Anthem is now BioWare's lowest rated game ever
Anthem now holds an undesirable title for developer BioWare.
Now that Anthem has been available for a couple of weeks, the vast majority of press reviews now carry final scores. As you can see in our reviews round-up, many reviews initially started out with no scores as reviewers needed more time to test out the game in the wild.
It was already looking grim for BioWare, and EA, but the overall Metacritic, and Opencritic averages have now confirmed what many suspected. Anthem is now the lowest-rated game ever developed by BioWare. As you may remember, before Anthem, Mass Effect: Andromeda held that spot.
Anthem has an average rating of 65 on Metacritic (at the highest), and a slightly lower 61 on Opencritic. By comparison, Mass Effect: Andromeda holds a 76 rating on Metacritic (at the highest), and 72 on Opencritic.
Mass Effect: Andromeda does have more reviews than Anthem, but given the average scores for BioWare's loot shooter so far, it'd take several incredibly positive reviews to register an upward swing.
Like it or not, review scores still matter to players, game publishers, and the many reviewers who produce them. You certainly don't need hard numbers to see that Anthem has been received worse than Andromeda, but it can help.
This is undoubtedly going to leave many BioWare fans incredibly disappointed, if Anthem itself didn't already take care of that. BioWare's two lead studios, Montreal, and Edmonton, have now both produced poorly received games.
BioWare already has a roadmap in place that plans to address some of the criticisms voiced in Anthem reviews, not to mention add new content. It's anyone's guess, however, if a year from Anthem will turn into a good game, or a dead one.