Anomaly Warzone Earth

 
Developer: 11 bit studios
Steam Release: Apr 2011
Hours Played: 8.8
Similar To: Deathtrap / Pixeljunk Monsters Ultimate / X-Morph: Defense
Rating: 5/5 Parsnips




GAMEPLAY
Tower defense games come in all shapes and sizes but in this quirky take on the genre you are the one defending the creeps. It’s not quite an action tower-defense game and not a classic-style TD game but something in between. You begin a mission with a limited amount of cash and a selection of tanks and vehicles to purchase as part of a team. When ready, you dive into the battleground where your vehicles trundle along the road. Up ahead are towers which you must protect your vehicles from using various abilities highlighted as icons on the left. Zooming out to a "map-mode" pauses the game allowing you to change the set path of your tanks. This may be to limit damage or to buy time. Zooming back in gets you straight back into the action where your vehicles continue their journey in accordance with the path.


BALANCE & PACE
A lot of focus will be on your Rambo-like figure who scurries around picking up drops and using abilities left by passing airborne units. Your commander may only use these abilities within a certain radius so you have to constantly anticipate where the trouble lies and activate it in time to respond to the problem. These actions include healing units or laying down distractions. The aim, while you allow your tanks to destroy the pesky towers, is to make sure at least one unit reaches the exit point. This often involves steering towards a small selection of towers to pick up the abilities they drop when destroyed. The healing ability seems to be the most valuable but picking up extra bombs to call in an air-strike is of paramount importance. Sending your convoy off to do a loop-the-loop to buy time is also a necessary strategy.
 

PRESENTATION & DESIGN
The artwork for the menu screens centres around a radar-screen motif with the sound of your supervisor communicating to you through a walkie-talkie. There are many menu screens keeping you well-informed and these are done with that slick, sloping effect. In the main game you will be doing a lot of to-ing and fro-ing between the main action screen and the strategy screen, and while flitting between the two can initially seem like immersion takes a bit of a hit, it all becomes seamless and fluid once you get used to it. AWE creates the right tension and atmosphere overall but as all-out armageddon approaches in the final few missions, the hysteria is laid on so heavily with a trowel that you can't help but feel the panic-stricken narrator is about to explode.


PROGRESS SYSTEM
The game comes packaged with a 14 mission campaign which becomes more lengthy and tricky as you progress. Completing a mission unlocks the next one and these are represented by dots linked by a path on a map. Navigation is straightforward and for each mission you are given a score and an online rank showing how you fair compared to other players. Additionally, there is an overall rank showing how well you fair in the entire campaign. There are also a couple of bonus campaigns and missions to unlock as well.

CONCLUSION
AWE is an exciting romp...if you know how to plan ahead. I managed to get to Mission 12 (out of 14) but stopped at that point when I felt the game was throwing far too much at me. More specifically, just after I'd dragged myself through a tortuous and arduous part of the mission yet another dramatic event occurred (to the sound of hysteria and panic over the walkie-talkie) which meant I had to negotiate my battered and crippled vehicles through yet another volley of towers that suddenly appeared from nowhere. I just wasn't prepared to go through all that again. Still, despite the unnecessarily elongated ending, Anomaly Warzone Earth comes packed with enough twists, turns and clout to make it a worthwhile addition to the library.