Great game, so buggy it is almost unplayable.

User Rating: 3 | Anthem PS4

Anthem is a great game. Beautiful, great ideas, new and interesting mechanics . . . here's the 'but'. It is almost unplayable.

Most of your time will be spent trying to find types of gameplay that are simply broken due to server issues or software issues, navigating bugs so glaring they make the game as frustrating as it is fun.

A week in, one of the primary game modes, "Quickplay", almost never works. When being brought into the game the world is unpopulated. It isn't clear if it is so just because it doesn't get populated, or objectives for the existing team haven't been updated, or the team completed the tasks while you were being logged in.

Bad guys almost never miss. Even when you are behind cover. Hard to know if this is the way the game works, server lag, or both.

Missions, even primary story-based objectives, often cannot be completed due to game breaking bugs of one sort or another. Not in "Freeplay", nor during regular, single player objectives.

Server connection issues absolutely abound. Drops, infinite loading screens and more continue to be present most of the time . . . not some of the time, but most of the time, despite a solid and very fast (over 100mb/sec) connection, despite two patches in.

Length of time or simple inability to revive teammates often kill you, with no real way to let squadmates know you are down. There is an indicator of a downed squadmate, but it is difficult to see where they are. This often results in you getting killed, and wipes for the whole squad.

A week in, "Feats" (achievements, sort of) rarely update, if at all. There is a paucity of main objectives, side missions, though there are currently "plans" to update much of the content.

There are a lot of minor complaints with game mechanics I won't further bore anyone with. Will keep it to the major complaints, that essentially amount to spending more than half the time looking at the game, being completely unable to play because of one or more of the issues above.

Bioware ought to know better, and of course, so should we. It doesn't excuse them pushing what is obviously an almost unplayable game out the door. There is great potential here though, which currently, cannot be enjoyed.