I really wanted to like this game. I was disappointed with Destiny and was hoping that BioWare wouldn't make the same mistakes with Anthem.

While the core gameplay mechanics are good, it's really just another hollow loot shooter. Destiny meets Iron Man.

I really do hope someone can take the combat mechanics and port it to a better game, because that part was actually pretty fun. Just not a fan of the loot-driven meta-game.

Halo Reach, maybe? We need something to hold us over until Halo Infinite.

@alien-ouy: I've gotten to the point where I trust IGN's reviews more than GameSpot's.

@Arkhalipso: I wouldn't say that they're all biased at GameSpot. In fact, I can't really say that any of them are truly biased based only on the evidence at hand. However, it is a little concerning that two recent Microsoft exclusive games, Quantum Break and Halo Wars 2, both got review scores from GameSpot that were appreciably lower than their statistical averages. Of course, there's always going to be some skew with the scores to account for differing tastes, but when a professional organization like GameSpot gives a game a fair review, you would expect that score to fall a little closer to the average.

@ninjaroach81: I think you hit the nail on the head. I really enjoyed the first Halo Wars, even though it wasn't the hardcore RTS experience that I'm sure a lot of people were looking for. It was its own kind of game, and it was pretty good, too. The Halo Wars series is intended to be accessible to Halo fans who may not be big into the RTS space, and there's nothing wrong with that.

@dominoodle: True, and I do allow some leeway for that. However, what concerns me is when a major player in the gaming space like GameSpot consistently shortchanges games from a particular studio or publisher in their reviews. First there was the Quantum Break review, now Halo Wars 2. It makes me wonder if there is some bias at GameSpot against Microsoft.

@StaticPenguin: Eh, I wouldn't use the term "conspiracy". Some bias, maybe, but I wouldn't call it a full-fledged conspiracy.

@alien-ouy: Review scores can be all over the place. A ton of media outlets review games, so you're always going to get a lot of diversity of opinion. That said, what's important is where the balance of the review scores fall (this is where review aggregation services like Metacritic come in handy). When an outlet like GameSpot (which is one of the larger and more established organizations in the gaming space) is consistently scoring games of a certain developer or genre lower than the critical average, that could be a cause for some concern.

GameSpot scored both Quantum Break and Halo Wars 2 lower than their critical averages. When you also consider that both games are Microsoft exclusives, it could beg the question of whether there is some bias against Microsoft at GameSpot.

@Arkhalipso: Forza Motorsport, Halo, and Gears of War are hardly mediocre.

I'm not sure what to think of GameSpot's reviews. 6/10 seems pretty low, especially considering that the early critic's consensus is somewhere around an 8/10 (check Metacritic). GameSpot did the same thing with Quantum Break (another Microsoft exclusive); GameSpot scored it a 6/10, whilst the consensus ended up closer to an 8/10. In the review roundtable they held afterwards, the staff literally wondered aloud how anyone could have liked the game enough to give it an 8. It wouldn't surprise me to hear them say the same about Halo Wars 2.

More and more, GameSpot's scores are ending up looking like outliers. Are they actively running a campaign against Microsoft? Not that long ago I would have told you that such a suggestion was just fanboy whining, but now, I'm not so sure.