee but flight, weapon switch, and grenade usage(which I never figured out how to throw a grenade) I had to find in the forge menu later, which since most games you just hit the menu button and there is layout so weird.
This is a demo so I am not gonna hit them too hard for random people in the city not really talking to you and the stores being open, but for a company known for it's story driven content and random interactions you would have THOUGHT they'd have had a few rando's live
Bonuses
- Firing controls were easy and intuitive
- Flight and dodging was pretty straightforward
- recharge times for specials was reasonable
- Enemies weren't complete bullet sponges without a reason
- Customization was easy
- Personalization was easy and you had lots of options
- Enemies weren't stingy with: Health, Ammo, Item Drops
The easiest thing to do in Anthem is aim and fire you gun, the controls were similar to CoD and Battlefield, left trigger aims right trigger shoots. Left bumper is one special, right bumper is the other, and the AoE attacks show you just where they are going to hit. The Melee button ("Y" on Xbox One) didn't have too much of a delay, hell might have been too quick don't hit why by mistake cause you will miss your target.
Once I figured out how to fly, I was gone. I was speeding through the air. Hover didn't heat you up as much if you wanted to fight from the skies but you can't hover forever either you will still heat up. If you run through some water though it will cool you down quicker. Now if you run into something (wall, roof, enemy) it will knock you out of the skies but if you can manage hover, dodge, and flight well you can possibly clear some space out to manage the amount of enemies you have to face between hovers.
Here's the thing about some games, they make specials take too damn long. Even CoD I feel if you are gonna take away my grenades for special abilities I should either be able to use them when I spawn or else they should immediately recharge when I get a resupply or else not take more than 4 seconds to charge. Anthem gets it right, hit somebody with a special, use your other special dodge once or twice and BOOM it's back up again. Some may complain about ability spamming but you are in a power suit, spamming your attacks is the name of the game. At max you are gonna have a 4 man team, taking 2 or 3 minutes for you attacks to come up in a faced paced fight is stupid. Get them up, get them out, and take down your enemies. Your ULTIMATE takes a minute but that is understandable. It's your big megadamage attack you don't want to use that lightly. and even that doesn't take long to build up if you keep your DPS(Damage Per Second/Shot) high enough. Think of the ultimate as crowd control or booty saver because if used right it will weaken take down a large group of enemies and either allow you to pick up a downed team mate or else get out of dodge to higher ground until your health can regen more.
Bullet Spongeyness was low which in my opinion was a good thing, Mega Elites take the shield down first and them pound them, they done. They guys with the shields hit them, DAMAGE hit the shield "Hahaha Puny Mortal", regular enemies depends on the gun and how well you aim + distance. it shouldn't take me 5 minutes to take out henchman number 5. And even if it was 5 henchman if my special was up one or two of them were going down. Creature encounters as long as you left most things along they left you alone, but if you started shooting so did they.
If you go into the forge it is easy to equip weapons you may have picked up on previous missions, craft parts, weapons, abilities, or attachments, swap out of Javelins, switch loadouts, and general upgrade to higher versions of weapons you may already have. So they get kudos for that, and if you were of the right level you could use it.
Changing your parts, what your parts look like or are made of, the color of your parts, or whatever was pretty easy. So you could basically stand out pretty quick, I made my Storm character shiny metallic since you know he was tossing lightning and fire.
In some games it takes all day to get enemies to drop various parts, items, weapons, or treasures. Anthem you were gonna get something, health, a gun, a crafting part, ammunition, a shield buff, SOMETHING. And it had the standard random rarities. So far I saw: Common, Uncommon, Rare, and I think I picked an Epic helmet or coloring. Might be a legendary level might not. And if you have the LOWER version of the item with enough crafting parts you can upgrade the rarity because that gives you the blueprint. BUT you do have to make sure you have the right parts and enough of them to upgrade the item.
Once I figured out how to fly, I was gone. I was speeding through the air. Hover didn't heat you up as much if you wanted to fight from the skies but you can't hover forever either you will still heat up. If you run through some water though it will cool you down quicker. Now if you run into something (wall, roof, enemy) it will knock you out of the skies but if you can manage hover, dodge, and flight well you can possibly clear some space out to manage the amount of enemies you have to face between hovers.
Here's the thing about some games, they make specials take too damn long. Even CoD I feel if you are gonna take away my grenades for special abilities I should either be able to use them when I spawn or else they should immediately recharge when I get a resupply or else not take more than 4 seconds to charge. Anthem gets it right, hit somebody with a special, use your other special dodge once or twice and BOOM it's back up again. Some may complain about ability spamming but you are in a power suit, spamming your attacks is the name of the game. At max you are gonna have a 4 man team, taking 2 or 3 minutes for you attacks to come up in a faced paced fight is stupid. Get them up, get them out, and take down your enemies. Your ULTIMATE takes a minute but that is understandable. It's your big megadamage attack you don't want to use that lightly. and even that doesn't take long to build up if you keep your DPS(Damage Per Second/Shot) high enough. Think of the ultimate as crowd control or booty saver because if used right it will weaken take down a large group of enemies and either allow you to pick up a downed team mate or else get out of dodge to higher ground until your health can regen more.
Bullet Spongeyness was low which in my opinion was a good thing, Mega Elites take the shield down first and them pound them, they done. They guys with the shields hit them, DAMAGE hit the shield "Hahaha Puny Mortal", regular enemies depends on the gun and how well you aim + distance. it shouldn't take me 5 minutes to take out henchman number 5. And even if it was 5 henchman if my special was up one or two of them were going down. Creature encounters as long as you left most things along they left you alone, but if you started shooting so did they.
If you go into the forge it is easy to equip weapons you may have picked up on previous missions, craft parts, weapons, abilities, or attachments, swap out of Javelins, switch loadouts, and general upgrade to higher versions of weapons you may already have. So they get kudos for that, and if you were of the right level you could use it.
Changing your parts, what your parts look like or are made of, the color of your parts, or whatever was pretty easy. So you could basically stand out pretty quick, I made my Storm character shiny metallic since you know he was tossing lightning and fire.
In some games it takes all day to get enemies to drop various parts, items, weapons, or treasures. Anthem you were gonna get something, health, a gun, a crafting part, ammunition, a shield buff, SOMETHING. And it had the standard random rarities. So far I saw: Common, Uncommon, Rare, and I think I picked an Epic helmet or coloring. Might be a legendary level might not. And if you have the LOWER version of the item with enough crafting parts you can upgrade the rarity because that gives you the blueprint. BUT you do have to make sure you have the right parts and enough of them to upgrade the item.
Intrigued but not FULLY Sold
Overall I did have fun with it, as I mention in the comment sections of various podcasts if it's more Warframe than Destiny I would probably be interested and it does seem to be more Warframe than Destiny. Enough run and gun, plenty of loot collection, and it appears it will have a decent story and some nice sandboxing. They Demo shut off like 7 pm on Sunday but I will have to check and see if it is live again. IF I buy it I will get the Dawn edition because hey I want the extras but that will take the Open beta first before I sink in my 77 bucks(with tax). If you are into open world squad shooters I think Anthem would be your game, BUT let's see if they can fix this log in issue first otherwise it will be dead on arrival.
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