Anthem

Anthem's fast-paced shooting gameplay is a ton of fun, but it suffers from long loads, repetitive missions, bad filler, and an iffy story. Still, this is an extremely solid base for more content.

Bioware's new live service shooter, Anthem, may be off to a rough start, but the core gameplay is still fantastic, and there is definitely hope for the future.

“Anthem’s world is charming, but forced repetition spoils the fun.”

Stronger alone.

At this point in time, Anthem feels like a title that needs more work. I want to like it, but damn does it make it hard. Like the games that came before it in this genre, I’ve no doubt that Anthem will get better and bulkier with updates over time, but if Bioware takes too long in getting there, I fear most of the player base will have moved on. For what it’s worth, Anthem does show a lot of promise, and I do sincerely hope that Bioware can get new content out efficiently while addressing the various problems currently plaguing the game. In a few months’ time I’d love to be able to say that An...

It's a wobbly launch for Anthem, but BioWare's shooter could soar to heady heights over time. Here's our review...

Anthem desperately needed a bit more time in the oven and the resulting product is one that I'm incredibly lukewarm on -- which is almost worse than if I had outright hated it. I don't understand many of the design decisions in Anthem to the point that I wonder how so many of the game's aspects ever got greenlit in the first place. I'd like to continue crossing my fingers and hoping that BioWare will return to be one of the industry's leading devs in the coming years, but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't concerned at this point. Anthem will potentially hold your attention for the first few hour...

Reviewing a games-as-a-service game can be weird anyway, because they change. Anthem has already, in a week, and is going to change more over the next month (it has a roadmap). On top of that, with Anthem I feel there's a lot to explain but not much to talk about, like watching a really involved reality TV show, and then realising that somehow nothing has happened over the course of an entire hour. I want to want to spend more time with it, because there are bits of it I really enjoy. But it needs more than the world map to change a bit, or have seasons, or better social interaction. It needs ...

Anthem falls way short of the hype due to repetitive missions and lack of content.

Anthem is deeply flawed and frequently frustrating, but it sure is gorgeous.

Anthem is a game based on a fantastic idea. Flying around in futuristic mech-suits with friends should have been a slam dunk after six years of development, and Anthem might yet become that game someday. Unfortunately, that's not what it is right now. Despite nailing the feeling of flying around in its Javelin suits and crafting a beautiful world, there's nothing in Anthem to hold a player's interest. It all gets old quickly thanks to bland encounters, dumb enemies, a borderline empty world and a dull story. Add to that a general sense of technical instability, loading issues, non-existent end...

ANTHEM feels like a beta. Despite featuring a full story campaign, the game as a whole feels stunted and unfinished. It feels tired, incohesive, and troubled. We can only assume that something went horribly wrong during its development, because it has all the hallmarks of a project that was gutted before being reworked and badly stitched back together. It's not looking good for the once great BioWare.