Giant Bombcast 571: It's Like a Big Slider

My time with anthem over the past 5 days has been super disappointing. Not only the bugs but other things like poor UI, tedious mission design and just a lot of mediocre guns has already made me want to be done with the game just after finishing it. I hope they keep working on making it better but at this point I don't have a whole lot of hope left.

My time with anthem over the past 5 days have been super satisfying. The voice acting and character animations are top shelf. I cant not wait to play more!

I have spent no time with Anthem.

Anthem

Tiny sandwiches are deceiving. You think you're going to come out ahead because they're small, so you have one... and then you think "well, what's one more?" One thing leads to another, and suddenly you've cleaned half the tray!

iiiiiiiiiiiidle thumbssssssssssssssssssssss

games. videogames. video games. videogames

Why no video stream? :(

@inemzis: There is an option to switch to video in the upper right corner. :)

@knockingnick: Haha, thanks! Can you tell I'm a new premium noob from YT? :P

@inemzis: No problem. :)

@knockingnick When I try to switch to the video option it does nothing... The Premium video doesn't seem to be live yet. The free version is up on youtube but the audio quality is fucked.

There doesn't seem to be a video up yet. With the site redesign, it is extremely difficult to tell if the video Bombcast is up or not, and it really bums me out.

It even gets posted to the latest video section before there is a video to watch. It's fucking madness.

@kerned: Oh, you're right, it's not letting me click over to it either, even though it's shown as an option. Very weird.

Yikes, the audio is kinda rough.

Brad: 'What do we gain by this studio making a different thing than the thing they did so well?'

A service game like Anthem offers more opportunities to make money compared to a singleplayer RPG. By letting it all play out on EA servers, they have full control over who plays the game. Whether or not piracy is a problem, it will not be a thing this way. By making the missions available to play out in parties, they can go beyond targeting individuals, and go for friendgroups (with all it's interpersonal forces acting on the members) as well.

Aaah my ears

yea, the video is up now, but like Willy above said the audio is.... harsh. turn down your volume if you're using a headset, trust me haha.

sounds bad?

Dogshit audio this episode

Ooof, okay it was not just in my head that the sound was off.

Me and my seven children nearly starved for lack of Bombcast video content. Close call!

Hmmm, Jeff & Jason are really making me wanna get Anthem... the audio cleared up for me after a while.

Hot mics

Those mics are HOT!!!

" I want it like Skyrim: I wanna turn into a wolf and fuck." ~ Jeff Gerstmann, 2019

The mics are HOT for the first 15 mins or so, holy crap, but it does ease up later on.

This podcast is actually called "I WANT TO TURN INTO A WOLF AND FUCK!" It is known.

Jeff saying that Crackdown 3 is basically Crackdown 2 again could be the most I ever disagreed with him

you saved me from bailing, thanks

Is the audio just permanently boned on this one, or should I just wait till they can do something about it?

what's the deal with jason interrupting jeff over and over to voice what feel like excuses for anthem? i get that a podcast is a podcast and interruptions happen but it seemed particularly noticeable today

So... what's up with the audio

Not exactly a banner month for big releases. At least next month we got DMC5 and Sekiro, so I'm fine with saving some money this month and just working through the old backlog.

i've sat here for maybe 15 minutes trying to collect my thoughts on the reaction to anthem...and all i've got is

"oof."

or maybe a slow, descending whistle.

it is sincerely rough to hear bioware isn't going to land that confident launch they likely very much need.

You cannot open any single menu or do anything when you are knocked in Anthem. It's not a bug. Or, well, maybe it is I don't know, but that's how it works right now. It's so fucked.

After thinking a bit about it, i agree with Jeff that it's pretty obnoxious how the messaging acts like Day 1 hasn't happened yet.

We've seen people ask for the wait & see approach during the beta. Now the people that paid for it are getting told that the experience they had was not seen as the important day 1. Now there's a third moment in time that is deemed important enough to bring out a bevy of fixes. But hey, thanks for testing the game for us chumps!

Naturally these games are going to have fixes throughout. But at least try to give your diehard fans, the people that are playing your game at the moment it's playable, the idea that the roll-out is timed to make them have a good time. If i went through this anthem release, i would hold off on playing these games until they hashed out most of the glaring kinks. Especially when the dev seems to downplay your experience and focuses on getting the game 'ready for launch'

@entireties

I think it's mostly him wanting to offer a counterweight to jeff's problems with the game ( bad weapons, bad iron man simulator) given that he disagrees on those accounts, but not being interested in going head to head in a firey debate with jeff or having to start his own monologue on why these aspects did work for him.

Do I feel about Anthem the same way the naysayers felt about Destiny when it first came out? Because I liked Destiny when it came out.

Or is Anthem worse, naysayers?

Jan needs Wile E. Coyote signs when he cuts to himself. That would be magic.

Not sure why mics are so hot? The recording was totally fine.

@willyod: I agree the audio is blown out on this one. And I'm not the person to complain when levels are a little off and can be remedied by adjusting your volume.

Hearing that Chyna is finally getting into the Hall of Fame got to me a bit.

Time for that talk on this year's hottest release Far Cry New Dawn!

It is very weird hearing people talk about Crackdown 1 as this well-regarded game when that was never the impression I got from the games media, ever, until now with Giant Bomb acting like that. It is remembered fondly by some people, but that seems to be about it.

Ok, I haven’t really gotten into the real discussion about Anthem yet, but I don’t think their complaints are entirely fair about the early access.

You got early access to the full game on PC if you were an Origin Premium subscriber (which I think costs $15 per month) - afaik, thou didn’t have to buy the game as well. You could also play the full game for 10 hours on Xbox if you were an EA Access subscriber (which is $5 per month, I think?), again with no need to buy the game.

Buying the full game didn’t get you early access at all, so saying they were punishing the people paying the most is just wrong. You can criticise EA for giving early access to people who haven’t invested in buying the full game, and I’m sure there are loads of reasons to criticise the game itself, but quibbling over what counts as ‘day 1’ just seems dumb. Especially as the guys often play games before the ‘day 1 patch’.

Anthem is not as bad as Jeff makes it out to be.

I'm really confused why the crew keeps referring to games on Game Pass as "free". That's.. not how it works? You pay for a subscription to get games.

Maybe the "free" thing works in the context of Games with Gold, but Game Pass is literally a service you pay for in order to get access to games.

Hey, check out the audio podcast if the rough audio bothers you, it seemed fine there.

I haven't been on this site for a while and I've just been listening to the podcasts so I thought they had messed with the compressor settings or something but I guess not since the audio podcast sounds okay.

I mean, I always took it like if you pay for Game Pass for even 6 months, you're paying $60 and probably getting access to at least 2 MS exclusive $60 games, not to mention countless others. While I understand that you're paying for a service, at some point based on what you get for what you pay, you can say a game is "free" to some extent. Just my perspective and I suspect what they mean. I don't think that they mean you "own" it.

@joemotycki: I was thinking of getting it. Now you make me hesitate. :(