Anomaly: Warzone Earth

Tower defense games differ from your typical strategy games. In them, enemies follow a set path through a gauntlet of your units, which try to destroy them before they reach their goal. The player sets up stationary units with a variety of abilities, such as close range and high damage, or units that attack multiple targets at once. In a tower-offense game, the player instead takes the role of the units running the gauntlet, using whatever abilities they have to survive the ensuing onslaught. Anomaly: Warzone Earth is a tower-offense game in which the player takes on the role of a commander, charged with supporting his (or her) convoy to make sure it succeeds in its mission.

Anomaly’s plot line follows the recent trend of the alien-invasion theme. Upon entering Earth’s atmosphere an alien ship breaks into two pieces, one landing in Baghdad and the other in Tokyo. The player begins by breaching a weak spot in the shield one of the pieces has erected over itself, and over the city. The cut-scene that introduces the game begins strong, with military-style footage from gunships and radar screens showing what is happening in real time. However, once the squad you will be controlling is introduced, the preface comes to a screeching halt, leaving you with the thought of “what just happened?”

The player takes on the role of the commander, a soldier who wears a special combat suit that grants him unique abilities. These include superhuman speed, damage reduction (the commander will get shot at), and access to various support modules. Players at the helm may notice that the back of this combat suit is identical to the layout of the module-deployment screen. The commander’s modules, and their correct usage, are the key to victory throughout the game’s missions. These modules include smokescreens, decoys, the ability to call in airstrikes, and repair modules. They are limited in number and are deployed by the commander onto the map, where they expire after a certain time period, or, in the case of the decoy, after it takes enough damage. Destroying enemies or passing checkpoints helps replenish the commander’s resources. The downsides to that replenishment are that the module type is random, and destroying an enemy does not guarantee an airdrop.

Although the commander has a variety of tools at his disposal, the convoy he escorts performs all the actual offensive work. There is an assortment of unit types to choose from. Anomaly’s armory includes APCs, which are heavily armored units able to withstand concentrated fire; shield vehicles, which generate shielding for the unit in front and behind them; and the Dragon, which sets multiple enemies on fire. This diverse selection lets players create survivable formations across the six available convoy slots.

The overhead perspective gives a bird’s-eye view of the mission area. 11 bit studios went to the extra effort of providing thorough detail in the city landscapes you will be fighting through. However, the limited zoom ability does not allow you to take in the finer details of the individual combat units. The script for the voice acting was finely written, and the cast of British actors played their parts well. The dialogue did inject some awkward emotional transitions, where a character would at one moment be speaking rationally about one topic, then spontaneously switch topics and toss in the extreme opposite emotional response. The sound effects were nothing short of excellent, from the cannon fire of the behemoth turrets to the flames of the Dragon tank, though they do get repetitive; you will hear them over, and over, and over throughout the entire game.

The game’s controls leave just a little to be desired. The control layout, from moving your commander around to deploying modules, is very straightforward. However, on the map display where the player assigns the route of their convoy, it can be tedious to select given points on larger maps, with a point being selected just off the course you intended. This is not enough to force the removal of hair or the throwing of objects across the room, but it can nag at you when you constantly want to fine-tune your convoy’s route. The only other interface issue is the way buying and selling units is handled; it is very easy to attempt to upgrade a unit and end up selling it instead. Otherwise the interface is easy to navigate and all the information you need is available at a glance. The game mechanics themselves had no noticeable glitches or bugs, and the learning curve to master them is minimal.

The challenging nature of Anomaly’s missions delivers an addictive experience. Combined with the satisfaction of eradicating extra-terrestrial life forms from real-world locations, it makes for a gratifying time. Different game modes such as “Baghdad Mayhem” and “Tokyo Raid” present different types of challenges outside the normal story mode to help prevent the game from stagnating. This, combined with levels that give you the option to change their difficulty, gives it a high replay value. In addition, even if you are successful on a given mission, you can go back and try to improve your score on it, which may improve your worldwide rank for that mission, or for the overall game on the leaderboards. A second player can be added to the mix in the two-player co-op mode, letting two players escort the convoy and ensure no alien survives.

Anomaly: Warzone Earth performs well in its chosen genre. Despite the shortcomings, what few there are, the game is worth more than its current $9.99 price tag on Steam. Hardcore players may get five to ten hours of gameplay from playing the storyline straight through at the highest difficulty, whereas more casual players will get significantly more time out of it by replaying levels at progressing difficulty levels and taking on the other challenge modes.