Tag: Anthem

Anthem is getting good. New stuff

Posted on by X35 Earthwalker

Anthem is the online multiplayer action role-playing game that had a good start but things started to go down hill due to a number of problems and expectations. Many voiced their opinions on the game and most gave negative feedback which is fair as some things needed to change. Now we at X35 Earthwalker do not listen to people like Angry Joe who at times don’t know what they are talking about and give bad reviews. No. We check things out and see for ourselves instead of jumping on the hate and hype train for views. Some new stuff has been added to Anthem and we are going to talk about them for a bit. Let’s take a look. 

The reason X35 Earthwalker stopped playing Anthem much was because there was nothing else really left to do and it became not fun anymore. This changed for us. There are new story based missions now. If you look up at the sky you will notice a large cataclysm. The big boss behind this one is Vara. She’s the sister of the Monitor and she’s also dangerous (the monitor is way better though). You will need the right gear and help to get into the cataclysm and therefore require help from allies and maybe even foes to get it done. You’ll encounter characters who you knew of but couldn’t interact with like Grandmaster Adam (he doesn’t deserve to be called a grandmaster) and even Dr Harken. It’s not clear what we will find in the cataclysm but we know Vara will be there. She won’t go down easy. 

Now there is a whole new game mode. Cataclysm: Echoes of Reality. In this mode players must zoom to the different cataclysm locations and destroy the crystals set up there to end the dangerous activities. The ways to open up the crystal for a clear shot is different for each one. For example one of them is just straight up co bat as in you must defeat the numerous enemies coming out of gates and then face a Fury guardian to get a key. In another you must interact and shut down 7 parts of a large mechanism to take down the field protecting the crystal. While the others are more puzzle based we will discuss this a bit later. When you want, you can go face Vara herself. So far this mode is fun.

Every enemy you kill gets you points. Every crystal you destroy gets you points. Concerning the stability let us explain. The moment you leave the starting area, you’ll notice the storm and your javelin will lose Stability. Staying in this storm will cause you to lose all Stability and you’ll die. There are safe bubbly areas throughout the map, as well as little blue orbs or items to pick up that increase Stability, but during an event the safe area will suddenly vanish. When that happens look for the yellow sphere normally in the air above the area, and shoot it. Once it explodes the safe zone comes back. Fighting in the unstable fields increase your score multiplier but being in the unstable fields for too long will cause great damage to your javelin. You have fixed inversions that change pretty much every week (more like 5 days). They are basically bonuses that work to your advantage like marksman rifles do more damage or when you have low health you do more damage and killing an enemy gives you shields etc. If you beat Vara your final score is doubled.

There is also new weapons and stuff for your javelin. Are you tired of receiving the same weapons as loot? Well we certainly are. There all new weapons now for players to get. They are literally all new as they don’t fire like any other weapon before it. The shard storm as shown above is a big blade slinger. It fires one big shot that travels through all enemies and hits enemies multiple times for big damage which is great against the scar enemies with big shields. The Bad Omen is a pulse accelerator that charges to fire a burst of energy projectiles. The Flashfire is a volt caster that fires a lightning attack that jumps from enemy to enemy. Jarra’s wrath is also a vol caster but fires a short range lighting arc. Razorwing is a blade slinger that launches a big blade that bounces between targets. Riza’a ripper is also a blade slinger that fires a barbed blade that once a target is it inflicts ongoing shrapnel damage. Also new are melee weapons. The javelins can now equip different melee weapons which have different effects. For example the colossus javelin can equip the Earthshaker which isoseismic glove that smashes into the ground to cause damage in a large area around you and releases a shockwave to hit enemies in front. The other weapon is the Meteor smash which is a flaming love that burns enemies around you in a large area that does very big burn damage.

Lastly that’s new is that you can now earn new in game currency called major and minor crystals which you can spend at the seasonal store to get cool new items, weapons, materials, animations, decal, wraps and stuff. You can also convert your minor crystals into major crystals and vice versa so this is useful depending on what you want to buy. The store changes pretty much every 6 days or something like that. So new stuff is constantly showing up. This does mean weekly updates are happening in Anthem. We’ve gotten awesome new weapons, looks, materials and customisations through this. If you are playing Anthem then you have to use this store. 

That’s pretty much all the new things that Anthem has. One big criticism we do have is that during the Echoes of Reality new players will have no idea where to go and what to do unless they are with some players who already know what to do. This happened to us at first. Unlike in the main story missions there isn’t an indicator that directs and shows players where to go until they are already near it. This means players could wander about or sit around waiting for a direction or confused. We figured out later that we can just use the map but that means your flying blind for a moment and certainly can’t use the map during combat. Even the areas that you are in doesn’t tell much at all on how to get to the crystal. You have to figure out the puzzles yourself. We didn’t know you needed the nodes to grant access to the node underwater and then two nodes outside to disable a field and then carry out all the nodes to then get to the stations outside while being attacked by enemies. More information and guidance is needed. Once you know though, it’s all easy.

Overall we are enjoying the new stuff that Anthem has going on and we are glad to see that the developers are getting a move on to make this game the big awesome game it has the potential to be. Fighting Vara is a fair and enjoyable battle. Her health isn’t too ridiculous and the battle is easy to understand. If you wanted to try Anthem then this is a much better time to actually do that. We hope the developers keep this up. We need more stuff like this. We are seeing a lot more players in the game and the community is as friendly as ever. Now Anthem might be doing better but it’s never going to be as good as… the ‘Earth Walk!’

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Challenge of Valor and others. Worth it?

Posted on by X35 Earthwalker
Anthem Challenge of Valor

Anthem is an action RPG developed by ‘BioWare‘ and published by ‘Electronic Arts‘. Now there is a number of things for endgame players to do like grinding for masterwork and legendary gear and weapons, complete missions to get coins in order to get new emotes and more customisation. You can even aim to beat strong holds on grandmaster 3 difficulty. Anthem also has some challenges for players to complete while they wait for the next big update to the game. Now these challenges take up time and something you can’t really complete quickly at all. You do get something for doing them though. Let’s take a look.

Lancers must prove themselves to be worthy to be called a legionnaire by completing the ‘challenge of Valor’. This challenge requires that players: complete 100 world events in free play mode, Colette 25 contracts, 25 strong hold missions and 25 quickplay missions. This doesn’t sound like much as first but it’s actually quite long when you dive in. Firstly contract, quicklplay and especially strong holds can take very long depending on the difficulty you are playing on. So missions last Lon on Grandmaster 2 and 3. So off course play in an easier level… you could but then you will get gear and rewards that you literally don’t need or want making the mission pointless. You still want a chance to get the stuff you need like legendary gear. Completing world events in freeplay is annoying as you can fly around for quite a while and not see any events take place. Anthem needs to make events spawn more frequently. So completing 100 of those, especially if you never did any before starting the challenge of Valor will take a very long time.

Anthem Challenge of Valor

So if you grind and managed to complete all that then off course you get a reward. We are hearing different things from different players. Some say they got a vinyl for their javelins, others say they got 10 masterwork embers (not gear but embers) and 4000 coins. X35 Earthwalker on the other hand got more stories from the story teller (bard) who loves to talk about the legionnaires like general Tarsis, Midderon, Magna, Ardan Vassa. Which in case you can’t tell SUCKS! Don’t get us wrong, we like the lore in the game and always like to know more but this shouldn’t be a reward for all that hard work and time spent. Now maybe X35 got some embers and a vinyl but we honestly don’t know as we got no notifications, pop ups or anything. In fact we checked out the challenges before and after completion and it displayed no rewards. We are kept in the dark and we are speaking for ourselves here. This disappointed us greatly and think that Bioware needs to do much better concerning this.

In Anthem’s defence you could say that honestly Anthem players who enjoy the game would be doing contracts, strong holds and freeplay anyway even without the challenge so we should just see this as extra bonuses, which is true to some extent. We are playing even without knowing about the challenge but a number of players do not play freeplay mode as it’s so far the worst mode for getting legendary gear from our experience. Like we mentioned, events pop up infrequently and when they do and you complete it, you might just get epic gear as a reward even when playing on grandmaster 2. Not good and not worth it. So everyone does strongholds for the good stuff and it’s where we got the most legendary gear drop from too. Also we haven’t come across a player who did quickplay. All that we know off who do quickplay only does because of the challenge. So no, not all players will be doing this stuff anywhere.

Anthem Challenge of Might

Also 10 masterwork embers is a poor reward too. Not making this up but X35 Earthwalker once harvested a plant or something (don’t exactly remember) and 25 master work embers came out which has never happened to us before. One random harvesting gave us more than the grand prize for completing a challenge which takes many hours to complete. That’s lame! Oh yeah, we didn’t mention that you get one more reward… you unlock the next challenge. The challenge of might… which is another big challenge, that will take many hours to complete as, that requires you to: defeat 2500 Dominion enemies, 2500 Scars, 25000 Outlaws, 1000 elites and 200 legendary units. That’s all. Now this is something you can complete naturally while playing but its still long but we can only wonder what the prize for completing all that is… probably a top hat.

Now this isn’t the first Anthem has done something like this. As we have mentioned in previous blog posts that you had to complete challenges to advance the story. Many players didn’t like that as the challenges also did take up some time. These challenges need to be done correctly. The rewards aren’t encouraging at all. We literally lost all steam for completing these challenges. We checked online and many there players feel the same way. The Anthem developers needs to improve this by adding in rewards that are actually are good and worth it. So overall what we say to the players who haven’t completed the challenge of valor yet is, take your time. Now the rewards for completing the challenge of valor isn’t worth it but there are some god rewards in… the ‘Earth Walk!’

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Anthem. Once again, Ignore the critics

Posted on by X35 Earthwalker
Ranger Javelin in Anthem

Anthem was released and many gamers had their eyes on it. Almost everyone heard about Anthem and there was some hype for it. Some were already salty because of what they think about Electronic Arts. We at X35 Earthwalker aren’t childish about these things. We look at the game that that’s it. We have checked out what some of these reviewers have to say about Anthem and so far a good number of them didn’t give a good review at all. Some like Angry Joe and others aren’t even that good at it and it shows. Check out what we think of it so far. We say “so far” as we haven’t completed the game yet or anything like that. Also this isn’t a full review as there is literally so much to say.

Anthem can be played both single player and multiplayer. How we see to do it is that when it’s a story based mission, as in it forwards the story, we tend to play it solo but when it’s agent missions and others we then decide if we want others there or not. Now we do prefer single player overall because we get to do things at our own pace, explore around that corner if we want to and even get stylish when facing enemies. You can’t really do that in multiplayer. In multiplayer you have players who just want to complete the mission as fast as possible and so they zoom from objective to objective flying everywhere. If they reach the next area you have around 24 seconds to get there also or you’ll be teleported there. So it’s a rush. This doesn’t mean multiplayer isn’t fun. In multiplayer we have come across some playful and friendly gamers. If we throw a flare, they all do. In fact we once had a flare party where everyone was emoting and tossing flares everywhere. In multiplayer, there enemies don’t stand a chance. You feel powerful. Plus we have to admit that some levels, especially bosses are very difficult to beat alone and off course a team makes a difference.

Now when do you get to play with others? The answer is whenever you want. Every time you go on an expedition you have the option as to whether to play with other or private. What they shouldn’t have done is keep presenting a warning or reminder that Anthem is better experienced with others and if you are sure you want to play private. Yes we are sure, that’s why we selected private and not public. It’s annoying that every time they have to ask you. It’s like they want us to doubt our choices. Just stop please. Other from that, the system works fine. You choose public and they find a team. The levels of your team mates are questionable but not a big deal at all. It’s minor.

We tried three of the four Javelins: Ranger, Storm, Colossus (haven’t tried yet) and Interceptor. These four play very different from each other. Rangers are fighting like actual soldiers using mainly their guns and equipment as backup. Storm normally stay at long range and use elemental based attacks like lightning, ice, fire and even wind. The Interceptor is all about getting fast, do quick damage and then get back out just as fast. The colossus wants to get up in the enemies face and use some melee action while tanking some damage. When you play each one, it does feel different but the principle is still the same as in, don’t die, take cover to recover shields etc. Your strategy and style of play changes with each Javelin type and that’s a good thing.

The enemies are quite similar to each other in some areas. The main enemies are: Scars, Dominion and Outlaws. They have foot soldiers, elite versions of those soldiers, unique units and even a shielded unit. The three main enemy groups are different when it comes to their unique units. The Scars have a big flame throwing unit that uses a big physical shield to completely negate all frontal damage. It’s weakness is it’s fuel tanks. The Dominion have a large animal like thing that has a cannon on his back which is really fast. There are even more enemies too including the wildlife. An Ursix is a giant beast that throws rocks, charges and smashes you with brute force. There are more enemies to but some are passive and will not bother you at all, only until you scare or disturb them.

We haven’t completed the main story yet but so far we do understand what’s happening. The shapers, shaper relics, anthem of creation, what the dominion wants, cataclysms etc. You can learn a whole lot more through the items that have information and lore like scrolls and books found in fort tarsus or certain identified areas in the main world that give the the background story and more. There is a lot of information to find and they do explain quite a lot. Some not good critics like PC Gamer complained that the story was complicated and confusing. We didn’t find it confusing, they were obviously rushing through the game to complete it to give their review. Take your time and you will see that it’s not that confusing at all. It’s a fictional game with fictional rules. So see it from Anthem’s universe perspective.

The characters are interesting. Haluk is straight forward to us and he needs to stay cool at all times and not just on the battlefield. Owen is quite easily understood and his actions can make sense but not justified. Faye its quite realistic, she’s one of those people who’s so into their field of study or interest that people forget she has hobbies like radio series. Matthias is the brilliant but reckless type and the whole manifold incident made him even better. The other characters just add to the social flavour. You can speak to them from time to time and they clearly have their own views, focuses in life and stories. There are other characters that you can speak to and you get to decide how you respond to questions and situations. In one of them we convinced Amal, the bartender, to always do the right thing and be honest. We also couldn’t deceive the old woman (Marelda we think) by letting her think we are her dead son. What she needs is the truth, gentle but straight up truth. We truly helped her in the end. Yes, it has been said that no matter what you choose, the outcome isn’t effected by much but these conversations do test the player themselves, their morality and what they think. Nice touch.

Chests and challenges Anthem

Now let’s talk a bit about what we don’t like. We don’t like that you can’t really decide what you can craft. From the earlier parts of Anthem we happened to find a harvestable source during a mission (we played in private) and it released a crazy amount of masterwork ember. We had a lot of crafting material but couldn’t craft anything great. We later learned that you need to collect and then upgrade blue prints by completing certain weapon challenges. That wasn’t made clear to us. It should have been spelt out to players.

Another issue is that moment in the story where you needed to enter four special tombs and those tombs can only be accessed by those who are worthy. You are worthy by completing specific challenges. Now what’s the problem? The challenges can take quite a while especially if you haven’t started anyone of them while you are playing missions. This whole section feels like a wall. Until you complete the challenges you cannot progress. We were fortunate to have only three more challenges remaining: melee kill a certain amount of enemies, complete world quests and find 15 chests (15 we think). It took quite a bit but not that long but we know other players had to spend a long time on it which isn’t fun. If they made it so that getting into the temples unlocks you weapons, upgrades, blue prints, techniques or whatever then it would be better and feel like rewards, instead of making that the actual main mission. We weren’t happy about this part at all.

A small sized complaint is that we can’t feel that much of a difference when we equip gear that increases our armour and shields. We even crafted a couple of stuff and really increased both armour and shields but enemies seem to kill us at pretty much the same speed (we always play on hard difficulty). Maybe when we get much better gear we can feel the difference.

Socialising and a bar Anthem

Another issue is that the story could have included more encounters with the different groups like the regulators and how messing with them could have consequences. The outlaws could have their own branch of missions along with the scars; giving players the opportunity to know more about them and their whole system. There’s opportunities in there and we want to see Anthem take advantage more of what they have in their universe.

One more issue is the items drops you get for beating certain enemies. X35 Earthwalker, the legendary soldier himself, literally earlier today in free play mode defeated an Ursix and got two epic items from it but later X35 fought a War Titan and beat it solo and the reward was a rare and uncommon. The war titan was stronger, had way more health, can do way more damage and took five times longer to beat but the drops were inferior. That needs to be fixed as that’s clearly not right. By the way we will show that fight against the war titan in a video in good time.  

Now some critics were complaining about the characters and the conversations you have with them. Let’s be real, the characters do what they need to do. They said the characters just stand around. Well what do you want? You want the characters running around in a route in fort tarsus so players have to chase them down just to get a mission or talk. Some really slammed Anthem for not having big story effected consequences based on your responses to some characters. This isn’t that kind of game (what’s wrong with these reviewers). Anthem isn’t about meeting clans, persuading them to join your cause and them lead an army and if you anger clans then they become enemies. It’s just conversations to keep things fresh, different and these conversations are interesting. People go through different things and it’s good to talk to others. Others slammed Anthem for having repetitive missions. We don’t find them repetitive. The developers can’t keep adding in completely different gaming mechanics all the time, there needs to be some sort of formula. Rescue and protect missions are not fun at all. There are limits on games especially those that are open world, RPG with world events and stuff to come. It can’t go on forever that’s why DLC have to come in bringing new stories and adventures. It’s sad that reviewers and critics don’t understand this. Like we said, ignore the critics and reviewers and certainly you tubers like angry Joe who just hop on the hate train to get views. Do your own research check out some gameplay and if you like what you see, try it for yourself.

Javelin customisation Anthem

Now another thing that’s good is the Javelin customisation at least in terms of the colours. You can change the colour of each limb separately. It gets better. You can decide what shade of the colour, the fabric, patterns and even the texture. Players who have some level of creativity will go to work with these options and we still haven’t seen a javelin that’s just like ours. Even better we haven’t see one that looks like ours. What we don’t like is how long it takes to get different helmets and javelin body parts. Keep doing missions to get coins and then rely on those. Or you could buy shards but we aren’t doing that. 

Overall we are really enjoying Anthem. The option to play with others is easy and just as easy to play alone. The Anthem world looks very nice and it does make you want to explore. Little things like how flying in rain helps your thrusters and reduce overheating while going in water or waterfalls completely cools you off, extending the amount of time you fly for. The weapon types definitely feel different. The pistols don’t feel like the scout rifles. The LMGs don’t feel like the assault rifles either. We like how much of a battle it is to take down a titan and when you finally do, it feels like an achievement because of how strong they are as enemies. The rabbits and other wild life creatures are cool. You can walk up to them, chill with them and even follow them around. The world definitely feels alive. Anthem has way more positives than negatives. Don’t forget that we haven’t gotten to the end of the story yet and we still have more to see.

Now what’s our current verdict? Anthem is currently 8/10. We recommend it to other players. It’s negatives especially the challenges to enter tombs does hold the game back as it makes certain things annoying. There is so much more we can say about the game but we want to leave it here for now. Now many have a lot to say about Anthem but there’s way more to say about… the ‘Earth Walk!’ 

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Epic Anthem gameplay

Anthem. You don’t sing this one

Posted on by X35 Earthwalker
Anthem

 

Anthem is a new action RPG developed by ‘BioWare‘ but published by ‘Electronic Arts‘. Anthem is coming out the 22nd of February on the Xbox One, PS4 and PC. From what we know, this ain’t an anthem you want to sing. Let’s take a look.

In Anthem, players take control of a freelancer. Freelancers are people (pilots) that use javelins for traversing the world and combat off course. A javelin isn’t something that you throw here but instead a powerful exosuit. So players must pick their exosuit from their wardrobe – we mean collection and get right into the action. Anthem is a large world and these javelins are essential so take care of them.

Anthem

With these javelin exosuits players can soar through the air at great speeds, dodge, slide, dash around faster than enemies can keep up (hopefully) and even explore submerged areas. That’s right, underwater areas are here too. Javelins can have equipment, gear and weapons which the players can customise and decide. Anthem seems to have good emphasis on the customising of the javelins. Since it’s an RPG we all know things can be unlocked as progression is made.

So ranking up is crucial. There are also dangerous and powerful enemies that once defeated you will pass milestones and even get loot which off course can get you even more gear and personalisation options for your javelin. Eventually like Halo 5 Guardians, it will be incredibly rare to find someone with the exact same looking javelin as you. 

Anthem

Now off course there are different types of javelins. There is the: Storm, Colossus, Interceptor and Ranger. Storm is like a mage, lots of longer range attacks and all electrifying. Storms can even hover and teleport to keep a distance from enemies. The Colossus is all about lots of weapons, heavy damage, explosions, flamethrowers and shields. So it’s basically the big tank that fights hordes by itself. The interceptor is all about getting in the enemies face, landing some blows and then getting out of there just as fast. Even weakening enemies and crippling them with it’s many abilities. The Ranger is basically the strong all rounder. It has different weapon types can get physical with enemies (melee), has grenades to deal with grouped enemies, can buff allies and even grant ability cool down reduction.  

Anthem is an open world game which means expect expansions. That’s a good thing as it also means players will always over time have new things fight, explore and look into like stories and events. This is multiple ways reminds us of Destiny 2. What else can you expect from Anthem? This open world will have different hazards and conditions popping up. So the developers clearly want an alive world with things going on. We like that.

Anthem

Off course Anthem is also very much cooperative. Anthem is focusing quite a bit on the social side. Gamers can play in teams with up to three other players to take on missions. These missions will reward both the teamwork and the individual ability. Players can still go solo and accomplish things by themselves. This is serious and some big games have failed in this area. Making sure that solo players have lots to do is important. Developers shouldn’t create exciting content that only groups and teams can do. Not everyone has or wants to play with strangers or friends. 

Each freelancer has a team. This team provide vital information to freelancers and do everything in the ability to make sure everyone mission is a success. They are the support. Players must also remember that you can progress your javelin and your pilot. Pilot upgrades can include improvements in combat like mobility and even allow you to use javelin functions for longer before overheating like flying. Pilot skills and aspects are carried over to each javelin and not restricted so keep that in mind.

We checked out some gameplay and it definitely looks good. The world is very big indeed. The biggest factor that separates Anthem from others is the huge mobility. Players can fly to wherever they want, investigate and leave. Graphics and the environments look very good. It’s generated using the frost bite game engine. Sounds are very good too. The enemies are wildlife, monsters and other humans with guns, all can be dangerous. The multiplayer works very well but we hope the game has high difficulty, especially since you can play with friends. The action seems great so far and it will only get better as it get closer to release date.

Overall Anthem is going to get a lot of activity and excitement from gamers. There’s variety, good visuals, lots of action, mobility, creativity and multiplayer. Off course there is much more we can write about and mention but we will leave it as this. The developers ‘BioWare’ have done a very good job with this game. We at X35 Earthwalker look forward to seeing everything Anthem has to offer as it’s potential is very high. Now Anthem may have a massive world but it’s so tiny when compared to the size of… the ‘Earth Walk!’

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