Anthem

After a disastrous demo launched weeks ago, we wondered whether we'd even get a playable game...The good news is that we did, and at its best, Anthem feels brilliant, beautiful, and thrilling. At its worst, though, this is a stuttering, confusing, heartfelt mess of an action game.

Anthem has proven to be perhaps even more derivative than expected. Boring guns, lacklustre mission design and really uninspired storytelling belie a team that we know can do much, much better. [12 Hour Impressions]

Beautiful, broken, with flashes of brilliance, Anthem is a disorganised mess in search of a reason to be.

For me, the biggest issue Anthem has right now is its loading times. I’ve never seen a game with so many loading screens, and some of them are utterly unnecessary. There’s an incredibly intrusive feature whereby if you fall behind your squad, a tethering mechanism kicks in and drags you forward via a loading screen. The fact that this happens when you’re barely 100 yards away in the same instance is mind-boggling, but more irksome is the frequency at which it happens.

As much as Anthem can be fun to play at times, there comes a point in every game like it where some snag leads you to look at the clock and, for an instant, see your whole future with the game flash before your eyes. The weight of the hours you’ve already spent playing it get projected out into the coming weeks and months, and the fatigue of a futile climb up the ladder from rare loot to rarer loot begins to set in...In Anthem, it doesn’t take long for that exhaustion to turn into dread, as you stare into the soul of the game and all that stares back is the ghost of someone continually rolling the dice in the hopes of getting a better gun.

The real issue is the lack of purpose. Why does this game exist? What kind of experience is it trying to deliver? It may not be Destiny, but Anthem is a similar breed of online game and it needs fans to hop on board. BioWare's never going to build up any kind of deeply invested community if it can't give that community something to reach for.

Anthem nails this power fantasy. But this sensation comes early, and dozens of hours of play never best that initial thrill. If anything, Anthem gets in the way of its fun. The need for a BioWare-esque story, presented in a controlled environment, prevents the player from experiencing the game’s action for any extended period of time.

It needs changes to how it actually works, which is a lot to ask. But the biggest fight I’ve had with Anthem so far is against Anthem.

Anthem is boring trash...BioWare's attempt to milk the "live service" cash cow is repetitive, bland, and too focused on lore over plot. Uninspired lore from a vapid world. Anthem wears its desperation to be like Destiny on its sleeve, and it's not a good look at all.

Anthem’s bursts of fun come in 15 minute chunks interrupted by bugs and bad design. Something as simple as changing weapons (an action that takes literally seconds in competitor Destiny 2) can take upwards of five minutes and several loading screens to accomplish in Anthem. And while BioWare’s storylines have historically been a highlight of the company’s games, Anthem’s narrative constantly interrupts the action.

I went into Anthem with an open mind. It’s a game I wanted to succeed from a studio I’ve always been fond of. Unfortunately, it’s everything everyone feared at reveal. It’s a hollow experience that’s been designed to appeal to the widest market possible while squeezing more money out of those who are hooked in by its doggy treat design.