Anthem VIP Demo Impressions for PlayStation 4

Over this last weekend, EA and BioWare had their hands full with launching–and then wrestling with–the VIP demo for Anthem. In between the complaints of frustrated players who couldn’t get access, and EA and BioWare’s reassurances that the server issues will be fixed in time for launch in February, you’d be forgiven for missing the most important part: how good was Anthem for those who did play the demo? I snuck in between the maxed out server errors with a friend during a lucky break before the VIP period ended. Since the troubles with maintaining a connection to the demo and servers are already well documented, let’s discuss the game itself.

Anthem seems to be EA and BioWare’s answer to Destiny, which until recently was controlled by Activision Blizzard and developer Bungie (and now just Bungie alone). From what I experienced in the demo, Anthem is gearing up to be a worthy challenger, if nothing else. Both games concern themselves with large sci-fi worlds with extensive lore and story elements while keeping gameplay focused on third-person shooting and light RPG elements. Where Anthem stands out the most to me, though, is in its excellent controls.

Transitioning between land and air in your mech suit (called “Javelins”) works with as much smoothness and ease as I could hope for. Even more impressive is the amount of freedom the game offers on the ground or in flight at any given time. A simple jump can shift instantly into zooming through valleys and canyons in free flight, or into a hovering stance that makes nearly any point in a level a vantage point for shooting enemies. You retain a full 360 degrees of motion while in free flight, which further demonstrates Anthem’s attention to verticality, a still preciously underexplored idea in contemporary gaming. On PC the game performs wonderfully, maintaining a stable frame rate the majority of the time, regardless of explosions and other visual effects.

BioWare is mostly regarded as an RPG game developer, and they’ve applied their world design chops to great effect here. The level designs present in the Anthem demo feature small outposts and industrial facilities tucked in the middle of beautiful rivers and mountains coated in exotic flora. In later missions come vast abandoned alien machinery, and even a network of tunnels and hives that take you into underwater caves faintly lit with bioluminescent critters. Almost always these spaces are large, if not massive, in scope so that players can take full advantage of their flight abilities. The gorgeous skyboxes in outdoor environments call back to those BioWare’s art teams have been perfecting since Knights of the Old Republic and the first Mass Effect.

Shooting handles almost as smoothly as maneuvering through the world and skies. There are several different weapons and secondary tools to play with, ranging from machine pistols to explosive sniper rifles, sticky grenades, shotguns, assault rifles, and rocket launchers. Most enemies get mowed down easily enough, but some of the larger enemies are particularly well realized. Strange alien insects and other terrestrial beasts charge at players, but buckle and shudder at the impact of a well placed mini rocket. The sense of feedback and power scaling for the different weapons goes a long way towards making Anthem into a great moment to moment experience during combat.

Missions can be played solo, cooperatively with a private group of friends, or publicly with strangers. Players can drop in or out of missions on the fly and the game seems to facilitate this without issue (outside of the aforementioned challenge of getting onto a server to begin with). Missions progress along Anthem’s main storyline, with room for side stories likely not out of the question either. There’s a Free Play mode for different regions of the world where you can just run and fly around doing whatever you please. Occasionally little world events will occur, like a call to rescue an NPC or collect some special items from a horde of enemies. Finally, there is also one Stronghold, which functions like a dungeon or public instance that features large mobs of enemies and a giant boss at the end.

As with Destiny, Anthem features its own extensive system of customization and crafting that requires plentiful amounts of various resources. Curiously, if you find new weapons or components during a mission, you aren’t allowed to equip them on the fly. All of the equipping and crafting occurs in the Forge, where your Javelin is put on display like a show car for you to tinker with. Everything from a new paint job, special abilities, and even the amount of weather and tear on your Javelin is available for customization. Along with the missions, this offers just about everything you need for a MMORPG-lite experience wrapped up in a snappy shooter. 

Well, everything except a compelling storyline. Of all the aspects of Anthem on display in the demo (PVP is absent for now but sure to make a debut soon) the story is the least prominent. While out on missions you do get some chatter between characters buzzing in through your Javelin’s communicator, but when you’re not things get very static. This is odd given BioWare’s history and talents, but there it is. When you aren’t flying and shooting through the beautiful open world areas, you’re confined to a first-person view and forced to slowly walk through Fort Tarsis, your main hub area. It’s also a gorgeous location in its own right, full of NPC’s going about their daily business and a variety of interesting buildings that show off the art team’s talents further. But it’s also a claustrophobic place that cuts out just about everything that makes the gameplay experience of Anthem, except for chatting with NPC’s. Given how uninteractive these conversations tend to be, one wonders why this design approach was chosen over cutscenes or at least something more cinematic that lets players see their character. But since customizing the look of your human avatar isn’t part of the game and you don’t walk around Fort Tarsis in your Javelin, perhaps BioWare thought there wasn’t much to see.

Anthem is due to arrive on PC, Xbox One, and PS4 on February 22nd. A public demo is scheduled to open this weekend, starting February 1st. With any luck, EA and BioWare will have the servers tuned up and ready for an even larger wave of players than the VIP period saw, and the game will have another chance to impress before launch day.