Mastering your javelin’s mobility is essential to surviving in combat, as Anthem’s enemies and locales instil a great sense of verticality. Once I spent some time with controller in hand, I smiled to myself as I spied cliff edges to sprint towards and leap seamlessly into precise flying manoeuvres. Dan Lowe from fellow EA team Motive Studios tweeted a thread about how the flight transition animation in Anthem makes javelins look so incredible as their thrusters kick in.Īs I was playing on PC, I attempted to use the keyboard and mouse controls, but I found plugging in the Xbox One controller to be much more intuitive in this console-native’s sweaty hands. The Ranger javelin feels satisfyingly weighty and moves with considered purpose sprinting along the ground, and invokes a powerful presence in the air. My first attempt saw me jump off the cliff outside Fort Tarsis and boost away erratically, eventually crashing into a wall due to my lack of coordination – crashing doesn’t damage you, per se, but you certainly feel the heavy crunch of metal against rock. Similar to how it is in superhero origin stories, your first time attempting to fly is an exciting yet clumsy time. It’s best to disengage the thrusters before overheating, as they will cool down quicker and let you get back to roleplaying as Tony Stark in his Iron Man suit. A meter in the bottom-third of the screen measures how close you are to overheating which will cause the thrusters to cut out. Each javelin has thrusters that allow them to hover and fly for limited bursts at a time. What I can say that piloting a Ranger is one hell of a thrill. I spent my entire time in the demo piloting the Ranger javelin, which is billed as the all-around mix of offence and defence, so I can’t speak for the other three models. Additionally, all VIP demo participants will be able to access all four javelin types in this week’s open demo, instead of the limit of two previously applied. I found this worked a large percentage of the time – it was annoying, but I imagine this will be solved on launch.įollowing the issues plaguing Anthem’s VIP demo, BioWare will be rewarding players’ patience by giving all participants a new vinyl to adorn their javelins with at launch, in addition to the vinyl already promised for VIP demo player. Executive Producer of Anthem, Mark Darrah, suggested an interim workaround of closing the game, where reopening the game would pop you right back into the expedition you tried to launch earlier. To put things into perspective, Robertson stated in a post on BioWare’s blog that Anthem peaked at over 300,000 concurrent viewers on Twitch, showing that a huge amount of people were watching and trying to play Anthem on day one of the demo.Īnother common issue that I also encountered multiple times was the dreaded “95% load hang”, where after launching into an expedition (for missions, Strongholds, or freeplay), the loading screen would get stuck on approximately 95% and make no further progress. One Twitter user wrote an interesting thread about their server infrastructure experience that documents some potential reasons for not only Anthem’s initial issues but also issues encountered by other online-based games. Many social media users were quick to criticise BioWare and EA’s lack of server preparation prior to the demo, a claim that BioWare’s Head of Live Service, Chad Robertson, disputed.
This also means players were unable to explore Fort Tarsis, the single-player base of operations for freelancers where you chat with characters and pick up quests.
Especially day one of the demo, many players attempted to get their Anthem fix but were greeted with server error issues, preventing entry into the game. A LOT of people wanted to play Anthem’s VIP DemoĪs is widely known, Anthem’s VIP demo encountered a myriad of technical difficulties over the weekend due to the phenomenal number of players trying to log in and play.
Keen to see what the fuss was all about, I bought a month’s subscription to Origin Access and jumped into my own flying mech (javelin) on PC to provide you with the details. Six things we learned from Anthem’s VIP Demo weekendīioWare’s upcoming addition to the growing shared-world shooter, Anthem, hosted a VIP demo available to everyone who pre-ordered the game or had subscribed to Origin/EA Access.