My first introduction was probably similar to a lot of you which was at E3 of 2017, two years ago from the time I’m writing this. While I do love the current space ( no pun intended)
of looter shooters with Destiny, Warframe and the Division. There are no doubts that since Destiny emerged in 2014 it has had mainstream success and a strong arm hold on the triple AAA side of the looter shooters with Warframe holding it down in the underground “indie” side of looter shooter. Warframe over time has managed to florish with in-depth mechanics and lore that is a bit much for your casual gamer; Destiny on the other hand appeals to the more casual market with more than a few hiccups to say the least between two games. The appeal that really drew me to Anthem in all honesty was/is the mecha-robots, I see a lot of comparisons to Destiny and Warframe with me agreeing more with the latter rather then the former but in my opinion it has a mix of a few games those that stand out to me being Lost Planet, Titanfall and Warframe.
With the V.I.P demo the first day I could barely get in constantly getting hit with a constant “Max capacity has been hit” pop-up which was very disappointing causing me to go somewhere else for my entertainment for the day. Not able to log on until 2am est, Saturday morning. Still dealing with technical issues I op-ed to wait for the open demo the following weekend, hoping that a lot and I do mean a lot of the issues would be fixed by then.
On that note, I was excited to actually sink my teeth into the open demo, upon loading up I was geeked with excitement after I finally and smoothly got through the initial start up screen. A few things I noticed that had gotten ironed out as I played the V.I.P demo on the Xbox one X which had a few frame rate hiccups but in the open beta my frame rates stayed steady with it only seeming to slightly dip for me whenever I begin flying before bouncing back ( unlike my PC peers, I have to eye my frames as I can’t pull up the stats on how the game is running). Another problem I’ve faced was enemies disappearing from the area within the open world not so much in missions/ strongholds. I had it happen to me about twice within the whole weekend with the game with both times in the open world side of the game. Moving past that the smallest complaint on my list is possibly the loading screens, even causing me to time it just to make sure I wasn’t going crazy but to my own uneasiness my highest count time for a loading screen rounded out at 00:52s with other loading screens being anywhere from 00:10s to 00:45s, I’m hoping this issue is addressed by Bioware or made aware of this within the next two weeks before the launch on the 22nd of feburary, though I have a strong feeling this lengthy loading is more due to all the rendering that’s happening cause of the size of the open world.
My impressions of the guns is they do need a bit of work as I’ve noticed that one difference between the V.I.P and open demo was that you could change the weapon sounds which did make it sound a little less stale in my opinion, no sound drops from my end in the open demo as opposed to the V.I.P where my weapon sounds would just randomly drop before coming back at awkward times.
To move on to things that I loved about the game, the flying mechanics. I enjoyed the setup/controls and after about a solid 2 hours into the game flying became like second nature or similar to driving a stick shift as I like to put it; also getting very use to that hoovering is your best friend in Anthem. Especially when it comes to stronghold which if you didn’t get the chance to play either the V.I.P or open demo that it’s easy to compare it to a Destiny nightfall but it automatically comes with matchmaking so for any fellow solo players out there you’ll have no trouble finding a team. I loved the difficulty of the missions and stronghold with the swarm tyrant ( a giant spider like creature boss) even with four other javelin around if you rush in you’re bound to get a web attack that automatically makes you overheat plus caught in webbing and overwhelmed . Trust me it happened to every group that I joined with even some of the better players getting downed at least once but more so towards the end of the fight then the beginning. The missions were confusing to find the way point at first but It just took some time to get use to the compass at the top of the screen, I’ve also run into more issues with other players having a hard time with the puzzle mission but after a few back to back missions I was able to help others through it really sped up the activity and put others in a good spot with the demo as you could tell some players were getting annoyed by how many went AFK at the end of the challenge; I’d sit back for a few minutes and walk around to see if my team got it before I’d jump in a coordinate the colors to drop the barrier.
Here is to me hoping that once the full game releases players will finally revive, I chuckled at it a few times a teammate flew right over me after about five minutes of being down is when the frustration kicks in, cause similar to a nightfall in destiny if the whole squad goes down then it’s a auto restart at least of the boss checkpoint. I really loved the scenery it’s gorgeous to view from above and below (underwater) though as I’ve seen some complaints about the motion in the water has unfortunately induced some gamers to motion sickness and while I personally haven’t experienced this I look forward to Bioware looking into or at least acknowledging this as this could be the fine line between players enjoying or not even attempting this game. It’s a really cool transition from sky to water to watch your boosters still work and propel you under water; personally looking forward to see if Bioware utilizing this underwater environment for a Legend of Zelda stylish water temple stage.
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