Man, I loved Too Human. I too spent so much time with it in spite of it's many problems.
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Anthem Review Thread
- Thread starter Earvin Infinity
- Start date
Man, today's Crate and Crowbar podcast was just dire. I didn't think it was possible for Bioware to create a hill that Chris Thursten wouldn't die on.
Ok I am honestly confused with what the problem with Tomb challenges are, by the time I got to them I had already finished most of them. I didnt even realize it was a problem until I read it here.
The problem could be that I started my playthrough last weekend before they patched it and just continue tonight, but I have a shit ton of stuff to do and there's seemingly no way to track my objectives/progress on screen as I play. I have to keep going into the codex and making mental notes. This alone is a design blunder not befitting a professional studio or any studio
Also literally can't find the tombs. I can't navigate to them. I guess I suck at flying but I just get stuck on walls everywhere I go and can't figure out how to get to them.
1. PS4 players don't have EA Access or Premier.
2. The quest is just horribly bugged for some people. I had most of the objectives completed by the time I reached that mission and only had to spend 40 something minutes finishing it up, while some people had to start from scratch.
It's far more likely that the quest is just downright bad and bugged than some insidious attempt to make players grind out their EA access trial. Also if I was playing a trial for 10 hours and I had to spend 2 of those hours on that shitty quest I would probably not buy that game or want to play more of it.
Thats when I started my play through as well, by the time I got to the tombs I think I only had a multi kill left to get on one. and a couple melee kills on another.
Really? Im sorry to hear that, I found a controller was way easier for flying on the pc, and since a mouse is required for precision kills I kept with the controller.
its 2019 and weve universally panned fetch quests for 3 generations now.
I guess if it had been collect moons people would be happier? jk
I still feel that gamers will learn. If these bad games keep getting pushed out. There will be a price to be paid long term. EA image is pretty bad right now.
The entire intro sequence with Shepard and Anderson on Earth is hackneyed and contrived, especially since the game assumes you played Arrival, a bad DLC, and makes very little sense without it
The Mars sequence is rushed and a way to introduce a magic off switch, which they can build despite not knowing what it is, but describe as doing something with energy, which is basically the fundamental description of a machine
The EDI/Joker relationship is garbage
Javik is DLC
Kai Leng is an awful character that the game desperately wants you to feel is some powerful antagonist rival but just comes off as an annoying prick protected by hilariously transparent plot armor
The character side stories often feel like they exist merely to conveniently finish off character arcs or give former squadmates who didn't make the party cut this time an excuse to not be here the most important thing ever at the end of the universe
Personally this is a massive nitpick but I hated how Mordin just completely made up his mind and started working for a genophage cure off-screen between games and also I like his default death line rather than the one that most players will get (where he hums Pirates of Penzance if you got him to sing it in 2, which feels like a fanservice meme inserted into his character arc's finale). this is super nitpicky i know
Cerberus once again completely changes form, this time into a super army of infinite dudes even though you were told they had no resources left after Project Lazarus to revive Shepard in 2
The Galactic readiness thing is really half-baked
The weird Pac-Man thing on the galaxy map
There's all those missions where they drop you into the multiplayer maps to pick up a goober but unlike the multiplayer which is fun these are boring filler
Half the sidequests are boring filler where you overhear someone saying "well we lost our space stick on planet gobulon v when the reapers attacked" and then shepard magically teleports the bafmodad into the Normandy by scanning the planet and then walks up to the alien and is like "hey I found your thing" and they're all "wow great, NOW i'll help stop the apocalypse"
Certain plot arcs like destroying/preserving the baby reaper or the rachni ended up barely mattering outside of a handful of GR points
In contrast to 2, which had a lot of varied scenarios, the plot of 3 necessitates that nearly every single mission is set on a tech base where a bunch of Cerberus guys jump into with rockets, or a reaper-invaded rubble planet covered in husks. the only major deviation from this is the Rannoch missions
I really hated the writing for Rannoch, which ended up just making the quarians even bigger assholes than they seemed, and the finale of the geth subplot is that all of the cool unique things about them as a gestalt synthetic species that wants to exist on its own terms are thrown out the window so they can become generic robot individuals; Legion's death, while thematically necessary, was written super awkwardly (I can't copy and paste my code so I have to cut and paste my code, which will work instead... I have to go now, my planet needs me); afterward EDI gives this incredibly insulting explanation about how the geth having a form of consciousness that deviated from organic standards was objectively inferior and incorrect so it's good that they conformed and destroyed their unique identities. fuck off
Beginning on Earth is really terrible
Space exploration on the map is even worse than ME2
Most sidequests on the Citadel are basically fetch quests
Very linear in comparison to ME1 and ME2
Kei Leng, and to a smaller degree Cerberus as a whole
Multiplayer maps used to increase length in single player campaign
The "war assets" mechanic reduces most of your choices to a number
Javik is DLC
All the manipulative scenes with the child
Turret sections
I could go on, I think it's kind of reductive to say that every problem ME3 has can be traced to the ending. You can really see they had to cut corners a lot, for the scope of the project they needed more time.
I think it's still a good game overall. Just not on the same level of 1 and 2 personally.
You forgot all the ham-fisted attempts at emotional manipulation with that kid, but yeah. All this.
For what it's worth I appreciate this. I'm burned out from trying to get gotcha'd with why I dislike mass effect 3. It's not JUST the last mission. That's just the culmination. It's the utter disappointment of everything I worked so hard previously being reduced to points at most and major decisions not really mattering at the end of the day.
Haha touche (I havent gotten around to playing odyssey so I cant say what's different)
Okay let me just show you guys exactly what the tomb challenge involves for anyone who has just heard it vaguely described.
This is what I encountered a few hours into the game. I have to complete these challenges to continue, and I can't track them on screen. I have to dive into the menus (as shown here in this video) to check my progress.
To summarize, here's what I have to do:
Trial of Yvenia
Trial of Gawnes
Trial of Artinia
Trial of Cariff
Again, this isn't end game optional stuff. This is a few hours in and I HAVE to do this if I want to continue the quest. It's not optional.
So.. Yeah. I'm done unless they patch this mission out.
This is what I encountered a few hours into the game. I have to complete these challenges to continue, and I can't track them on screen. I have to dive into the menus (as shown here in this video) to check my progress.
To summarize, here's what I have to do:
Trial of Yvenia
- Treasure Chests: 1/15
- Harvests: 19/25
- Javelins Repaired: 1/3
- Collectibles: 0/10
Trial of Gawnes
- Melee Defeats: 14/50
- Ultimate Defeats: 0/50
- Legendary Defeats: 2/3
Trial of Artinia
- World Events: 1/5
- Weapon Defeats: 30/30
- Weak Point Defeats: 15/15
- Elite Defeats: 9/9
Trial of Cariff
- Missions: 1/3
- Gear Defeats: 12/30
- Combo Triggers: 1/15
- Multi-kills: 1/3
Again, this isn't end game optional stuff. This is a few hours in and I HAVE to do this if I want to continue the quest. It's not optional.
So.. Yeah. I'm done unless they patch this mission out.
What that crap is still in the game ? I thought it had been patched out with the day 1 /day 8/ day whatever the hell it is called patch ? It seems Bioware hasn't learn't a damn thing since Mass Effect 3 days when they put the "best" ending behind MP, In ME 3 there is an extra clip at the end that is next to impossible to get unless you take part in Multiplayer or use the crappy app that came out with the game. Later after the game had been out for a while Bioware reduced the number of assets you needed to get the "best" ending.
Yet here we are 7 years later and not only did they NOT learn but they doubled down on trying to force the player to do shit they know their playerbase is not interested in.
Collectibles probably just means collect 10 collectibles out in the world. Combo trigger basically just means light someone on fire or freeze them and hit them with an ability that does combo damage. Mission just means do a normal mission, like a contract, a mission you receive from one of the NPCs or from a mission board. Looking at it now, it's not that hard, it just takes time if the game hasn't been keeping track of stuff like that for you.
Crackdown 3 is also content-starved and underwhelming in quest design, but it still attempts to deliver what fans want and has few technical issues. It performs great and there's no equivalent problem to Anthem's terrible pacing, or its lack of loot and endgame despite being a GaaS loot game.
Playing casually, doing side quests that were available, by the time I reached the trials, I was one objective away from completing each of them. I think they expected more people to be enamored with free roam, as you tick all of them off rather quickly just flying about and fighting / doing events as you run across them. Opening chests turned out to be one of the longer ones, but world chests and events, or entering a dungeon solo made that relatively easy.
If you turn right once you get into freeroam and fly along the city, you can find a group of friendly soldiers overlooking the fields that get attacked by enemies frequently. Picking them up as they drop counts as reviving javelins.
Note: I don't think this is a great thing to drop into mainline quest progress, but I also think the time it takes to do these things is being overblown by a large degree.
If you turn right once you get into freeroam and fly along the city, you can find a group of friendly soldiers overlooking the fields that get attacked by enemies frequently. Picking them up as they drop counts as reviving javelins.
Combo trigger is the number of times you see "COMBO!" on your screen from using primers and detonators
Note: I don't think this is a great thing to drop into mainline quest progress, but I also think the time it takes to do these things is being overblown by a large degree.
I think the treasure chest objective is probably the biggest offender out of that whole list. That one takes some time since you have to fly all over the place and hunt those down or complete a world event to get it to spawn for you.
Does the game ever actually explain what primers and detonators are? In my 6.5 hours I don't recall it ever being explained, but maybe I just missed it.
They did. They just said to themselves "other games like destiny shipped like this so it's fine people will buy it and defend it for us regardless so what does it matter?"
I've played the game for 5 hours or whatever at this point and I have no idea what a primer or a detonator is.
I'm okay with games having hidden depth or involved mechanics -- I love that, actually -- but it's bizarre to force me to do it a bunch of times as part of a mission without ever explaining what it is.
It doesn't, to my knowledge. And even when you know which abilities are primers/detonators (the icons on the skills look like a dot within a circle or a four-point star, respectively), it's hard to know when something is primed until you get a feel for it.
I believe it's all in the Cortex. Hit J on PC, and then go to Tutorials.
EDIT: Actually I just looked. It doesn't. It explains combo effects, but not primers and detonators specifically.
So no, a key part of major system is not explained at all in the game. Primer and detonators icons aren't present in the tutorial.
It does not. It's a huge flaw in player onboarding. In my personal reality, you would have been playing alongside an NPC that set up primers and let you detonate (and then vise-versa) to train people on how it works.
Also, the different element types vs. bar colors hasn't been explained... if that still matters from the ME MP influence this game has (and needed more following of, IMO).
This plus inconsistent tool tips across a wide number of items - maybe even outright bugs on some - makes it hard to know what does what or what's better than what. It's pretty messy right now.
I agree, he was a terrible fanfiction tier character. It didn't help that he came from the "eat cereal" book.
Writers need to stop assuming everyone read the comic or novel that the character was created in. These characters still need a proper introduction and be more than just a cameo.
I don't agree with all of this but yes, ME3 was garbage. People go on about the ending but the rest of the game was a mess both technically and design/writing-wise. People forget that basic shit like the journal log was bugged or that Jessica Chobot was a romanceable option in the game.
i went and did 3-4 sidequests i was going to do anyway, and spent an hour in freeplay just generally flying around and helping people do open world events. That was enough to finish all those trials.
If you sit there and look at them as a checklist, yeah it sucks. if you just go play the fucking game its not bad at all. And to be fair, i probably wouldn't have given freeplay a chance till i finished the campaign but it was actually fun to just fly around and complete events.
Or his design, especially the visor. Slits as eyewear were used by certain indigenous folks living harsh winter conditions. Aside from shielding the eyes from cold winds and snow, it reduced amount of glare courtesy of on reflection off of ice and snow on relatively cloudless days. Essentially an alternative to constantly squinting.
In the case of assassin Leng it came across as making sure people knew he was of East Asian heritage.
wow can you imagine Destiny having a main storyline quest like that
yes, those are present in exotic quests but at least they don't stop the main story
Quite impossible when the map is just one giant jungle and you can't even set waypoints or have indicators of what's going on in it. Pair that with the fact that if you're playing solo, die and respawn you're all the way back to a spawn area, after a load screen of course, and you can't simply go back to the place you died cause you get lost trying it.
I don't know who is worse, the guy who designed this or the one who tested it, it blows my mind.
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yo damn did not expect this game to be ravaged. Wonder if EA/Bioware will drop this like they did Andromeda.