Anthem Hands-On Beta Review: 5 Ups & 5 Downs

1. It's So Destiny It's Painful

I'm being assumptive about how Anthem came to be, but even if we go with the idea that Bioware just happened to really want to make a game that's heavily inspired by Destiny, minus the flying, the final product is so close it's just a first/third-person perspective apart.

The casual one-liner dialogue, bullet sponge bosses, repetitive combat where the core is sublime but mechanically shallow - even the fact EVERY mission boils down to "walk up to thing, hold button, move on" - it's so on the nose it'll knock you out.

Maybe there's a way for both EA and Activision to dominate the loot-shooter market with two offerings that are practically identical, but it stands as a marked negative that Anthem's biggest talking point is how much it doesn't bring to the table.