Anthem (PS4)

“Play to your strengths” goes a common piece of advice, and for good reason. Even though as a creative it can be wise and fruitful to stretch your legs and tackle new and diverse subjects, being able to build off what you’ve succeeded with before can make entering new frontiers less rocky. Anthem is a loot-based shooter, a game from the developer Bioware that is best known for making role-playing games with intriguing worlds and stories with greater depth than just the plot’s main focus. Shifting genres was a risk, but if Bioware could have cushioned the growing pains of something new by integrating what they’re typically good at, Anthem could have become a successful new franchise. Instead, Anthem is built with unfamiliar software by a constantly shifting team with even its most defining mechanic, flight, being something that was removed and added back in repeatedly during development as the developers struggled with even figuring out what the game should be about. The unfortunate reason I find myself playing Anthem now is its impending closure in January of 2026, the game requiring online servers to play, already mostly to its detriment before you even consider that expiration date they lead to. However, despite the tumultuous life and looming death of this third-person shooter, there are still points you can see where Anthem did sometimes play to Bioware’s strengths and could have been something more if handled more carefully.

 

Anthem, in the game’s world, refers to an ethereal energy that shapes the world the characters reside in. This Anthem of Creation can inexplicably manifest land and creatures with no clear rhyme or reason, but there are also relics that allow people to tap into the Anthem and use it for their own aims if they can contain the often wild energies. Cataclyms can utterly upend parts of the land as well, these being situations where the Anthem of Creation radically alters the world often with disastrous or long-lasting consequences. The humans on this world of sometimes rampant creative energies try to eke out a living as best they can, doing their best to understand this almost abstract guiding force of nature as well as reacting to its calamities with well armored warriors who can fight back against the monsters sometimes formed by the Anthem. The line between physics and fantasy is sometimes blurred and rules of reality are occasional rewritten, but Freelancers do their best to keep things in order using their Javelin armor, mech suits that increase their size and defense while also giving them the ability to fly through the skies of this world called Coda.

There is a good deal of world-building put into Anthem’s setting and the Anthem itself feels brimming with potential for unusual changes to the land. The people trying to document it and understand it while also knowing so little of the truth behind it gives the Anthem of Creation an intriguing mystique, but the game isn’t afraid to highlight smaller elements of living in this world like the woes of a fastidious custodian or the bickering between fans of different radio shows about Freelancer life. While you spend a good deal of time flying your Javelin armor out in the natural world the Anthem has created looking for trouble, Fort Tarsis serves as your base and a chance to check in on the people and society that has sprouted up, and here you get to see some of Bioware’s strengths show up from time to time. There are memorable characters who end up being interesting to talk to beyond any missions they provide such as Sentinel Brinn, an introverted member of the city guard with very particular interests who you gradually help come out of her shell on top of helping her with protecting the fort. A rumormonger crops up and always seems to have the wrong idea about you and your relationships with others in the fort, leading to some amusing exasperated interactions, and sometimes your dialogue choices can impact how a character’s story unfolds in miniature, like a fellow Freelancer named Lucky Jak potentially having different tales to tell of how he always seems to luck into fortune or just barely miss trouble. The main story does a decent job of laying out your custom Freelancer’s relationship with their assistant Owen, although the major focus of the game’s plot ends up being about the Heart of Rage, a Cataclysm your Freelancer barely survived but one day hopes to quell. It was clearly meant to be the first of many stories should the game have received the updates it was meant to and it at least gives you a full narrative that can be experienced entirely in single-player alongside the side-stories of characters like Mathias whose efforts to understand the Anthem go awry in a fun and unexpected way. However, even before you see the teaser for thing to never come, the main adventure doesn’t feel like it makes the best use of its characters or world-building as it settles for the more singular looming danger of the Heart of Rage and the straightforward villain The Monitor who hopes to use it to tap into the Anthem.

 

When it’s time to go out into the world and fight, you’ll first pop on your Javelin armor, and when the game begins, you’re given a choice of four different types with various strengths. Ranger is a sort of standard option, all armors able to fly and fire weapons while also getting specific Gear abilities and an Ultimate. The Ranger gets a mix of attack and support options like grenades and a bulletproof barrier, but the Colossus is a burly heavy duty armor that can sustain a great deal of damage, put up an actual shield, and has unique access to the auto-cannon weapon for incredible rapid fire shots. The Storm armor is fairly close to a magic caster, able to fly around in the air and unleash blasts of ice, electricity, and fire while also having support skills like laying down a hastening zone, but the Interceptor conversely allows you to get in close and carve up foes before dashing out to safety. Leveling up will let you unlock the additional armors so you don’t have to commit them full time, and you can get most of them before even finishing the main story if you invest some time in side quests. The armor classes themselves aren’t leveled up, your Freelancer’s growth gradually unlocking more equipment slots for all armors, but you will need to get Gear out in the world that is specific to the armors or craft it. The main adventure is more than possible with just what you find along the way and even some post-game content still won’t strain you, although it does encourage embracing cooperative play more. Up to four Freelancers can attempt a mission together and more than that can work together in the Free Play mode where you wander the available world instead of getting sealed into mission areas, although even one other person helping you might make some things a bit too easy unless you up the mission difficulty or tackle the tougher content like Strongholds.

 

During a regular mission, you sometimes need to do some basic tasks like matching spinning pillars to plaques on the wall or fly around to gather energy orbs to unlock the way onward, but mostly it will be flying around the world and then engaging in firefights with the different dangers of Coda. Scars will be the most common threat, these insectoid creatures with firearms containing a few variants like snipers, huge shield-bearing ones with flamethrowers, and more durable elites with stronger and faster weaponry. Outlaws are fairly similar save that they’re humans, which in turn means some of them have their own Javelins so you can go up against power sets similar to your own. Some aggressive wildlife like wyverns in the air and large Frost Hounds can also trouble you rather regularly, but much of this opposition runs into two little issues. The first is more benign but disappointing when it does occur, that being that their AI is most assuredly determined server side. The game already offloads a good deal of information like the environment to online servers leading to some long loads on occasion, but the most material effect this has is some baddies will just stare off into the distance and let you fire on them unopposed. It’s fine when it’s a random Scar or animal, but not so great when it is the heavy duty trooper of the battle meant to give it more teeth.

The other issue in a common battle though is your ability to fly. When you are navigating the world of Anthem, it’s actually quite breathtaking even after you’ve played the game for quite a while. The environments can be gorgeous and your aerial view of it all doesn’t get old, even if sometimes trying to find the nearby minor collectible your compass is indicating does lose its charm fairly quickly. Flying about is a nice way of making travel a bit interesting, although the timed races show that it’s more a tool for movement than speed as they can feel unusually low energy. The flight feels like a great addition though up until you see its impact on combat. Cover can’t matter for all that much in Anthem when you can fly over and around it, and when it does matter, its usually because you flew off to a hiding spot to let your regenerating shields recover or were shaking the heat of too many enemies targeting you at once. Most enemies do have long range weapons to try and make it so they can pressure you as you fly about and not all Javelins allow aerial combat, but flight works both as a usually safe to use rip cord and a fairly safe means of plunging into enemy lines. While an occasional turret or sniper can track you well in the air, it still feels like, unless enemy numbers are fairly high or the battle area cramped, you have too strong an edge over the opposition.

 

Boss monsters and characters do exist, and the game can sometimes be rather patient in rolling them out. The walking tanks of the Scar forces aren’t overused, and while the Titan that made the Heart of Rage so dangerous sees some of its kin appear surprisingly early in the adventure elsewhere, these giants are one of the more dangerous foes before you understand how they fight. At the same time though, some boss battles will start to drag on too long without meaningful change in their flow. You can find yourself sitting in a relatively safe spot, spraying them with bullets and reloading, without much meaningful interruption if the arena isn’t properly populated with other concerns. However, the speed of such fights can change drastically based on if you have a team with you or stronger gear, and the content that is meant to be truly challenging still packs its intended punch. Weaker battles are at least over quickly and there are little tricks like no-flight zones to make cover matter for a bit, although one really poor choice for part of the story’s progression occurs at about the midpoint where you need to use Free Play to putz around and do minor tasks in abundance like opening treasure chests or hitting milestones in terms of what you’ve killed or how you’ve killed things. Encouraging a look at Free Play wouldn’t have been a bad idea if it was focused more on things like World Events which are specific battle types, but the collection tasks can slow things down considerably if you weren’t taking time to scoop up plants and the like before despite flying through the world usually being the focus.

 

Loot is a major element of Anthem even if it isn’t always exciting. You have a range of guns to find, a player able to bring two on a mission with there not only being assault rifles, shotguns, sniper rifles, and pistols, but variations within those gun classes. A marskman rifle for example is a long range but fast firing gun, but you can choose between things like the heavy single shot attacks of the Anvil or the quicker burst shots of the Scout. Initially new weapons you find will usually just be a bit stronger with small extra effects, this also true of the Gear, but the Gear feels better handled. Gun upgrades are quite incremental, but unique Gear powers can be found and it’s not always possible you’ll find a stronger version of a skill for quite some time. This incentivizes you to switch up your Gear abilities and find out their advantages so you can later make an informed choice of what to bring instead of settling into what’s comfortable, although it would be nice for there to be a target range to test out your weapons and Gear in instead of always having to bring it on a mission. There are cosmetic armor sets and tools for crafting better gear and equipment available for purchase with real money or the slowly earned amounts of currency doled out in game, but they feel almost superfluous unless you wish to tackle the highest difficulties and most challenging extra content. You could almost overlook most of the live service elements if the people selling them didn’t have dialogue with you at times, and considering Sayrna, voiced by Kristen Schaal, has some delightfully unhinged stories about her using mob ties to go out and try to pet dangerous baby animals, at least you get something out of their presence if you don’t choose to engage with the monetized side of an adventure that didn’t really feel like it benefits from that side’s presence.

THE VERDICT: Anthem provides a gorgeous world to fly around in, flickers of fun characters, and a world with some tantalizing mysteries, although the way it explores its greatest strengths is flawed. Flight can sometimes trivialize the game’s gun fights since it invalidates cover and other useful elements of constructing good battles while the game’s updates stopped before Anthem could explore more corners of its lore. There is enough to motivate a run through the story, some bosses and dungeons up the ante and encourage you to use Javelin Gears in satisfying ways, but the cooperative play can also reduce the difficulty again outside of the high end challenges where it becomes a necessity. Anthem is a hodgepodge of ideas that technically work but need more elaboration to truly thrive or less conflict from other parts of the formula holding them back. Choosing to name itself for the sometimes random and dangerous force of creation in its game world feels somewhat appropriate, great marvels and moments as likely to show up as bland or detrimental ideas.

 

And so, I give Anthem for PlayStation 4…

An OKAY rating. It feels easy to call any failed live service game from a once reputable name a tragedy, and since Anthem followed Mass Effect 3 in development even though other games lead to Bioware’s reputation declining before its release, it is easier to declare it as its own heart-breaking decline. You can see the moments of writing that would be beloved if they were in a more cohesive game that put more focus on its writing outside of the lore that still has room to grow. The Gear system is a nice bit of customization and its ties to a loot system aren’t the worst shift away from an RPG style progression. The environmental designers deserve incredible praise for building such a beautiful world that is enjoyable specifically because you’re flying over it rather than it feeling like you’re missing out by traveling above it. Not everything that works is firing on full cylinders though, and other elements are on shaky ground despite bearing the greatest weight. The flight is the defining mechanic of the game but it feels often at odds with the battle system, even enemies that make use of it still not able to truly explore their potential there because not all Javelin armors are able to pull off midair combat. The ground-bound baddies can struggle to oppose you if they’re not in some huge horde or packing the few enemy types that can contest your inherent advantages, and the AI having its hiccups or bosses that sponge up damage despite not challenging you much can lead to missions that lack stand out moments. Anthem’s tumultuous and sometimes directionless development is no doubt to blame, the necessary time to hash things out not given, but it’s not a complete lost cause because technically in an uneven package, if you have lows, you also have highs.

 

There are parts of Anthem worth seeing and remembering, and if this was simply a single-player adventure with possible cooperative elements, it not only would have a life beyond an unnecessary day of deletion, but it would likely have had a greater focus rather than the hopes that content that never came would be able to fill in the world more and provide new forms of action. Anthem’s online components feel like they only suffer from being server-side and while it would have had a larger file size if it was all on disc, at least it would still be possible for future players to get to be charmed by Sayrna’s eccentricities, to be able to fly over some lovingly detailed environments, and feel the might of the Javelin armors when their Gears allow for a turnaround on a boss. Instead, Anthem’s going to go in the same bin as too many other online-only games, another warning about the dangers of trying to be a live service game when you don’t have the know-how or commitment that likely won’t be heeded. There is room for live service games, but Anthem was a case of talent being forced into a mold they didn’t fit well, their strengths not coming through in this decent game that ended up an unfortunate folly.