It could also be that the games getting pilloried just are that bad. It’s not like there aren’t other games getting great reviews at the same time. Right now, there’s another EA game averaging in the high 80’s even though it has all the ingredients for the influencer crowd to tear into it. EA, GaaS, battle royale, F2P, takes the place of a full sequel to a well-liked franchise. Somehow, Apex has run the gauntlet of negativity and come out strong. Weird.
Angry Joe, despite his moniker and histrionics, gives high scores out all the time. He very much likes Apex, for example, even while he made fun of the cosmetics costs.
Anthem is a victim of its own pre-release hype. They created expectations they didn’t live up to. It makes a lot more sense to keep your cards closer to the vest these days because people expect you to deliver on what you promise. In this case, it seems like there are a lot of things they didn’t deliver on.
That no one knew what an Apex Legend was before two Mondays ago really helped that game become a phenomenon. They delivered something no one knew they wanted, for free, and it’s really good.
It doesn’t pay to assign too much meaning to reviews anyway. They’ve never really been indicators of how much I’m going to like a game, but that may be due to idiosyncratic tastes in my part.
Which is not to say I don’t like or don’t read reviews. I love a well-written review that gives me insight into what parts work or don’t work for the reviewer, what they like or don’t like and why. But that’s as much for appreciation of good writing as anything else.
Honestly, I welcome the shift in review scores. Getting a 7 just for showing up then only going up from there (for most big AAA games with massive marketing budgets) was too milquetoast for me.
Games are entering into an extremely crowded space in 2019. Anthem is competing against a whole slew of GaaS titles that are free, have years of refinement/support/, or better execute the core gameplay loop. It is a latecomer to a sub-genre that demands huge amounts of player attention and engagement.
There also may be a sea change in the hobby where the audience is becoming fatigued with the GaaS model and its dreadful reliance on excessive repetition to create content and solicit engagement.
You have a fair point, though the other key with Apex is that it is free.
I don’t agree that Anthem hasn’t lived up to the hype. I think they delivered exactly what they have been showing. They couldn’t possibly have been more transparent overall (a couple of exceptions, like microtransactions). This is not No Man’s Sky. They told exactly what the game was going to be and they delivered it. You don’t have to like it, let alone love it like I do, but they most certainly did deliver what they promised. And I expect it to get better and better with time.
Supposed to get better on Friday crosses fingers. My system is hybrid (hdd with a large ssd cache) and Oscuros is on an hdd. It regularly takes him a good two minutes more than me to load in.
Generally, if you use a weapon enough, you unlock blueprints for the weapon that let you craft a new one with embers. This is effectively “rerolling” it, except that it doesn’t destroy an existing one.
It definitely looks really good. As primarily a PC gamer I do wish I had more controls over graphics settings. As good as it looks, I’d trade it for another 10-20 FPS in a game like this. I’m still torn on whether to purchase it on the Xbox (I want to play this from the couch) or PC (performance and friends) for that reason.