Oh huh, BioWare's exosuit shooter Anthem is still online

Like most people, I had assumed EA shut down Anthem soon after dashing BioWare's hopes to overhaul and revive the sci-fi looter-shooter. I was surprised to see Anthem on Game Pass while poking around checking out space games which are not Starfield. It did shut down, didn't it? Surely it did. So why's it on Game Pass? If an 80GB download is the price I pay for a ha-ha-hilarious joke post where I review a spinning loading ball or server error message, so be it. Let's go. Wait. Hang on. I'm playing this. This is a game. This is still a game!

Anthem first launched in February 2019. It was BioWare's Destiny, in that it was a live service looter-shooter where the plot is about random capitalised Nouns and the game desperately needed big updates (and possibly a sequel with several big updates of its own) to potentially become worth playing. "It needs changes to how it actually works, which is a lot to ask," said Alice Bee in our Anthem review. Unlike Destiny, Anthem did not get that second chance. While BioWare did patch parts and eventually hoped to release a giant overhaul, EA scrapped this 'Anthem Next' in February 2021 so BioWare could focus efforts on Dragon Age 4 and the mysterious new Mass Effect. And, like, surely EA shut it within the year?

I thought maybe a good joke post would be 'speedrunning' Anthem. 13 seconds to see everything it had to offer, reach a "service unavailable" victory messages. Or maybe a review of what I could see, perhaps a few splash screens before hitting a loading stall. Great joke. Very funny. Top work, Alice. Then the intro cinematic started playing but ah sure, that doesn't mean anything. Then the intro missions starts and I'm quite surprised but but maybe that mission was offline. And then it just... kept going.

Everyone I've spoken to about this also assumed Anthem had gone offline years ago. I played a few missions with matchmaking open and did fall in with another player twice, though one sat AFK until leaving three minutes before I finished it solo. Then a handful of robomen are still leaping around the social hub. I do not know how much longer it will last (EA regularly shut down less-played games) but it's here for now.

Is Anthem good? No. It's a looter-shooter with boring loot and perfunctory shoot. But I like parts. Flying my cool-looking exosuit around is pleasant, lazily swooping around the skies of an alien world. It's an involved movement too, because the suit slowly heats up and you need to regularly cool it by diving downwards or flying through waterfalls and such. I'm always happy when simply getting about involves playful little motions. And I'm kind of interested in some of the traditionally BioWare-y NPC chatter and storybits going on back at the hub base? But the rest of the game's not good enough for me to persist.

I am increasingly realising that the value of Game Pass for me is not access to the latest and greatest, it's the joy of rummaging in the bargain bin of games that I would never have bought. It's like how I mostly use Netflix and Amazon Prime for direct-to-video horror and Christmas movies (as distinct from Hallmark Christmas movies, which are good enough to warrant their own subscription service). Discovering the continuing existence of a flopped BioWare game I'd thought long-dead is like stumbling across Hellraiser 17: Carry On Up The Leviathan. Sure, go on, give me that exosuit, and give me that flensed Charles Hawtrey with clamped nipples.