What I'm Playing: Anthem Demo

Yesterday, I had the opportunity to give BioWare’s new game, Anthem a go through their Public Demo that was available during the weekend. I played a mission with some friends and explored around the free roam while piloting the Ranger Javelin suit. While it wasn’t the full game, I thought I’d put down some of the impressions from what was in the Demo.

Javelins are piloted in third person while Fort Tarsis is explored in first person

Gameplay

The main gameplay of piloting the Javelin suit feels great for the most part. Flying around like Iron Man is a lot of fun and it even feels satisfying when getting shot down by an enemy in the world. The versatility of movement between flying or using the back rockets to launch into a fast run it great. I also like that there is an option to swap into a hover mode to shoot at enemies while in the air but in some cases, it felt that it filled the Overheat bar too fast to be as viable a strategy as it should be. I know that they probably made it like that so that players can’t just hide in the air out of reach of half the enemies.

Weapons can be used in the air but the overheat bar will still fill.

The guns feel okay, but the more important part of the combat is the Javelin’s abilities that can be used to help with fights. During my time playing, I got to try out the Ranger’s default abilities of a homing rocket attack, frag grenade and bubble shield. The menu options in the Forge (Where players customize their Javelins) seem to suggest that there will be more options in the main game so that players can adjust their Javelin to better fit their play style. There are already four main classes of Javelin suits that have their own options and attributes the fit with different play styles. The Ranger is the average balance model that has medium speed and defense. There’s also a big bulking suit that has a lot of defense and low speed as well as a skinny suit that is fast but has little defense. Then there’s also a caster suit that from what I’ve seen, it can call down lightning from the sky. They all have their own types and if the players have options to fine tune their abilities, it would a great feature.

Story

The demo didn’t offer much detail about the main story of the campaign but there were several tidbits about the lore of the world that has got me interested. There are mentions of the world’s creators called Shapers and the devices that they used to create the world. Apparently, the Shapers left and left behind their devices in the world and sometimes the devices can power up and change the world around them. I am intrigued to learn more about the mysteries of the world through the lore collectibles and through playing the main story. Even if I end up not getting the game itself for a bit, I’ll probably keep up with the lore of the world through other sources. It seems interesting.

Entrance to the Shaper Ruins that are the subject of one of the demo's story missions.

Sound

The world’s sound effects are great and help make the world feel more alive. The music in the shopping district where you customize your Javelin loops way to frequently. I had to wait for a friend to catch up to me and I felt like I was losing my mind. Otherwise I didn’t have many issues. The only other weird thing was that some of the dialogue with characters has some serious reverb that doesn’t fit with the room they’re in. They sound like they are speaking into one of those kid microphones that makes their voice echo.

Conclusion

I think Anthem seems promising as long as it gets properly supported after launch and doesn’t launch with as many bugs as its VIP Demo did. The story seems interesting and the gameplay is fun with a team of people. It is very much a game that you’re going to want a team of people to play with since many fights are scaled with the expectation that you have a team to work with. I am not sure if I will be picking it up at launch but I will be keeping my eyes on reviews for the game and maybe I’ll grab it a week or two after launch or when its on sale.