Cue the music: Anthem closed alpha signups are open

Do you hear the players sing?
Singing a song of angry mech suits
It is the music of a people
Who'll soon be slaves to shoots
When BioWare's Anthem alpha starts
On the 8th of next month
Sign up now to take part
when December comes!

Jetpacks are fun. Mech suits are fun. Blasting aliens with class-specific abilities in pursuit of shinier guns is mostly fun. I'm calling it: Anthem will probably be quite fun.

I'm hoping I can find out by getting into the closed alpha tests, which are due to run on December 8th and 9th. I won't be able to tell anyone because it's NDA-ed to high heaven, but at least I'll know.

You've got till December 3rd to sign up for yourself on EA's site, though they say it's a first come first served deal - and it's been open for about 15 hours. No harm in trying though, eh?

If you don't get in, I wouldn't worry. You'll only have to wait until February 22nd for the sky larks to start.

There's plenty more Anthem footage where that came from. Here are two devs zipping around a lovely looking jungle, and here are some more devs zipping around another lovely looking jungle with a lower framerate.

Like I said, it's all looking pretty promising to me. I love feeling mobile and this is a game where everyone gets a jetpack from the get-go.

Guidesman Dave has rounded up all of Anthem's chirping so far.