The Semi-Wonderful Anthem VIP Demo Experience (Impressions)

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Hi Everyone,

Over the weekend I got to play the Anthem VIP demo on the Xbox One. It was for select users, and you could also share the code with your friends. 



The game is made by Bioware, and published by EA. The game is for the Xbox One, PS4, and PC and comes out February 22, 2019.

I will go over the Gameplay, as the story was minimal (but still a thing) in this demo. I will also dive into the bugs, and the improvements that need to be made for when the game comes out. Well, let’s dive right in!

Gameplay:


The Game is a Third Person Shooter (known as a TPS). You play as a Javelin, which is a mech suit (similar to Iron Man) that your character jumps in. There are several different Javelins, but for the demo I only played as the Ranger, which apparently is an all-around type of character. Some of the other ones focus on defense, or the speed of the character, or even the elements of the planet itself.

The goal of the game is to complete missions, for you and your home, called Fort Tarsis. You collect loot by defeating enemies, which you can use to upgrade your Javelin. You get to explore Fort Tarsis, and see what the world has to offer.

The game has several different weapons that you can use. These include Assault Rifles, or Grenade Launchers. There are other ones too. The ones I used were the Assault Rifles (called Assault Launchers) and the Heavy Pistol (rapid fire). They were pretty neat when I used them, and they got rid of enemies at a decent pace.

You can also fly around in your javelin by pressing in the control stick after jumping (by pressing the A button on Xbox One). It was pretty fluid, but one had to watch out for the Overheat feature, which would prevent you from flying again after a while. Luckily for me, it was easy to avoid, and I did not have to worry about it much, as I could just go to normal for a little bit, and then fly again.

There are several different game modes. There are Freeplay, Missions, and Strongholds. Freeplay is to just roam around. Missions are self-explanatory, and Strongholds are Longer side missions that get you nice loot.

In the Strongholds mission, there are several different objectives, from collecting Echoes (an objectified collectable) to opening doors, which I will mention later. It was interesting, but the Echoes are hard to see.

That’s pretty much the gameplay in a nutshell. It’s pretty fast, which I will address later on.

Problems:


The game goes way too fast. There is so much to do on the screen at once that it gets hard to figure out what is going on at once. Don’t get me wrong, I love action and fast paced games, but this was too fast. As such, it would be hard for me to focus effectively on what I wanted, especially with collecting Echoes (a mission objective).

Speaking of Echoes, they are very hard to find. They are small white orbs that you have to deposit into this weird circle thing, and the game counts how many you have deposited. The objective isn’t hard in itself, but the goal of trying to find the Echoes is challenging.

When your character runs around Fort Tarsis, your character is super slow. It is a terrible contrast compared to the rest of the game. Why have a fast-paced game with a slow overworld? It doesn’t make sense at all. I hope Bioware fixes this.

Bugs:


The game has a lot of bugs. The ones I encountered were the Infinite Loading Screen and stuff like doors not opening when I needed to get into the action.

The Infinite Loading Screen Glitch is where you are in the loading screen forever. Literally. There are ways around it. The first is to exit the Anthem demo, and go back into the game. Luckily the game lets you reenter the game if you need to. I don’t have to worry that much about progress being lost. That’s a good idea from Bioware, and other companies need to implement the same thing.

There was also a bug with a door in my Strongholds mission. My teammates were through it, and I could not get through it to revive them when needed. So we all died and hoped to restart from that point, and move on from there. But the game then gave us an Infinite Loading Screen Glitch, so we all exited and restarted our game. But the game sent us to Fort Tarsis, which made me mad. All that effort for nothing (we were pretty far in this Stronghold).

The game also has a tendency to freeze and make a really bad screeching sound. The only way to fix this is to exit and restart Anthem. Luckily, as I mentioned earlier I could reenter the game, and as such it made my life better, as this freezing happened several times.

Overall:


I hope that Bioware fixes these glitches in some capacity. It actually hampered my gameplay experience, and if they are still in then I might not even get the game at all. It was fun and enjoyable, but I am not sitting through loading screens in hopes of playing, or through several game freezes. That’s on them to fix, and if they do, then consider me in.

The game is still a lot of fun, but I do not want to sit through all of these problems. I would make the game have a higher rating as such, but the bugs lower it.

Rating:


I give the game a 3 out of 5 stars. The bugs really sour the game for me.


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