The opposite of tower defense.
Anomaly: Warzone Earth can best be described as tower defense in reverse. Much like most other tower defense games, Anomaly is played from a top-down perspective. Instead of filling the area with towers, you lead a squad of vehicles through a city already filled with defensive towers. There are several possible routes through each level, so your job is selecting the path your squad moves through.
You are actually controlling a character through this as well. After you've set a route, you also have access to various "Combat suit" abilities. You can use the repair ability to drop a green circle on the path, healing any vehicle that passes through it and drop down a decoy, which will draw fire from any enemy tower in range, for example. You start a level with just a couple of uses for each ability, but more are airdropped to you as you progress through the level.
You also get money from destroying enemy turrets or finding it in the environment (Often leading to a situation where path A has very little resistance in it, while path B has loads of money on the way). You can use the money to upgrade your vehicles or buy new ones.There are 6 different vehicles in total with very different characteristics. There's no one "right" combination for a level, they all have their strengths and weaknesses.
After the first few missions I thought that this game is going to be way too simple. You start the game with just the repair ability, so all you're doing is looking at the health bars of your squad and repairing if necessary. I was very wrong. The game gets very tricky very quickly.You end up with 4 different ablities for helping your squad, and situations where you'll want to use all 4 at once. I played on normal difficulty and got stuck on a certain level. After several failed attempts I tried again on easy and got through it, although barely. You need to think ahead to survive and be conservative with your abilities. All of this comes together in a surprisingly deep and strategic experience.
There is a bare-bones story connecting your progress. It's all a B-movie type thing full of cheeseball dialog. I laughed out loud
when they had a "shocking" plot twist late in the game. It serves it's purpose of contextualizing where you are and why very
well, and that's all it's actually there for. The fact that it managed to entertain me (Unintentionally or not) is just a bonus.
I'm finding it really hard to come up with any real criticisms for this game. It has an unique gameplay mechanic and it uses it very well. The game has 14 missions in it, which really isn't much, but since you're getting this game for just 10$ I find it hard to complain. Anomaly: Warzone Earth offers a very unique experience. I could not recommend it enough.
YOU'LL RATE THIS LOWER IF:
* You have some serious issue with the general gameplay mechanic this game is presenting. Maybe you got violated by a top down game as a child?
* You're Scrooge Mcduck and 10$ is way too much for anything
