Anthem seeks to infuse co-operative shooting with the nuanced storytelling that has made its developer, BioWare, one of the world’s most respected – and in doing so, it takes copious notes from Bungie’s colourful sci-fi shooter Destiny. It’s an intriguing gamble, but sadly, Anthem proves to be depressingly hollow.
Initially all seems well, as Anthem sensibly front-loads its strongest features. The game takes place on an alien planet subject to perpetual cataclysms, and players assume the role of heroic mercenaries, using their powerful Javelin mech suits to fight the dangerous creatures that appear in their wake. This world is visually stunning, beyond almost anything we’ve seen in the current generation of video games. The planet’s surface appears to have been shattered and then hastily cobbled back together, as if some divine baker has tried to rescue an enormous dropped meringue. It’s a place where lush rainforests cling to vertiginous rock formations and perch on towering white mesas, while sparkling waterfalls pour down cliff-faces hundreds of feet high.
Similar attention has been lavished upon the Javelin suits. There are four to choose from, from the hulking Colossus to the nimble Interceptor. They all come equipped with a powerful jetpack: leap from the ground and hit the boosters, and your Javelin punches through the air like an F-15 breaking the sound barrier. They’re not the easiest things to control, particularly using a mouse and keyboard, but flying around is supremely liberating regardless.
The true power of these suits is revealed during combat. Each comes with a variety of weapons ranging from pistols to massive assault cannons, and its own special abilities. The Ranger, for example, can equip his off-hand with a high-powered laser beam or a heat-seeking missile, while the suit can generate a force-field that deflects enemy bullets. Over time, each Javelin can charge up a devastating “Ultimate”, such as a pummelling barrage of rockets fired from the Ranger’s chest.
When four players are locked in battle against one of Anthem’s more powerful opponents, the potential of the game is plain to see. Yet, despite being touted as a cooperative experience, Anthem’s team play is limited to reviving fallen comrades and occasionally pulling off a “combo” power set up by another player. Otherwise, there’s little sense of teamwork and almost zero communication. The effect is of playing alongside other people rather than with them.
This bizarre sense of isolation is most acutely felt in your home city, Fort Tarsis, to which you return at the end of every mission. Here, Anthem separates you from other players, switching to a narrow first-person perspective while you pick up new missions, upgrade your Javelin and (should you really want to) talk to the game’s characters. Fort Tarsis is notionally where the human side of Anthem resides; plot-critical characters and chatty civilians are sprinkled around like story-garnish. Yet Anthem’s tale is entirely disposable. In the absence of any meaningful opportunities for character development, most conversations amount to quipping duels, as if the dialogue was written by a machine-learning algorithm fed on Joss Whedon scripts.
It’s disappointing to see BioWare fail to deliver in the area where the studio is historically most adept, but poor storytelling is far from the worst of Anthem’s problems. Continually returning to Fort Tarsis to accept a new mission or upgrade your Javelin obliterates the flow. It’s like two completely different games have been welded together so abruptly that the seam is still glowing. Whether you’re following a key story expedition or embarking on a side-contract, almost every mission involves the same blend of flying through pretty but empty environments, stopping only to shoot repeating waves of enemies. Occasionally the game will mix things up by throwing in a boss at the end, or inexplicably forcing you to collect sparkling orbs from the air. Even the rewards for completing missions are curiously underwhelming, a samey mixture of guns and upgrades delivered with all the grace and fanfare of your average Yodel courier.
Anthem’s loudest bum-note honks out roughly a third of the way through, in a mission that requires you to complete an exhaustive list of in-game challenges. Some of these, like “repair 3 Javelins” or “open 15 chests”, are highly dependent on being in the right place at the right time, halting your progress for hours. It’s one of the most obnoxious bits of game design I have encountered in years, like a film interrupting itself with a mandatory pop-quiz about its own production. It’s been so unpopular amongst Anthem’s early-access players that BioWare has already promised to make adjustments.
Anthem has been built to serve its audience long-term, so it is probable that the game will improve in the coming months. An exhaustive list of technical hitches are due to be fixed imminently, for instance. But even where it is strongest, Anthem rarely stretches beyond the derivative. The combat, while well-designed, is little more than Gears of War with jetpacks, and narratively it veers between inconsequential and downright irritating. This anthem is, sadly, a tedious and conservative dirge that we’ve all heard before.
Anthem is out on 22 February; £49.99.
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