10 Major Video Games Coming In 2019 You Need To Play

3. Anthem

Anthem Bioware E3 2018 6
EA

Release date: February 22

BioWare's first foray into the realm of live services has a giant, Destiny-shaped shadow looming over it, one that, no matter how hard it tries to shake, will follow it all the way up to launch.

In a reductive sense, the comparisons are fair - Anthem's always-online, open-world hijinks and loot-driven reward structure parrot those systems that Bungie popularised, but the Mass Effect creator shouldn't be reticent toward showing more of the game its been nurturing for the last five years for that reason - digging just an inch deeper only serves to showcase each game's superficial similarities.

If anything, Anthem borrows most heavily from BioWare's own famed RPG series, its co-op focused skirmishes and ability systems more akin to Mass Effect's oft-overlooked multiplayer component, one that allows pilots of the former's Stark-approved Javelin suits the opportunity to compliment each other's abilities with their own to devastating effect.

Really, the only major worry anyone should have leading up to launch is the seemingly generic nature of Anthem's admittedly gorgeous environments and the potential narrative compromises BioWare may have to make in order to accommodate for a multiplayer-enabled title, but as it stands, Anthem earns its spot through sheer potential and beauty alone.

 
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Contributor

Joe is a freelance games journalist who, while not spending every waking minute selling himself to websites around the world, spends his free time writing. Most of it makes no sense, but when it does, he treats each article as if it were his Magnum Opus - with varying results.