Bioware’s online multiplayer game Anthem officially launches on Friday, February 22. However, some players have been playing it in Early Access since the end of last week, and they have had some mixed things to say about it. The game has also received some reviews, and while more will be popping up over the next few days, we’d thought we would take brief look at just how the game is performing with critics and fans alike thus far. It’s important to note that this game has not officially released, and Bioware has already stated that there will be a massive day one patch on release day.
From the very beginning we knew that the game would be online only, with a story line and side quests to keep things exciting for the players. As this is a Bioware game, a lot of people were expecting top-notch writing with this one. It seems our hopes were a little too high as some of the people reviewing the game stated that the story line is, well it’s just plain boring. The argument can be made that Anthem is a loot shooter at its core, but the unfortunate circumstance is that this game is made by Bioware, a company well known for its creative ingenuity.
As for the actual gameplay, the game is beautiful, filled with rich environments and fast paced combat that will definitely be the focus of the players enjoyment, at least for a while. As soon as a battle begins, the screen becomes absolute chaos. With multiple Javelins flying around shooting and firing all sorts of weapons everywhere, co-op coordination seems like it would be impossible in a situation where the light show on the tv/computer monitor induces headaches for the player.
While these problems might appear to be the bigger part of Anthem’s issues, there is actually one that towers above them all. Without a doubt the biggest problem that currently plagues the game is the loading times. From attempting to start up your own mission to jumping into one that is already in progress, Anthem’s biggest complaint so far has been how long the game takes to fully load an area, or a mission. In an open world online game, this is something that Bioware needs to fix immediately.
We’re sure that in this riddled mess there’s a fun action-packed video game somewhere, but as of right now, it’s hard to see it. Perhaps Bioware tried to do too much with just one package, or maybe they wanted to be a step above Destiny. Either way, Anthem isn’t being looked at favorable right now, and with the full release date looming, it’s going to take a lot for Bioware to redeem themselves. As we stated earlier, the game has not been fully released yet, and there will be a day one patch when it does, and hopefully it fixes these issues.
Anthem officially launches on February 22 for the PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC.