There are four difficulty levels, and although the lowest, “Casual,” is for the most part a cakewalk, anything beyond that can be challenging, and sometimes extremely so. It adds a layer of challenge by mandating on-the-fly convoy manipulation – buying new units, selling old ones, changing the marching order – but inevitably, there are moments when the inability to issue some very basic orders to your soldiers feels a little overly contrived. And trust me on this I yelled at them a lot. This latter point can be especially frustrating after the introduction of a turret type that actually becomes more powerful and dangerous if you shoot at it with the wrong kind of weapon: a fact your crew just doesn’t seem to grasp no matter how much you yell at them. Concessions to gameplay are unavoidable, but sooner or later you’re bound to wonder why you can’t tell your convoy to pull over and stop for a minute – you can’t, by the way it’s an inexorable journey forward that can only be paused by entering the overhead map – or why it takes a special ability to tell your guys what to shoot at.
It’s a simple and elegant system, but it comes at the cost of some feeling of immersion. You’ll gain the other three abilities as the game progresses, eventually allowing you to place Decoys to distract enemy turrets, disable them completely with EMPs, or direct your convoy’s fire with the A.I.M. Each ability has a small area of effect and a brief lifespan, after which it expires to use the Repair ability on the convoy, for instance, you drop a “repair token” in its path, and the units driving through it will be partially or fully repaired. Lynx, the commander of a convoy of one to six military vehicles, while plotting the course the convoy will follow on an overhead tactical map, and then supporting it on the ground as it moves through ruined streets by using one of four special abilities. It’s not great, but for a niche indie title it’s actually quite good some of the accents are hokey but the delivery is committed and well-paced. It’s also a pleasant surprise that the voice acting is generally decent. Weapon effects are also impressive – rockets leave satisfying trails of white smoke, while the heat of alien scorchers shimmers over cracked, blackened roads – and when things blow up, they blow up real good. The blasted Earth is a hazy blue-grey (hey, nobody said nuclear winter was pretty) but the lighting and level of background detail is excellent, and it gets considerably more colorful as you work your way deeper into the game. In fact, Anomaly 2 does a fine job of dressing up the game in Sunday finery. It’s not exactly a Mario Puzo novel, but as an excuse to direct a small but heavily-armed group of transforming tanks through ranks of creepy alien turrets, the story is quite adequate. The scientist who created it is still alive, and it’s up to you, as First Lieutenant Simon Lynx, to lead the team that will rescue him and enact revenge upon humanity’s enemies. Yet there is hope, in the form of a super-weapon known as Shockwave that might just turn the tide. The sequel to 11 Bit Studios’ 2011 release Anomaly: Warzone Earth, Anomaly 2 takes place in the year 2034: in the wake of an alien invasion that has left Earth shattered and broken, and the few remaining human survivors scavenging like rats for food and supplies in a desperate, endless struggle for survival. Anomaly 2 is a successful and welcome sequel that improves upon the original in almost every way.Īnomaly 2 is a well-polished and intense addition to the unusual “tower offense” sub-genre, but while its new “convoy-versus-towers” multiplayer twist is an interesting idea, in execution it leaves a little bit to be desired.
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