ANTHEM Down to £35 in the UK Just Days After Launch

With the amount of micro transactions supposedly in it, should be £0.

Bioware said "we can drop our Price faster than Dice". Ziiiing

@ThroughTheIris56 the micro transactions are purely cosmetic and have no effect on gameplay at all. I've played a couple dozen hours and haven't even seen them at all in the game, so it's not as bad as you make it seem.

I hope they stop making $60 GaaS games.

Ouch! I would be lying if I said I was sorry to see EAWare crash and burn so hard.

Wow, this is even worst than Fallout 76's dropping to $40 a week after launch.

EA basically wants to take their cake and eat it. They want to sell bucket loads at £45/$60 within the first few days then hook enough players into buying microtransactions to set up a tidy revenue stream. Basically a free to play game without the very first word of the monetary game model. The entire game is built around this style and whilst it’s “just cosmetic” now (not that it was ever a good argument for a full priced game) you can bet EA will be microtransactioning this game up the wazoo in the near future. I wonder when DLC Javelins will appear and how much they will charge for each.

@redd214 I'd be careful as these publishers are holding back on them at the point of review only to introduce them later. Having seen the end game there is a lot of potential for them, as the in game currency and materials simply aren't anywhere near abundant enough, with 60 hours worth of grinding not even close to buying one master weapon.

That being said at the moment that is the least of its problems. The fundamentals are there and the basics for a great game do exist but for me they have been placed in a game which is ok at best with some parts just downright poor

I wouldn't buy it even if it was just £5. That's not hyperbole either; time is a precious commodity so why bother wasting it on something that's mediocre?

That must be a new price drop record. Could this be EA trying very hard to beat Bethesda's mediocrity with Fallout 76?

I get when it is on PS+.... oh wait its an EA game so it won't.

I don't know what the full price was but I was seeing it for £39 before it released - maybe because pre-orders seemed to be indicating it will sell 'poorly'. I got the Legion of Dawn Edition for £60 and often see 'standard' editions for £55 if you want to buy digital. As far as I can see, the Legion of Dawn edition is £70 at Amazon so prices may not have 'crashed' that much...

Good I love seeing EA fail

@Acquiescence
That's how I roll

Reading the large amount of inordinately negative reviews for this game has become something of a minor hobby of mine these last few days.

Bioware used to be amazing. EA ruins everything it touches.

Is an aggregate metacritic score of 60 a 'terrible' game that is absolutely not worth your time, completely 'trash' and not have any reason to bother playing at all?

To me, it means an 'average' game that some will enjoy, maybe worth checking out if the price drops but not a game that is complete 'trash'.

Maybe I am applying my own guidelines of what a score of 60, 6/10 would be indicative of. I can also see it being 'difficult' to review a game like Anthem as these games tend to evolve over time and its not until you reach the 'end' of a 'season', you can actually review the game in its entirety. Its like reviewing a book after just reading the first chapter or a TV series after the first episode.

I can totally understand why some may want to wait and see what happens, like waiting for a few TV shoes to come out and see how people are feeling before jumping in, others may wait until the 'end' and decide whether its worth binge watching or ignoring - I am sure some did with games like Hitman or Telltale's episodic games too.

I can fully understand why some are exceptionally wary - after all its EA and BioWare messed up Mass Effect. In some ways, Mass Effect and Anthem have more in common than just the developer - both HAD to release before the 'end' of the financial year regardless of whether they were 'ready' or not - both could have done with more time to finish the game and make sure its 'polished' ready for release - something Sony certainly do with their developers. Its why Sony games are as polished as they can be before those not too close to the game get their hands on it.

Regardless of what state an EA game is in, its exceptionally rare for them to delay it into the next 'financial' year. Its why games like Anthem, Mass Effect, even Battlefield: Hardline were all delayed into Q1 which is the 'last' delay any game can get. To me, it makes no sense to release a game that's not 'ready', that reviews relatively poorly - even if the Devs patch it multiple times over the next few weeks/months to get it up to a higher standard. It will suffer in sales, it will have a bad reputation - not just for the Devs but also EA and upset the shareholders who they were trying to appease.

Its why Sony as a publisher is having success - GoW and Spider-Man had a LOT of nominations for awards - as well as several VR titles. The lack of polish in an 'unfinished' game that hurts sales also puts more pressure on EA to make anti-consumer decisions to recoup their over ambitious promises to their shareholders. Anthem could of sold 6m in 6wks if it was a finished and polished game that scores 8.5+ in reviews...

60 to me isn't a terrible, broken game - its a game that's average and maybe worth jumping in when the price drops or the game get's patched and evolved to the full experience in the case of these live service games

It dropped in Germany after just TWO days.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q52lAS0cFU4

Is it worth it to release incomplete games and tanking the ip, rather than wait until it's ready?

I think games like anthem, driveclub, and gt sport will be more successful if the publisher wait until the game is ready.

I don't "hate" EA, but I don't agree with many of their practices or philosophy. I bought FIFA, but I've never touched FUT.

But this seems to be karma. They claimed that single-player was dying, and 'service' games were the future.

And yet just about a week after Sony picks up a stack of awards for single-player games, this happens to their Great White Hope.

@BAMozzy I would agree if reviewers used your scoring criteria but they largely don't. 60 on metacritic is pretty poor. Doesn't mean loads of people won't have fun with the game. I quite enjoyed the fallout 76 beta with some folk from work and look how that scored!!

Funny thing is, you look at success stories lately from EA like Apex Legends then they fail with this. Activision is in a similar boat with sales being down on annual stuff like Call of Duty, but Crash and Spyro knocking it out of the park. Resident Evil 2 being a recent AAA success is also worth looking at.

It feels like most consumers are either waking up to the BS of this stuff, I’d like to hope they are at least, but it feels like the right priced product with the least amount of crap to sift through and most amount of bang for your buck is still succeeding while a lot of the compromised products aren’t.

@BAMozzy you know people now a days, if a game gets anything less than 8 it's considered utter trash

with is total ******** and it doesn't help when you have companies like capcom saying "they would rather have a game sell less and get a high score than a game sell loads and get a average score"

a bloody review score (or meta score) isn't the be all and end all and i wish people and companies would realise this

@kyleforrester87 Well, perhaps. Player numbers are high, but how many are coughing up for MTX, and to what extent? Is it making money or costing them? The game may be free, but the MTX in Apex are still on the extortionate side, cosmetic or not.

There's a place for games like these, certainly. But they're not going to replace single-player. At least not in the foreseeable future, anyway. There's still a whole lot of people who aren't buying into them. It would be foolish for any dev/pub to put all their eggs in that basket at this stage, or to try to force the issue.

It's great that at least some are getting some fun out of Anthem, but it clearly wasn't ready for release, even after 5 years.

As @Sakisa says above, with expected sales of 'big' titles being down for the 'big two' publishers and their supposedly smaller titles doing better than expected, it would seem that a reasonable number of gamers are trying to send them a message in the only way they are likely to understand. People have been saying it for a while now, but they've been deaf. Now sales are being impacted, perhaps they'll pay more attention.

it was discounted heavily before launch.

regarding the average score.. i agree 6 isn't terrible, but largely i think this has come from metacritic who rate anything under 7.5 as 'mixed'. but also there are a number of reviews whose scores aren't consistent with the tone of the review. several of anthem's reviews read like a 5 to me, but they were scored 7.

as for the microtransactions.. it's pretty obvious the masterwork tier has been designed to get people to part with real cash for the currency to make this more achievable - and that does effect the gameplay imo. otherwise the grind is going to be excruciatingly tedious.

still, just read that EA's CEO pockets a measily $35 million per year, despite 97% of the shareholders voting against this remuneration. good to see the little people struggle, eh?

Wow. With this trend of nearly instant discounts (Fallout 76, Battlefield V, Crackdown 3, Anthem), DAY ONE is no longer on the table. Better to wait a few days to see how it fares.

@FullbringIchigo I agree - Its still just an 'averaged' score so some reviews could be better, and some lower too of course. I am sure we have all played games that were given a 'low' score and actually enjoyed it - perhaps because you actually played the game with low expectations where as those high rated games may not live up to their rating. I know quite a few people that enjoyed Crackdown 3 - maybe for a nostalgic and/or dumb fun experience just like the first Crackdown was. That too sits at 60 on metacritic - and the majority of reviews were 'critical' because it hadn't changed or evolved from the original.

Point is, you can still enjoy and have a lot of fun in games that are rated at 60. Whether that's because its a nostalgic trip back, just dumb/mindless fun or doesn't live up to the promise/expectation. From what a lot of reviewers have said, Anthem is in general a great looking game, generally a lot of fun in the mechanics - flying and shooting, story is not great but at least they tried (more than Destiny), missions are a bit repetitive as is the loot - although its quite abundant and the loading times are too much and too frequent but the fundamentals of the game are still decent. It certainly needs a bit more to it to give it longevity and a bit more polish too but its not total 'trash' and completely broken and/or unplayable.

@leucocyte Anything that Metacritic rates as 'mixed' to me would indicate the region of 'average' games - not completely broken or trash as some people would have you believe. A 6 to me is what I would consider an 'average' game - has some 'good' and some not so good elements but still something that if you have in interest in the lore, the type of game-play mechanics, the genre etc, that you can still have 'fun' but maybe should wait a bit for the price to drop before jumping in because its just 'average' rather than a 'must buy'.

If it was more on the Negative side, then its perhaps not worth buying. There are more Positive scores than Negative too - in other words, more people gave anthem a score of 75 or more than below 50. There are games like Darksiders 3, Just Cause 4, Jump Force, Chromagun VR, YIIK: A postmodern RPG, Override:Mech City Brawl etc - all scoring between 55 and 65 on Metacritic yet some people will have fun playing these at the right price - maybe not full price but still fun...

@Acquiescence I don't get much time for gaming these days, so for me this can't be overstated enough.

Another good game from EA. The only game left to get f*** is Dragon Age.

They should've put a soldier named Shepard in it who commands a ship called Normandy SR3 which is piloted by a sarcastic witty bloke called Joker. Probably should have put a kick arse alien in that looks like a bird of prey and totally called him Garrus, too.

@BAMozzy It’s all relative though.

A 60 Metacritic is not really the average when most major AAA releases score higher than that.

Scores would mean more if more outlets used the full scale, but it’s very rare for a AAA game to get anything less than a 6 (60).

I do agree with your point in general though. I loved Darksiders 3 for example.

@Fight_Sora_Fight All scores are 'relative' - One person's 10 may well be another persons 6 for example. There are a lot of 'critically' damned games, movies etc that have been incredibly successful and most importantly 'enjoyable' for a LOT of people.

Another aspect is that my idea of what a '6' actually means to me is likely to be quite different to what someone else thinks a 6 may mean. My idea of what constitutes a 6 for example may well be what someone else thinks should be 7 or even an 8 (in other words - a 7 or 8 is what constitutes an 'average' game should score) whilst another may well believe that an Average game should score 5 (as that is mid-way between 1 and 10) or maybe even lower.

Its all relative.

60 is better than 50 which is 'halfway' between 0 and 100 so its technically better than average as 50 would be the middle of the road, average of the highest and lowest possible score. However, if a game doesn't score more than 85, then its absolutely trash and the devs/publishers should be lined up against a wall and be shot for releasing such a 'mess of a game'. 85 is now the mediocre and 9 is now average and 10 is a must buy, great but still flawed - because no game is 'perfect' so must still be flawed somehow but still gets a 'perfect' score.

I see quite a bit of love for the Order 1886 but that's only on 63 Metacritic, the same as Darksiders 3. Games like DMC HD Collection, RE6, Deadpool, Slender: the Arrival, SNK Heroines, EVE: Gunjack all scored 60 too. The Inpatient scored 59 as did PS VR worlds, N.E.R.O and Micro Machines. Jump Force, a new release, only scored 57 on metacritic, as did Sonic Forces and Knack only got 54 and Fallout 76 is on 53.

According to the reviews, Anthem is better than Knack as it certainly scored higher yet some people quite enjoyed that...

Keep it coming Amazon get it down to £20 and you've got yourself a deal sir

@BAMozzy the problem with all of that is that there are literally thousands of games with a higher score that you could play instead.

Plus, I think most people already decided the game looked bland and boring without seeing the score. The underwhelming critical reception is just the final nail in the coffin. There are loads of games with bad to average scores that people give a chance to anyway, as there's still something that stands out as worthwhile; maybe the setting, the licensing, the plot, the art style, etc. Anthem doesn't even have that for most people.

@redd214 I agree cosmetic micro transactions aren't as bad as items for gameplay, but I still disapprove of locking items that should be included with the game behind a paywall. I wouldn't mind if it's a free to play, but since this is (or was a full price game) it's a different story.

And from what I've heard cosmetic unlocks via loot are lackluster, which is more salt in the wound.

@ThroughTheIris56 ehh, personally just dont care lol. I understand the logic behind that but emotionally it just doesnt bother me at all. All my javelins are all black and silver and doubt i will ever change them so I wont complain about cosmetics.

@redd214 Fair enough. Probably wouldn't bother me too much either, but it's more the principle of it.

Yeah, to be honest I'm not sure if I'd play it even if it was free on ps+ next month, doesn't sound very interesting.

I just need EA to keep the Apex servers running. Other than that, they can eat sh*t and die for all I care.

Should have made it a straight 3rd person action job and skipped the RPG bollocks.

@BAMozzy - i think it's a psychological thing with the scale. to me, if a game scored 72 for example, that would indicate it probably scored mostly 7s with maybe a couple more 8s and above than 6s and below. that's not a 'mixed' reception imo, but it is according to metacritic. if you see a 3/5, it might seem decent enough, if you consider 5 excellent and 4 very good. on that scale, 3/5 psychologically seems to be better than 60/100 - it's like people see "there must be 40% wrong with this game".. personally, i don't think Anthem deserves a 3/5, so would have to score it a 2.. but would i give it 40/100? probably not.

Ouch. I'd be seriously annoyed by that if I'd pre-ordered.

@JoeBlogs If Last of Us 2 gets anything less than a 9.5, the pitchforks will be out for whoever reviewed the game! Look at the reviewers that dared to score Zelda anything less than that.

The difference though is, as I have mentioned earlier, that Sony would not force Naughty Dog to release a game before it was ultimately ready and polished. Its a much more story focussed game too so that will inevitably lead to more 'points' in its favour. Even if it doesn't innovate or 'deviate' from the linearity and 'must kill everything' to miraculously open/unlock a door to progress, hold out horde style moments, don't need to build characters up to much because they will be dead in a chapter or so, predictable ending that the first was, just the polish, the story, the visual quality etc will be enough to score it highly. If the story isn't grabbing you, then you start to notice things more, if the performance isn't quite there, you notice things more, things like that take you out of the 'game' and so you become more aware of its 'faults' but if the story is compelling and the performance is solid, you get lost in the moment and perhaps don't notice the repeated 'missions/moments'. GoW is another good example where you progress so far, meet a blocked path so have to go on a mission to get a tool to progress which then meets another blocked path so have to go on another mission to get another tool etc. You don't notice so much because the story, the characters etc are so engaging that you want to keep following the linear path through to the end.

Anthem doesn't appear to have a deep story, doesn't seem to greatly engage the player in the world with great characters and acting, and doesn't perform flawlessly. It looks good and the mechanics are fun - but because its not as engaging or perform flawlessly, you notice the cracks more, you notice the repetition more. Its similar to Destiny in that respect but Destiny at least performed well and was a 'new' concept but even still, the lack of a decent 'story' to invest you into the world didn't help.

@leucocyte Trouble is, a lot of reviewers do use a 5pt system so a 3/5, which is 'average' is what a game like Anthem would get. Its not as bad as 2.5 or 2 (although I am sure it got a few looking at the critic scores as their are a couple of 40 and 50 with nothing in between). By far the most common seems to be around 60, with IGN on 65 for example who do use a 10pt but also include decimals so gave this a 6.5. Essentially, this game is a 3/5 game as those that score it below are balanced by those that scored it above that. People will focus on '60' but chances are, most of the reviews are likely to be 3/5 with a few 6/10's which doesn't seem as bad as 60/100 but the very nature of Metacritic is to convert scores to a 100pt system and average everything out. A game like Anthem probably doesn't deserve a 4 or a 2 out 5 but a 3 out of 5 - meaning an average game that can be fun for the right person at the right price is pretty much 'fair'.

The point I was making though is that 60, 6/10 or 3/5 is still the same thing and that doesn't mean that you should avoid it entirely. Its an average game, and whether you like 'Anthem' or not isn't the point here. I listed a faire few other games in the same 'ball-park' score wise that are also 'average' games that some people quite enjoyed - Knack, Just Cause 4, Darksiders 3, DMC HD collection, Sonic Forces etc. Maybe not 'everyone' enjoyed but those that had an interest in the concept, interest in the game-play etc, did get dome enjoyment from these, they weren't a mess of a game, completely broken and must never buy titles - you see people asking for Knack in the monthly What games do you want on PS+, and that scored lower - despite the fact that Games have moved on a LOT since release...

@ThroughTheIris56 There are hardly any micro-transations in it. For the one's that are there they are purely cosmetic items.

@ThroughTheIris56 In most cases that would be a valid point. However, the expansions for the game will be free, so the cosmetic items will fund and encourage their development.

@4ngryDw4rf

"However, the expansions for the game will be free, so the cosmetic items will fund and encourage their development"

Funny. I thought that's what paying £60 for a game was meant for...

I have no problems with paid cosmetic DLC and even paid DLC in general if optional but that "fund and encourage their development" bit is just nonsense.

It's a brilliant game. Characters, story, Lore, World, Gameplay.
All the crap about Anthem is on par with Trumps 'National Emergency.
Only problem I have with it is the few crashes. Damn, I can live with that, it'll be fixed. It's a boring grind if that's how people choose to play the game. There's a story in Anthem, several stories all which make the game far more than Destiny ever was or can be.
There, I said it. I prefer Anthem, even with it's dodgy servers, over Destiny. I'm having a blast with the game.

@BAMozzy I disagree about the story. It's rich and complex. The fact that reality can be shaped and rewritten so people forget the reality they originally had, is a strong theme.
Engaging with characters adds depth and dimension to playing the game and adds to the overall package. Sure, it's not like Uncharted or TLOU - there are too many characters for that - but still, there's emotional content and consequences. I'm enjoying all of this.

@nathanSF I was speking in general terms - the story isn't as focussed or as narrative driven as a game like GoW or LoU. The characters are not as well developed. There is 'lore' if you want to invest in it, get passed the reviews and actually spend time finding out more yourself as its not exactly presented to you.

I was predominantly defending the game and its score rather than being 'negative'. The fact that its not a linear story that drives you on through narrative and engaging missions is potentially a reason why its not scoring 8's or more but that doesn't mean that because its a 6, that people cannot enjoy the game, cannot be invested in the world and lore as some people seem to think.

I am sure I said that if you have an interest in the universe that Bioware have created, the type of game-play loop etc, that you can still enjoy the game - that's what a 6 means - not that it is utter trash and must be avoided at all costs!! Maybe you should have read some of the other posts I wrote....

It's back up to £48 now and Amazon Uk are sending out emails with so called selected customers to receive a £5 off code when purchasing this game.

Probably be even cheaper soon 😂 still no sympathy for the mugs who bought it.

@BAMozzy
True. I should spend more time here. It's a good place (and not in the Netflixy style of Good Place)