Anthem

Grumpypants wrote: »

But common sense seems in short supply.

For an upstart or any company with a good track record I'm willing to give the benefit of the doubt most of the time. EA & Bioware have just lost so much damn goodwill and respect from me so I feel pretty safe assuming the absolute worst with any of their products. For the last few years I've been completely right about most of their (IMO) garbage so I'll be nothing but pleasantly surprised if this turns out good. So still gonna wait it out. Patience is not just a virtue but a goddamn requirement in the gaming market right now if you don't want to continuously get conned.

Grumpypants wrote: »

No one rates a demo, that's just silly nonsense from the usual crowd of dopes..

I don't look at journalist or site ratings, I exclusively use user feedback systems. Demos is literally the only (legal) way to experience a game first hand before you invest in it so I don't think it's unfair to judge it by it or consider others' feedback on it. If it's not a good representation of the game then what's its point? I used to use demos all the time back in the day.

Does anyone have any codes left?

Spear wrote: »

And one sent to you.

Cheers man

Oof

https://twitter.com/dadsofdestiny/status/1088910268195917829

Spear wrote: »

Yes.

The sensitivity on the rest, walking/shooting is fine. But when flying the javelin just wallows in the air.

Are you pressing forward to go fast? If you just hit shift to fly then they go a slowish/medium speed, if you pull back they go really slow but if you push forward (W) and they go plenty fast.

jones wrote: »

I really want this game to be good. I love mass effect trilogy although never played Andromeda. The first Destiny was decent but too much of a grind for me never bothered with the second. I'm starting to get the feeling from reading previews that Anthem is going to be more like destiny than I had hoped.

This was originally one of my highlight games of the year but I'll just wait and see how it reviews now.

Ps am I the only one who prefers single player games over mmo? I'd prefer a main single player campaign and a separate online contingent.

I like online games for the social aspect, but the time consuming nature of them can be a bit off-putting. That being said, I can see why games like this include a grind. They need to keep players engaged to be successful, otherwise people just drop off after a few weeks (destiny 2 release being a good example).

The trick is keeping things engaging to the average player rather than monotonous, while also keeping something for the hardcore players to grind for. I think It's harder than it might seem to get that balance right. Too little to grind for and the hardcore players drop out, too much and the casual players drop out. Using destiny 2 as an example again, I think they got the balance right with forsaken's release. There was a grind, but it was fairly engaging and didn't feel repetitive, with a couple of longer really grindy quests to keep hardcore players interested. I think they've moved towards too much grind for my liking again lately, but that's a whole rant in itself

I managed to get a few hours in tonight without any loading issues and made it to level 13 from a couple of story missions and some free roam play. As a loot shooter Anthem is just an ok game and pales beside other similar games in the genre like Warframe, Destiny 2 and The Division. The graphics are grand but nothing to write home about and its other systems like movement, gunplay and missions are just meh but its main gimmick flying, is god awful on PC and super clunky. The map is not as nearly as big as I was expecting seeing it a single location game. This game will be a hard pass for me unless there are massive improvements in the final release along with huge amounts of content and seeing as this was the game that was supposed to save Bioware, I've a feeling that studio is in serious trouble.

The demo only has free roam with public events and 3 story missions.....but the "stronghold" dungeon is where it impressed me. It's Hard on hard which is nice. If you don't stick with your team and work together you will die several times.

Getting a group together and comboing is an absolute joy and something that I never got in destiny outside of some of the raid encounters. This is what this game seems to have over Diablo or Destiny. In either, you can just abandon your group and go off on your own for minutes at a time and just slaughter the AI no problem. In this, you'll get killed.

The combat basically feels like Mass Effect Andromeda with flying....which is no bad thing as the combat in ME:A was the best part of that game. I'm pretty impressed to be honest.

Having said all that, there are issues here. Bioware have really fudged their demo up. The connection issues are to be expected and are par for the course with release. A million people pre-ordered and then they were given 3 codes to give to friends. Connection problems are expected and understandable, even with the knowledge that their reconnectiong code basically caused them to DDOS themselves.

What ISNT acceptable is that loading screen bug. Literally half the time you load a mission, it gets stuck at 95% done and just hangs. Loading into a mission or out of one. Meaning you can spend 30 minutes doing a mission, complete it, then crash and lose all progress, xp, and loot you got.

This isn't a UI problem or graphical bug. This is game breaking stuff and a AAA studio shouldn't be releasing a demo people have paid for in a state like this. There are a ton of people who weren't able to play this weekend and those who were ended up frustrated by crashes and load screens.

They've shot themselves in the foot big time. The game didn't need the bad press.....It already has EA stigma on it.

So, for me so far it's an optimistic 'meh'.

Cons:
- Weak controls, who includes non-toggle mouse acceleration these days (well to be fair quite a few so called aaa devs who apparently just have console-controller monkeys onboard (* EDIT: To be clear it's the lack of effort on M+Kbd that makes the 'monkey' part, not the emphasis on controller).
- No FOV - (see above, pure ignorance and again shows that the PC version was an afterthought)
- Linked to this since small FOVs are more suitable for playing at a distance on a TV it's exacerbated by critical bug with Dolby Vision enabled TVs and Nvidia cards. I picked up an LG OLED before Xmas and now game on it near exclusively (with Mouse/Kbd using a Roccat Sova). Start up Anthem, Dolby Vision enabled logo.....black screen that cannot be exited, you have to hard reset the PC.
- General movement feels clunky and unrealistic, no real weight.
- Gun play is ok, again it feels more like shooting at sliding paper targets than tangible enemys. As has been said a few times it's very like Mass Effect Andromeda with more mobility, and while it has been correctly pointed out that was one of the best aspects of that game it was not good on a global scale (i.e. ME-A got away with it because it was not primarily a shooter, this should be doing a much better job of it).
- Voice acting is hit and miss,some characters are great and others completely lackluster ('you' being the worst). I'd put this down to bad audio direction more than the talent since it seems more about mis-delivery than base ability to express.
- Graphics and performance are again disappointing, there doesn't seem to be much payback for the FPS hits. on 4k I was getting around 40-45 FPS max on ultra, dropped to 1440p and it was fine for most areas but had some slowdowns. All for a game that does not look as good as a number of other titles (even MA-E looked and played better with a solid 60FPs at 4k).
- Loading takes longer than it should based on map size and hard-load pausing between some areas. 20-30 seconds on a pure SSD system is just ridiculous.

Pros
- The off-ground movement I think is what may save this. And I include dodging and hovering aswell as pure flight here. When I started to get more used to it the ability to mix effective doging and flight into firefight maneuvres was quite satisfying.



I have EA Access so will be playing this on release. I think based on the demo though if I didn't and had to make the choice to explicitly spend on it I would probably wait for some good reviews of the full product, and even then when it dropped to mid price.