So, hearing that this game was on the chopping block, and seeing that it's free with Game Pass, I decided to gaze upon 2019's biggest train wreck for myself, see the carnage.
The thing is, though, parts of this game aren't bad. Parts of this game are honestly really good. Many people have cited the flying as being excellent, but honestly I enjoyed most of the combat. Sticking with a Storm for most of my campaign playthrough, the powers were an absolute treat to use, and my brief foray into Colossus was also quite fun, with that thing feeling weighty and like a tank. The character writing, too, is actually pretty solid. There's a decent cast of characters here that I quite enjoyed talking to, and there are some fun twists with their character arcs along the way that I was really excited to watch unfold.
Aaaaaand the bad parts. Two years on, these servers are still unforgivably unstable. I was dropped from missions, almost always almost-done ones, a dozen times in about as many hours. The load times (or, I suspect more accurately, the server connection times) are abhorrent, massive stumbling blocks that absolutely ruin the flow of play. The loot is all incredibly samey, and I was never excited to find a drop. Literally every mission of the game is the same, just fly to a spot, shoot stuff, maybe do a thing, repeat. And boy, god, the bullet-spongey bosses are negative fun to fight.
But, ugh, dammit, parts of this game feel so solid. There's a good idea buried in here, but a lot of the rot that would need to be yanked out to find it probably entails ripping up a lot of fragile and complex backend server code that couldn't be fixed easily. I think I'm actually pretty bummed that Anthem Next is officially dead: there's a version of Anthem that could have been absolutely phenomenal, and parts of it poke up through the surface regularly enough in the Anthem that does exist to make its faults infuriating.
The thing is, though, parts of this game aren't bad. Parts of this game are honestly really good. Many people have cited the flying as being excellent, but honestly I enjoyed most of the combat. Sticking with a Storm for most of my campaign playthrough, the powers were an absolute treat to use, and my brief foray into Colossus was also quite fun, with that thing feeling weighty and like a tank. The character writing, too, is actually pretty solid. There's a decent cast of characters here that I quite enjoyed talking to, and there are some fun twists with their character arcs along the way that I was really excited to watch unfold.
Aaaaaand the bad parts. Two years on, these servers are still unforgivably unstable. I was dropped from missions, almost always almost-done ones, a dozen times in about as many hours. The load times (or, I suspect more accurately, the server connection times) are abhorrent, massive stumbling blocks that absolutely ruin the flow of play. The loot is all incredibly samey, and I was never excited to find a drop. Literally every mission of the game is the same, just fly to a spot, shoot stuff, maybe do a thing, repeat. And boy, god, the bullet-spongey bosses are negative fun to fight.
But, ugh, dammit, parts of this game feel so solid. There's a good idea buried in here, but a lot of the rot that would need to be yanked out to find it probably entails ripping up a lot of fragile and complex backend server code that couldn't be fixed easily. I think I'm actually pretty bummed that Anthem Next is officially dead: there's a version of Anthem that could have been absolutely phenomenal, and parts of it poke up through the surface regularly enough in the Anthem that does exist to make its faults infuriating.
FrozenRoy
3 years ago