Anthem Open Demo – My thoughts

Anthem is no doubt one of the most anticipated games for me this year. I’ve been hyped about this thing since the moment I’ve seen its demo at E3. Heck, I was so hyped I pre-ordered it and that’s huge coming from a guy that never ever pre-orders his games. There was just something about Anthem that got me pumped and counting the days for its release.

Now pre-ordering Anthem did give me access to the V.I.P demo and well, that did not go as smoothly as I thought it would. The online communities were filled complains about people waiting hours and hours just to get it, which was mainly because the servers weren’t all open and on the other hand V.I.P access players could give away 3 friend codes out for their friends to jump in to the demo as well, further adding to the queues.

Not to mention a lot of bugs such as the ‘infinite loading screen’ which seemed the most common and which I faced every time I would go to start an Expedition or go to Free Roam.

The other bugs included the sound cutting off, rubber band lag, and not being able to boot up the game at all. Now I will be honest and say the only bug that I personally faced back in the V.I.P demo was the infinite loading screen. I did not face any other problems other than that, guess I was just lucky.

Now just a week later it was time for the open demo. Reading about all the problems online did not give me hope that the bugs were fixed but to my surprise I was wrong.

I have played both the V.I.P demo and open demo on PC.

I booted up the open demo, got in my Javelin that was saved from the V.I.P demo and selected Free Roam and just waited to see if that infinite loading screen was still there or not. To my surprise it wasn’t. I entered the game ‘smooth as butter’, the slight lag was gone. And I was just taking the time to soak it in, that a week ago I just stopped playing for that loading screen.

Now I should mention that I still faced the missing sounds of animations when firing my gun or flying sometimes but that should be fixed come launch. Overall this demo gave me hope for Anthem and made that old hype rise again. If BioWare gives this much care and attention to this game it will be amazing given that Anthem is already an amazing game just from the demo.

I remembered how Bioware were open, and reached out to fans explaining the problems of the V.I.P demo and admitting that it did not go well. This all gives me hope because the bottom line is that the open demo is a huge improvement from the V.I.P demo and it’s only been a week.

Anthem as a game and a new IP is very, very promising and if cared for in the right way, could be the next big game we talk about for years to come. Get ready to suit up on February 22^nd.