Anthem (BETA)

I can’t honestly say I was very excited for Anthem, but when I saw there was going to be an open demo/beta or whatever you want to call it, I decided to give it a spin. I guess what I’m really trying to say is – I didn’t expect much, but I was still disappointed.

The demo doesn’t open where you’d expect – at the beginning of the game. Instead, it drops you into the game at level 10, presumably after the initial tutorial and plot/character introductions. I guess it allows players to test out more content/upgrades than they’d typically experience during the early missions, but it’s also pretty strange to be dropped into the world without any sort of proper introduction.

Because I’ve not followed Anthem or read anything about it, I really had no clue what was going on, where I was, who anyone was or what the f**k they were all talking about. The demo skips over all of the story / plot / world / character intros, so unless you’ve read all about this stuff in advance, the demo will just leave you feeling confused.

You begin in a large hub area full of npcs, the majority of whom you can’t interact with aside from a message box popping up to tell you that they’re not ‘available’ in the demo. The hub area does look nice, but it’s a pretty lifeless and static area that feels totally disconnected from the actual gameplay. You just (slowly) walk around in first person, following a quest marker to an npc who gives you a mission.

 

Doors magically open as you approach which is really bloody bizarre, and when I tried to enter a bar by passing through a cloth partition, I discovered the cloth was as solid as stone and I had to walk around it. Why even put it there if you’re not going to simulate cloth physics?

I kind of wish I’d stayed out of the bar though, because the one dude I could interact with inside turned out to be an insufferable twat who I just wanted to punch so he’d stop talking. And when you do talk to people in the hub you’ll get the occasional ‘dialogue choice’ although this doesn’t appear to have any real impact on the plot or gameplay.

After navigating this pretty but empty maze of dead eyed weirdos you’ll eventually find your way to your ‘Javelin’ which is basically an Iron Man suit. Entering the javelin triggers a mission start, but before you can begin you must first navigate an even more convoluted maze of menus to customise your javelin and your weapons, but also set up things like mission difficulty and player squads.

The UI/menus in Anthem are clearly console/controller orientated and trying to navigate them with a keyboard and mouse is a real pain in the ass. But once you do finally drop into the open world to begin your first mission, Anthem does begin to improve.

Because there’s no proper tutorials you’ll probably struggle with the flying controls for a little while as you get used to switching between flight and combat. Traversing the open world of Anthem like Iron Man is easily the best thing about the game once you get the hang of it. That said, as fun as flying is, the ‘overheat’ mechanic really got on my tits.

The idea is that if you fly for too long your javelin ‘overheats’ so you have to cool off. There are times you can do this whilst flying by passing through water or (I think) going into a powerless glide, but when you can’t, you’ll find yourself enjoying the flying before dropping back to the ground, waiting for your suit to cool and then taking off again – it’s not so much flying as it is taking really long jumps.

The world looks nice, I guess, and the variety of wildlife is okay, but I don’t know jack about this world and the game doesn’t tell me anything. The opening mission (in fact, all of the demo missions) isn’t very inspiring. You fly a little, land at a cave entrance and then immediately get a loading screen. The world isn’t exactly seamless.

You enter the cave, but then get stuck by a locked door so you have to leave the cave (another loading screen) and then go shoot some bad guys. I don’t know who they are or why they’re bad but you shoot them because they’re red dots on your radar and that usually means they’re bad. It’s the typical ‘stay in this area whilst we hack or download data thing’ as wave after tedious wave of enemies spawn into the map out of thin air.

You eventually kill enough enemies (or they simply vanish into nothing, which happened to me a few times) and then get immediately teleported back to the hub, from third person action game to slow paced first person walking sim. The disconnect between the hub and the open world gameplay is pretty jarring. There were three missions to complete in the demo and none were very exciting.

They also didn’t feel very balanced for a solo player, as during the second mission I encountered a boss enemy that was a frustrating and ridiculous bullet sponge, clearly designed for more than one player. It was one of those bosses who just keep spawning endless waves of supporting enemies. I took the f**ker down, but I must have been slowly whittling down his health for about 5 minutes.

The combat is okay, I guess. It’s not good but it’s not terrible, either. There were moments I had some fun, but that was mostly by exploiting the poor AI and just bunching up enemies for easy multi-kills. Trying to fly and fight can be fun, but it only really works in open areas. Trying to manoeuvre in smaller spaces is a bloody nightmare so it’s often easier to just fight on foot.

The weapons are exactly what you’d expect, as are the special abilities. There’s nothing here you haven’t seen before. The combat can also be incredibly messy. There’s way too many effects popping off at times, making it hard to see what the f**k is going on. And combat just doesn't feel that satisfying. Enemies are just bullet sponges who each take a set amount of shots to kill. They’re not very smart and they don’t do anything interesting. They just stand still or slowly follow you around, continually respawning in waves until the game’s decided it’s time to stop.

It probably sounds like I really hated Anthem or something, but I really didn’t. I just found it so uninspired and by the numbers. There’s nothing unique or interesting about it. Not the world. Not the characters. And certainly not the mission design or combat. Maybe if we’d actually started the game at the beginning and was introduced to these things in turn, I might have actually cared.