Anthem

So I was flipping through the playstation store to see if there were any good deals and I found Anthem marked down to something like $10.

So, Anthem is that big EA/Bioware game that was supposed to be the next big thing, but hilariously flopped.  On launch it was a buggy mess.  It didn't live up to expectations in story and characters.  And people just did not care to be dumping time into yet another live service looter shooter game when there are already so many out there.

Up to the release of this game I had been watching it with an overwhelming feeling of "meh".  I don't typically care for shooters, and I am wholly uninterested in online multiplayer.  There's nothing like being dressed down by a foul mouthed thirteen year old for not being as good at the game as he is to put you off of that sort of thing.  And though the game looked beautiful, they didn't really show off much of it before release.   I don't know why people were expecting this to be the beginning of a new series like Mass Effect, but apparently they were.  They hyped themselves up for it, and the game just didn't deliver on expectations.  And pretty much about a month after the game's release no one was talking about it anymore, and a fraction of the people who bought it were still playing it.

So, I figured why not see the train wreck for myself.  Now, keep in mind, that I played this game more than a year after release, and it has had some significant bug fix patches.  So, for the most part, the game ran pretty well.  I did run into some bugs, but they weren't anything exiting the game and restarting couldn't fix.  The servers that the game runs on were, unfortunately, not very reliable.  I kept dropping in the middle of missions with "unable to connect" errors, which is kind of aggravating.

Anyway, I played through the story, and a few of the side missions.  And I had fun with it.  For what it is, it's not a terrible game.  The problem with it is that it's trying to be an online live service multiplayer looter shooter.  Every problem the game has stems from that aspect of it.  If this game were a single player story based experience with additional multiplayer for the people who wanted it, I think it would have done a lot better than it did.  The story is okay, not the best thing Bioware has ever put out, but it's not terrible.  The characters are fine.  The gameplay is fun enough.  The biggest problem it has is that it wants to be a live service multiplayer game, and it's kind of clearly not.  I played through every story mission solo.  On normal difficulty I died a few times, but made it through without needing anyone else.  As a single player game, it wasn't bad.  I never bothered with any of the endgame stuff, because, like I said, it's just not my thing.  The thing is though, I just can't see why anyone would want to continue playing this game after the story is over?  What's the point?  Why should we care?  That's where this game fails.  It didn't give anyone a reason to continue playing the endgame looter shooter aspect after completing the story.

So, anyway, I feel that I got my $10 worth out of it  It was a fun distraction for a few weeks.  I have no desire to play further, and probably won't ever play through the story again, but I mostly enjoyed my time spent with it.  I wish it hadn't been an online multiplayer game, but we can't have everything.  I think one of the biggest reasons why this game failed was that people put Bioware on this high pedestal and that places unrealistic expectations on them.  Not every game they make is going to be another Mass Effect or Knights of the Old Republic, and I think that people are now starting to realize that.  They had their fair share of duds in the past.  Dragon Age 2 anyone?  Mass Effect 3 (even though that one's my favorite, despite everyone else in the world hating it for some reason).  If you accept this game for what it is, and don't pile unreachable expectations upon it, it wasn't a terrible game.  It was, maybe a little mediocre, but, I mean, people are allowed to be mediocre at times.