Bioware's "Anthem"

Been getting in fine this morning, was kind of liking it til you get to the room with 3 titans. Their AE goes through walls, knocks you down, overheats your suit then kills you with the next pulse.

Valderen said:

I played the first mission and that was fun, little puzzle to solve.

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If it's anything like the alpha, that wasn't a puzzle. It was, "Fly here, wait for voiceover to finish, kill bad guys" rinse and repeat.

Wow, whole lotta puzzle there!

goishen said:

If it's anything like the alpha, that wasn't a puzzle. It was, "Fly here, wait for voiceover to finish, kill bad guys" rinse and repeat.

Wow, whole lotta puzzle there!

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it was definitely a puzzle. it was pretty basic in nature but it also was a nice little change of pace.

goishen said:

If it's anything like the alpha, that wasn't a puzzle. It was, "Fly here, wait for voiceover to finish, kill bad guys" rinse and repeat.

Wow, whole lotta puzzle there!

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Its a puzzle but the answers are nearby - its amazing ppl dont notice the pictures on the wall.

I don't remember the last time I played a game with such an unintuitive UX / menu system. There are going to be so many people salvaging all the items they get after each mission and getting stuck in exit loops on the map/mission screen. All the menus are layered and perfectly visible but uninteractive until you select the previous layer. A and D cycles menus, except for when you have to use Y and U or mouse clicks. Menu items are labeled 'exit' when they should be labeled 'next'. I know PC controls are usually one the last things done in a game like this so I'm hoping theres some changes before release cause right now it really gives the feeling that PC is an afterthought.

anthem gives off a sketchy vibe. I bet you can probably finish the campaign in 10 hours or less and the endgame is gonna be absolutely shitty, which also explains why they didn't just drop an open demo that lets you start at beginning.

its crazy how now japanese devs (and indies) seem to be the only ones making great games focused solely on story and gameplay now, like resident evil 2 seems to be extremely well received and sekiro looks fucking awesome, but every vibe I get from anthem is "this game is actually a dude in drag and is gonna roofie you"

Got a very badass looking blue auto cannon, but I don't have a collosus javelin so womp womp...

They seem to have been fairly creative with the different powers associated with each of the javelins. I've tried out a number of different Storm powers and found them to be quite different from one another and many are quite situational or at least require some degree of teamwork to use well.

The UX is very non intutive and takes quite a bit of getting used to. Fort Tarsis as a solo social space is just kinda silly, especially since you run around the place in first person.

The transaction nature of the mission results is gonna be a big problem. Right now the game relies on you being passed off to an 'adventure' server that goes through the whole mission / freeplay/whatever and all loot / exp is held locally on that instance. In order for that to become part of your permanent character it has to go be passed off from the instance server to the main transactional server when you finish the mission or exit freeplay. If you crash or have any sort of server problem during the mission or, god forbid, while in the closing mission phase then nothing is recorded. The game knows you were in a mission and never formally got sent back so it sends you a mail with some pity exp / coin, but thats it. As a result there either will be people who exploit this transactional nature or who get royally fucked in the inevitable server instability at launch.

spronk said:

anthem gives off a sketchy vibe. I bet you can probably finish the campaign in 10 hours or less and the endgame is gonna be absolutely shitty, which also explains why they didn't just drop an open demo that lets you start at beginning.

its crazy how now japanese devs (and indies) seem to be the only ones making great games focused solely on story and gameplay now, like resident evil 2 seems to be extremely well received and sekiro looks fucking awesome, but every vibe I get from anthem is "this game is actually a dude in drag and is gonna roofie you"

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The alpha demo was the start of the game tho - this demo is supposedly around the middle? Also if it is 10hr or less isnt that 5hr more than D1 vanilla?

However supposedly the story is pretty good according to one article ill link.

Anthem — My Biggest Takeaways After About 5 Hours of Play

Furthermore one reiterating no lootboxes at all

Anthem Producer Reiterates Loot Boxes Will Not be in the Game Because They Have "No Purpose"

I painfully was able to play last night for a few hours and I think there's a decent game somewhere here but there's a lot of issues that I'm not sure they will be able to fix in time.

1) PC controls are horrible. Flying is a fucking chore on PC and not fun at all to me so I ended up just switching over to my Xbox. I played 10 minutes of the anthem alpha on my PC and stopped because I couldn't take it. There's been some improvement between the demo and alpha but not much. I don't get how a game that is centered around flying has such bad controls to it. It feels like kb/m is an after thought.

I will say flying feels pretty good for the most part with a controller, however, there's still some fluidity issues to it. I found it hard to fly straight up and I felt like getting in and out of flying sometimes was cumbersome. I probably am just bad because it started to feel a little better after a couple hours

2) Swimming is AIDS on all platforms. Not only is it not fluid but it gets so dark in spots that you sometimes lose your bearing and can get lost and end up just dry humping a wall for a few minutes trying to figure out where to go.

3) UI layout/functionality needs work

4) Customization is really cool. Figured as much as this will be where they get their money from.

5) I was surprised by how much I did enjoy the combat though. It can be extremely chaotic and the abilities were pretty fun. Ultimates are powerful.

If you're on the ground it feels like a completely different game then when you're flying. I wish we could fly longer as you have to pay attention to overheat a lot. I'm not sure if gear or abilities will make that better or not?

The combo system is nice and satisfying but I'm not 100% sure what triggers all of that since I haven't read much about it. You can absolutely control the chaos if combos are pulled off and it feels pretty satisfying.

6) Enemies can be kind of stupid but I didn't find the game exactly super easy.

7) Whoever made walking only in the Fort without the ability to set way points and no mini map deserves a spot in hell.

8) Loot looks like it could be really fun. I'm seeing potential to have a lot of different play styles based off your gear. You get a pretty good amount of it too. I think I was getting around 10-15 items after each mission.

We will see if they can fix their problems though. I don't have that much confidence that they will fix a lot of their technical issues before launch. Some of their game decisions are wtf but as I said earlier there is a decent game in all of this mess. I doubt this demo will get people to pre order much though as this game continues to be a wait and see.

Why the does only one class get a cloak, same stupid decision was made in destiny. Cloaks are badass, add them to all classes.

I'm starting to get the same vibe that this game is going to get repetitive/stale quickly.

I think most likely what I will end up doing is paying the 15 bucks to have access for a month, play it and see if its worth it to buy after that month. Will cost me a few extra dollars in the long run if I end up buying, but could save me 45 dollars most likely(as a game lasting longer then a month is pretty rare these days).

I was kinda hoping for Anthem to be something awesome. After playing this VIP ”demo” it feels like a soulless game with boring combat. This game launches in what, 3 weeks? I’ll try it with my EA Acess but I doubt they’ll get me to buy it.

I've been paying $15/month for about 4 months now, and have yet to actually get much time out of any of the games they offer. I suppose 10 hours in Madden 19 on PC was alright. Was neat to play that series again on PC. But if I don't get some more time out of it I'll have to cancel! I'm hoping Anthem will entertain me long enough to get some hours. I typically like to stay at about $1 / hour, but it's tough right now to get 15 hours a month outta Origins Premier.

Utnayan said:

This game is going to make fallout 76 look like Witcher 3.

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I'm thinking that is a bit too harsh.