"Anthem" Review - Great game, or GREATEST game?!

Available for: Playstation 4, Xbox One, Microsoft Windows

Reviewed for: Playstation 4

As the subtitle suggests, I don't actually have a "witty" subtitle for BioWare's latest game, Anthem. How could I possibly come up with a punny subtitle when the game itself is so good as to render any play-on-words associated with it heretical? I tell you what, it's been a while since I've played something that provided as much consistent excitement, rewarding action, and desire to throw dollar after dollar at Electronic Arts as Anthem does. I tell you what, if I were a shareholder, I'd see this game as a testament to how much money BioWare can make! In fact, since this game was more-or-less produced with a clear creative directive from on high, I'd say that the single smartest business decision EA CEO Andrew Wilson can make now is to (bear with me) let the chains off of BioWare, let them make their own decisions, and watch the billions upon billions of dollars print themselves! This is entirely due to how much Anthem makes me want to spend money and not at all because Anthem is a soulless, tedious Destiny knock-off due to EA's executive orders! It's like they say: "where there's BioWare, there's money!" Which reminds me of another old, folksy saying: "If you shut BioWare down, I'll work my way up the EA shareholder ladder, end up holding a majority of the shares, demand that you wear a ball gag and a skimpy maid outfit if you want my continued investment, and only allow you to in-game monetize if you're a REALLY GOOD BOY, Andrew Wilson!!!!"......because as we've seen with Anthem, BioWare games make me spend money....whether I want to or not! Hehehehehe! Hehehehehehehehe! HehehahehhehehHEHEHEHEHEHE!

......


Have the EA moneybots stopped reading yet? Yes? Ok.

Readers, Anthem is exactly what we all expected. Nobody is surprised by Anthem's lack of quality, and I think we're all equally concerned for BioWare's future in the hands of the company whose CEO thought that the disastrous Battlefield V flopped because there was a single-player mode. This marks a second strike on BioWare's report card, and EA is not a forgiving headmaster. At this point, we can assume that BioWare has one of three futures ahead of it: 1) It gets shut down before Dragon Age 4 (*puts ball gag on table*), 2) It survives past Dragon Age 4, but walks on thin ice (*slowly removes ball gag from table*), or 3) It survives, but EA makes them develop Dragon Age 4 as a Battle Royale, then shuts them down when that inevitably flops (*puts ball gag right back on table alongside maid outfit*). I try not to cover industry workings too much, because I deal in opinions and light research, not numbers and market trends. However, it just has to be said that if anybody else did their jobs as terribly as EA's upper leadership does, they'd be fired in an instant. How people in charge of a company can be so BAD at everything they do is astounding! I'm going to lay out a scenario, dear reader, and you can tell me what you'd do if you wanted to make money, ok?
The scenario is this: your company has the exclusive rights to make games in the defining science fiction universe, the most beloved one ever conceived. One of your subsidiaries developed two of the single greatest-selling games in this universe ever before they were acquired by your company and before you acquired the exclusive rights. Also, in a country where people literally take to the streets and get themselves beaten senseless by New York cops in order to protest companies like Goldman Sachs, your company has consistently been voted "worst corporation in America." You tell me, dear reader, what business move would guarantee maximum financial returns for use of the license as well as maximum returns in public good will?
Was your answer, by chance, "make an entirely different subsidiary than the aforementioned one develop a trend-following new entry in a less successful series in this license, and fill the game with the exact same scummy business practices that consistently get you voted 'worst corporation in America?'" No? Because you're not a complete idiot? Congratulations! You literally have more business sense than one of America's highest-paid CEOs had with the Star Wars license.
But wait, you know what? I'm getting carried away. This review is about Anthem........
Good grief...complaining about EA is more fun than playing Anthem is.....
Well...let's get this over with...

Anthem takes place in a world called "Bastion"...I think. In this world, a mysterious artifact/force called "The Anthem of Creation" does...things...to.......reality? And sometimes things called "hearts of rage" open up where the Anthem's energy....*sigh*...is....bad?
Umm, in case you couldn't tell, dear reader, this game's story is utter gibberish. And before you tell me to look in the encyclopedia, just close your mouth and keep it shut. I shouldn't have to do pages upon pages of reading to understand what's going on! Nothing has any context!
"Well, I can hear the Anthem, after all!"
Ok, the f*** does that mean?
"They want to get their hands on the Cenotaph!"
Ok, the f*** does that mean?
"Rumpletweezer ran the Dinky Tinky shop in the foot of the magic oak tree by the wobbly dumdum bush in the shade of the magic glade, down in Dingly Dell."
Ok, the F*** does that MEAN?
Nothing ever gets any sort of organic fleshing out!
Ok, taking a step back here...
You play as "The Freelancer," a generically sassy everyman/woman, and...oh...that's all there is to say about that...great.
Well...I guess...the worldbuilding isn't great, but what about other aspects of the story? Y'know, let's take a break from the negativity to talk about one thing the game actually does well when it tries: the side characters. Every character is well-acted, and the writing is classic BioWare. Even though actual interactions with these characters feel static, they themselves are at least interesting. For example, one of the first side characters you meet is your "cipher," (ok, the f*** does that mean?) Owen. You first meet him via dialogue as he speaks to you through your radio, and first impressions aren't great. How to put this...his writing at the beginning feels like writer shorthand for "cast a British guy." But once you actually meet this character, he becomes a joy to talk to. I mean, it sucks that so much effort had to be wasted on a game like this, but it's nice to see that BioWare still has its character-writing chops...well, except for the villain, but we'll get to that.
Well that was a great couple seconds away from the negativity, wasn't it? Back to the grind. The moment-to-moment storytelling is pretty awful. This game hits a huge pet peeve of mine that seems to be exclusive to video game stories: treating the deaths of characters we've either never met or only knew for like one mission as these giant, earth-shattering moments of drama. In the case of Anthem, the moment that irked me came during a mission where you're tasked with tracking down a scout in the employ of another character. This mission exists to introduce the game's antagonist, "The Monitor" (and if your eyes just rolled back into your head and you've woken up everybody in your place of residence with your groaning because of that "baby's first videogame villain" name, you aren't alone), and it's meant to make him look like this terribly powerful force of evil...but it just falls flat. You see, the Freelancer meets him as he kills the aforementioned scout, and the Freelancer's response is screaming "YOU BASTAAAAARD!" I was sitting there, thinking, "YOU LITERALLY NEVER MET THAT SCOUT BEFORE!!" As the mission continues, you end up chasing after the Monitor while the freelancer angrily yells about how he's going to take him down, and it's SO lazy! What writer with a lick of sense feels like that's compelling? I don't know, maybe I'm just a little more jaded and close to sociopathy than I would've guessed, but it seems to me like a veteran of armed combat might require just a bit more evil to go past the usual "kill the bad guys" attitude and into the mindset of a hero facing the darkest pits of human depravity. Furthermore, there's a legitimately interesting bit of drama that comes up towards the end, but it ultimately gets dropped like nothing...or at least, I think it does. You see, I have to be upfront. I haven't finished Anthem, nor do I intend to. The reason is rooted in yet another storytelling problem: padding. At a certain point, your objective becomes to complete a bunch of arbitrary challenges in freeplay mode because the story at that point is to "pass the trials of the legion of dawn (ok, the f*** does that mean?)". You have to get x amount of this kind of kill and open x amount of treasure chests, etc. Ultimately, this part isn't as bad as people have been making it out to be, I'll admit that right off the bat. I don't know if it's just the way I played, but for me, most of the challenges had already been completed by the time the mission came into my log. I still had to spend a night or two in freeplay to make progress, but it wasn't as soul-crushing as people have claimed. However, by that point I was just...done. My last two challenges were opening treasure chests and reviving fallen allies. The former would've required randomly flying around for God knows how long. The latter would've required me to actually play alongside people or wait around for npcs to get knocked out. In either case, my patience had waned thin, and I was just finished. So I'll never know if that bit of drama came back at any point. I'll never know what the game's supposedly-good endgame is like. This game is just too soulless to keep me invested, and with reports that PS4s are having their hard-drives corrupted by this game, I don't plan on ever returning.

And with that, we move on to gameplay. Let's start off with the flight. The act of flying is satisfying as hell. Jetpacks are always a good gameplay mechanic, and the flight in Anthem controls flawlessly. Sure, you can only fly for a few seconds before overheating (unless you dive down, skim water, or fly under water), but the way you can seamlessly take to the sky in and out of combat and be perfectly in control is worthy of note. At times, the combat is that good, too. After you clear the tutorial and first level, you're tasked with choosing from one of 4 classes (they're called "javelins," suits of armor, but they're classes) to play as until you get the opportunity to unlock another class at level 8. Firstly, there's the "Storm." This javelin can shoot ice and lightning and fire and can hover for slightly longer than other javelins. Then, there's the normal one. I don't remember its name and don't feel like looking it up, but it's the ultimate "middle of the road" javelin. Then, there's the "Colossus." This javelin can take the most damage, moves the slowest, and is basically your tank. Finally, there's the "Interceptor." This javelin is mainly melee-focused and has the highest speed. I was an Interceptor main, and I delved a little bit into the Storm when I got the chance for a second unlock. I'll say this: If you know what kind of gameplay experience you want to have, chances are good one of the javelins will give you that. I personally wasn't a fan of the Storm, but the Interceptor suited my "freedom of mobility" gameplay leaning perfectly. When this game was me getting in close, using shotguns, slicing up enemies left and right with my blades, flying out of the fray to save precious seconds of shield recharge time, then kamikaze-ing back into the chaos with my blades out, I was having a blast! The problem is that the game never gives interesting situations or missions in which to kamikaze. Every mission you get is either defending against waves of enemies, following an awful radar to a thing, or a combination of the two. There's no variety, and it gets old enough fast enough that before long, even pretending I was playing 2016's Doom couldn't make the game compelling. Even with that in consideration, if Anthem were remotely rewarding to play, it could be overlooked. But as it stands, nothing about Anthem is rewarding. The loot all looks the same, so none of it is aesthetically exciting. The loot stats are completely randomized, so you could have a weapon at power level 2 that does 200 more damage than the exact same kind of weapon at power level 8. It seems like you get the exact same amount of XP at the end of every mission/freeplay session, so if you're grinding for hours in freeplay, you would earn exactly as much as if you just dropped in and completed one side quest (and if this isn't the case, the actual factors that determine XP gains aren't explained...at all). In addition, you're "awarded" "Alliance" points at the end of missions/freeplay, and that basically just gets you additional in-game currency...for f***ing microtransactions...great...thanks, EA. So, you get the drift. Even if you initially enjoy the combat, that enjoyment will run dry, and Anthem comes up short when you then come to it asking for more. Uninspired mission design, lack of rewarding loot, lack of experience rewards for playing the game for longer periods of time and/or killing more enemies, and minuscule microtransaction currency used as a log-in incentive...I'm afraid that fun flight and at-times good combat can't save that.

So the story/characters are...sometimes good, but mostly bad. The gameplay is...sometimes good, but mostly bad. Is the game at least good from a technical standpoint? Well...the technical strength is...sometimes good, but mostly bad. The graphics are beautiful to look at, but the framerate pretty consistently suffers. The soundtrack is good, but the numerous, numerous, numerous, numerous, numerous audio glitches mean that the overall sound package isn't great. The amount of sound effects that are either missing or distorted like a streamed movie over bad internet is unforgivable. The controls are tight, but they're rendered useless when animation glitches are a frequent occurrence. Then there are technical issues without a silver lining attached. The amount of loading screens in this game is mind-boggling, and it made me hesitant to go to the forge to change my equipment because I knew it would be another loading screen. The framerate in the main hub area is inexcusably bad and the audio glitches are even more present there. The user interface is terrible. The map in a GAME WITH THIS MUCH VERTICALITY doesn't give any topographical information, so it doesn't actually help at all. In freeplay, enemies often disappeared right before my eyes a couple seconds after we engaged in combat. Hell, in story and side missions that kind of thing would happen. I'd be fighting an elite enemy, I'd have it down to 20% health or thereabouts, there wouldn't be any lingering damage effects like poison, then suddenly the enemy would disappear and whatever objective I was working on would be marked completed. It's as if objectives are actually based on a hidden timer and BioWare just made an assumption about how fast a team of 4 could kill a certain amount of enemies, disregarding the fact that there could be anti-social people like myself who play missions solo and therefore notice these kinds of things. On one evening of freeplay, I'd get paged by Owen every minute or so telling me that there was a camp of outlaws ahead, then outlaws would just appear somewhere ahead. Every minute, "careful, there are outlaws ahead!" It got so annoying that I ended freeplay and started again, which fixed it, but it still needs to be mentioned. I experienced a hard crash in my play time, and I was booted back to the main menu on a couple of occasions because connection with the server had been lost. This technical package is so sloppy overall that it's tempting to break my rule of "a negative can only take off a max of 1 point." I'm not going to, but it's worth noting that Anthem, despite some good technical points, is such a mess that I believe it's worth taking off more points than I normally would.

I believe everyone was as uneasy as I was about Anthem in the months leading up to its release, so as I said, none of the negative press should come as a surprise. The fact of the matter is that Anthem is a disaster. It's not absolutely terrible, there is some fun to be had, but it is a disaster on just about every front. The worldbuilding is awful, with no history/metaphysics of the world organically woven into the story. The story itself is even worse, sporting little actual story content and moving plot points along in what I now consider a new record for degree of laziness. Gameplay, though not bad, is marred by a myriad of technical issues and uninspired combat scenarios. At every turn, Anthem has some technical issue that makes it unpleasant to play in some way. As I've said, gameplay can be good. Flying around and fighting with a javelin that matches your playstyle is satisfying. Some of the side characters are written the way BioWare is known for. The game is beautiful to look at, and the soundtrack smartly adds a slight tech sound to its otherwise atmospheric tone. But literally everything else about this disaster is so awful that all these objective positives simply can't support the weight. I fear for BioWare, and I fear for Dragon Age 4. We can always hope that professional paste-eating moron Andrew Wilson will learn from this mistake, but it's more likely that I'm just going to have to look into purchasing EA stock.

Let us review:
Technical issues - 1
Unrewarding gameplay - 1
Uninspired missions w/no variety - 1
Gobbledygook worldbuilding - 1
Awful moment-to-moment storytelling - 1
I never plan to return - 1

The final score for Anthem is...

4.0/10 - Below Average
Shame on you, BioWare (but mostly EA), shame on you