Anthem, the game that collapsed whatever reputation EA had after the failure of Mass Effect Andromeda and Star Wars Battlefront 2 (EA) . I’m going to do this review a bit differently than my usually format because frankly, I didn’t finish this game but holy crap was it a struggle to get as far as I did. Another thing to keep in mind is I’m reviewing this game in 2021, well after it’s release because I’m sure we all heard about the lackluster shape it was released in but I was curious to see if EA and Bioware reworked it.
Well, for one, the game is stable in my experience which I was grateful because this is a always online game. I experienced some minor frame rate drops but nothing that killed my game. During about 6 hours, I had 2 crashes but I can’t be entirely sure if it was necessarily the game’s fault.
The first few hours, the experience is pretty mind-blowing. Flight and exploration is spectacular; the first time diving into the water and jetting back up into the sky was pretty nuts. The Storm Javelin, which focuses on elemental damage, is pretty awesome and by far my favorite as the stand out of the 4 available Javelins. With good/ great class attacks with solid gunplay, combat feels pretty good.
I bet you are waiting for me to say Anthem is a great game you should try? Well, no. The first few hours you basically get a pretty good picture of what the game has to offer and it ain’t much. Essentially I felt like I was playing Destiny 2’s most repetitive missions. Having to load into the Javelin between missions gets really annoying, especially when an average mission is about 2-3 minutes but you’re going to spend an equal amount of time in loading screens and walking around getting missions. takes more time than actually playing. The enemies are bland and I couldn’t give an eighth of a shit about the story because I wasn’t convinced the game did either. The guns are pretty standard and don’t really look different so it’s pretty clearly a numbers game when it comes to loot. The raids aren’t special and don’t offer much epic loot. I waited and kept playing, getting about 10 hours in before coming to the conclusion nothing was changing and I couldn’t really bring myself to finish the game.
In the end, I’m sad to say skipping Anthem isn’t a bad idea. It looks, sounds, and plays great but it’s painfully shallow and undercooked. There are way better sci fi looter shooters out there. May the gaming gods bring you glory.
