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Forums - Gaming Discussion - Anthem Review Thread - MC: 61 | OC: 60

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COKTOE on 21 February 2019
OTBWY said:
Score on metacritic is now 67.

nrmnd. thought this was the CD3 thread.



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forest-spirit on 21 February 2019

I haven't tried it but based on what I've seen I'm not too surprised by the reviews it's getting. Some environments looked good but beyond that it didn't give the impression of being enjoyable for very long.



Azzanation on 21 February 2019
Faelco said:

First, it's a 13-14 hours completionist run. The campaign is 6 hours.

 

And of course openworld changes a lot of things, you need bad faith to try to say the opposite. A 6 hours openworld means that it's an empty and useless openworld. 6 hours of pure action without a break is a lot different compared to 6 hours of "exploring" an openworld. 

 

But I guess you won't care about any argument, you made your mind about the game already.

Have you played it?



MrWayne on 21 February 2019
AngryLittleAlchemist said:
MrWayne said:

At this point Bioware is nothing more than a label, most of the creative figureheads who were responsible for the old Bioware games left the company and some of the games you listed were even made by teams who were never part of Bioware befor EA bought them. It's hard to criticize something that doesn't even exist anymore.

What the games developed by "Bioware" in the last 10 years show is that EA don't really care about brand sustainability. They put the label Bioware on new studios who are unrelated to the original one and neglect quality control.


While I can appreciate what you are trying to say with your comment, it is basically blaming EA for wanting to expand one of their acquisitions. Which .... is what every publisher does when they acquire a new studio. And most successful studios that run for an extended period of time see huge shifts in their employees anyways, with massive amounts of new workers who eventually become creative leads. Successful studios can often be categorized into generations even, with a lot of the new workers becoming the main driving forces behind studios. You're kind of seeing this now with Naughty Dog for example, where people who had worked for the company are now becoming the heads of the company.

Your basically saying that all of that is inherently bad, when it isn't, in fact it's pretty normal in the gaming industry. Saying that a studio should have been kept close to it's original staff for the sake of identity is misguided really, it's normal for studios to have huge shifts in focus and game development. A bigger problem is most likely who was hired at Bioware and how the studio was managed, and while some of that is probably on EA a lot of it isn't (Bioware employees and ex Bioware employees have reiterated time and time again how much control they have over their own studios). 

In addition, Mass Effect Andromeda was given 5 years of development time and a massive budget. Dragon Age Inquisition was considered "good". Dragon Age II was a creative decision by Bioware that didn't pay off. And If I had to guess, Anthem was probably an idea proposed by Bioware themselves, with the express purpose of cashing in on Destiny-like games as to appease EA, due to the fact that their games weren't making their owner a lot of money. Which isn't a fault of EA but rather Bioware, because the types of games they make rely way more on the quality of the game in order to make a profit, and their past games failed, so this was probably their way of getting back on good terms. Having some pressure from your publisher is a real and understandable consequence of consistently fucking up. The only thing that I think can be traced back to EA in terms of quality control is probably ME3 and maybe the MMO Star Wars game, but those are funnily enough some of the oldest examples of Bioware fucking up. Unless you are implying that EA should have just outright cancelled Andromeda before release, or restarted development. Both of which are so unrealistic and would take them out of so much money that it isn't even funny.  

I have to elaborate a little bit more. Yes I do think that EAs approach is fundamentally flawed, maybe not financially but it leads to the wear of studios and brands which creates instability.

Putting the label "Bioware" on new studios is always a risky move because the consumer has an expectation of the label and it hurts the brand if the expectation can not be delivered by the new studio. By the way, this is not complete standard in the industry, take a look at Bethesda, the studios they bought still exist in their own structure and are distinguishable, even the new studio who got created to develop TES:O got it's own name, or Activision, even the three studios who develop CoD have their own brand and are distinguishable.

You're right that creative figureheads have to change from time to time but most of the time the new ones grow up within the company culture so the approach to game development stays the same or only slightly evolves. At Bioware how ever happened something different, the new studios with the Bioware label obviously already had a different approach and within the main studio it changed to. Befor Bioware got bought by EA they developed the same kind of games for 20 years, they had a strong creativ vision how their games should look like, under EA their approach changed to a market analytical one.

ME3: tacked on multiplayer
SWTOR: MMO
DI: semi open world
Anthem: destiny like c-oop loot shooter

They followed every big market trend in the last few years and that's not exclusive to Bioware, most of the other EA studios work the same.
Dead Space 3: co-op (rip)
apex legends: battle royal

And last but not least all the Bioware studios are directly owned by EA, so if these studios deliver one disappointing experience after another it's ultimately EA's responsibility to tackel the problems within those studios.



oniyide on 21 February 2019
Wyrdness said:
Azzanation said:

If that's the case, than should all modern Remasters and Remakes receive poor reviews because they don't offer innovations or features? There's nothing wrong with how Crackdown 3 plays, its Solid and can be quite addictive and probably one of the better polished Sandbox games at launch where it doesn't launch with bugs or game breaking glitches. 

Also the MP is a stand alone mode, not a tacked on mode. Different developers on both Campaign and MP.

Remasters and remakes have changes to help bring them into the modern era CD3 however does not it's polished for a game of 2007 standards yes but when games that do have bugs still have far more redeeming factors it's not much of a selling point.

not mention it makes no sense to compare a "remaster" with a numbered sequel. 



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JamesGarret on 21 February 2019

As far as I´m concerned, Bioware has been pretty much dead for a while...that Bioware that used to consistently put out very high quality games is long gone.



Lucca on 21 February 2019

The major publications have started posting their reviews, and it doesn't look like it's going to get much better for Anthem. GameSpot gave it a 6/10, Destructoid gave it a 7 and PC Gamer gave it a 5.5. Its Metascore is now 65 on the PC, and it has a 62 score on OpenCritic.



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Neodegenerate on 21 February 2019
John2290 said:
The written reviews, or at least few of them, do not match their scores in the slightest. These outlets should be dropping 5's around rather than 7's. Has it really come to this that a mediocre game is now a 7 from single reviewers? I get that an aggragate score is weighted but when you do a single review for a game you are literally trashing and give it a 7, your score looses meaning. If they all scored properly perhaps MC and OC reviews of 80 or less would not be looked upon with suspicion and 60-70's as bad games. If call the game less than mediocre with technical issues abound then score it as such with a 5 or less.

70s... FFS.

7 has been considered "mediocre" for a very long time in the reviewing world, especially for games.  I typically think anything under a 7 must have significant technical problems these days, when that should be reserved for things below a 5.  Gives such a tight window for what is actually considered good.  I think its a large part of why some people only play 9s and up these days.



Lucca on 21 February 2019
John2290 said:
The written reviews, or at least few of them, do not match their scores in the slightest. These outlets should be dropping 5's around rather than 7's. Has it really come to this that a mediocre game is now a 7 from single reviewers? I get that an aggragate score is weighted but when you do a single review for a game you are literally trashing and give it a 7, your score looses meaning. If they all scored properly perhaps MC and OC reviews of 80 or less would not be looked upon with suspicion and 60-70's as bad games. If call the game less than mediocre with technical issues abound then score it as such with a 5 or less.

70s... FFS.

Welcome to the current gaming review scene, where reviewers basically only use 50% of the scale and Sonic Boom, an almost unplayable game, gets a 32. Oh, and where 74% is already considered "average", when it should actually mean "good".

Like, when a game is widely panned as a terrible game, it gets a 50 or 60. That's ridiculous. Just look at Mighty No. 9. That has a 55.

I have no idea how we got to this point when the film critics seem to really use the whole scale. Maybe it's the fact that critics don't give points to films just cause the camera's recording or the audio is working. They tend to focus on filmmaking per se.



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Lucca on 21 February 2019
John2290 said:
Seen ads for it on IGN. I expect nothing less than an 8, perhaps an 8.6 or some shut like that.

 

John2290 said:
IGN with their Anthem banner ads, smdh, no doubt postponing their review because EA bought up all the damn ad space on thwir site... which will probably end up higher than an 8 at any rate.


They gave it a 6.5. Come on, IGN is not that bad. All this hate is not warranted at all. They're humans, not monsters.



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