Review of Anomaly : Warzone Earth

11 Bit Studios has done something for me. It has revealed a concept of money to product that I can’t deny anymore. The game looked great. It played smooth. It gave me my 8 hours of play with optional re-playability. Game flow kept moving forward in difficulty. Story was pretty straight forward. The thing is, I can name so many AAA titles that fill all these requirements to equal strength that are setting themselves up with a $50 to $60 dollar price tag. If you want in on 11 Bit Studios’ rendition of this same old equation, you’re looking at $10. Much respect.

The Other Side of the Fence

At first when I read that Anomaly : Warzone Earth was going to give the player the ability to see a tower defense game from the other side of the tracks I was wondering what joy could come from that angle. Granted, in my mind I saw this playing out with me deciding which waves of monsters to hit the towers with to attempt to break through, but I was surprised to see that a more puzzle-like approach was taken for this “genre-bender”. I found everything involved to be very exhilarating at times. Having to manage travel paths while simultaneously determining situations in which to burn special abilities gave me enough of a rush to really set this game apart from other things I’ve played.

The Risk of Repetition

Amazingly enough, the gameplay never got old. After a solid 6 hours of play in story mode, I found that I wasn’t bored. New tower types kept me on my toes enough to really force me to change my strategies up on the fly. None of this “sit back and roll through it” mentality. As an avid player of TDs in the past, I must say that there were a few game-mechanics-altering towers that I have never seen or thought of before, and they worked really well at making me think heavily about upcoming fights. From start to finish every map felt very personal, even though their basic function was set only to get to there from here. This was sewn in with escort the flight vehicle, avoid friendly ordnance, prep for ambushes, fight the enemy mother-ship, and many other missions, both time sensitive and free reign.

The Bad Bits

Honestly, not as bad as it sounds. The only thing I had issue with until I started snickering at it was the writing. During the tutorial level I couldn’t help but notice I was Jason Statham. Well not literally but the small avatar picture in the top right of my screen and the voice coming from my speakers kept taunting me with the possibility of this. At first that was fine, but then this British character decided to remind me over and over that he was…in fact…British. He, and his army of expendable misfits, would time and time again find a great moment to describe what is going on by putting it into the context of a distinctly British saying. Be it telling his soldiers that they all owe the Japanese commander a pint or saying “bloody hell” just about every 3 minutes, force commander Jason Statham put forward quite an effort to remind me of his British-ness. But honestly, who gives a shit. I’m in a world where tanks are unable to not drive on the road solving puzzles with a tactical overhead where I can only heal, cover, use decoy and call airstrike if I have the proper power up. Screw it all, thats just to damn funny. I wonder when Statham will be starring in the Uwe Boll iteration of Anomaly : Warzone Earth. That one I might actually go see.

In Closing

If you are looking for a new tower defense, this isn’t it. If you are looking for a game to play online with your friends, this isn’t it. If you are looking for near infinite re-playability with endless amounts of things to do, this isn’t it. But most games that are $10 never really are. But a lot of $10 games are also not this polished. Anomaly : Warzone Earth feels complete. Who knows, maybe 11 Bit Studios plans to keep this title or genre alive with new IPs or DLC. Could be cool. All in all, you could do worse for the money, and when it comes to puzzle type games, many of them aren’t this fun.