Anomaly Warzone Earth Review - Not Your Usual Tower Defence

We’ve all played our fair share of tower defence games in the past(and potentially more coming in the near future), so it comes to me as a pleasant surprise that 11 Bit Studio’s Anomaly Warzone Earth is a fresh and unique approach to tower defence games. It’s a reversed tower defence game where you control the creep. Let me explain…


In Anomaly Warzone Earth, you play a commander who has to investigate just what the heck is going on. You see, a giant fragment of an Alien ship has crashed into midtown Baghdad and you have to escort(you aren’t really escorting, more like following) your convoy to retrieve data on the alien artifact. To make matters worse, Alien turrets start popping up around Baghdad. Hence begins the plot to Anomaly.

Go ahead! Enter this Alien bubble thingie! totally safe

Tower Attack Game

The plot can be completely ignored as that’s really not the strong point of this game. The voice acting grates on you with annoying British voice overs with some awful scripts(I mean the writing). All you need to know is that ‘towers need dying!’. Despite what the game tries to subliminally communicate to you to avoid alien towers, you don’t want to do that.

You see, the brilliance of Anomaly is the incredibly well balanced risk to reward mechanic. Which I’ll get to  once I’ve gone over the basics of the game. In each mission, you help set the movement route of your little convoy of vehicles. In the strategic map, you get to direct which path your convoy will take. You can’t control it or stop its movement(other than just setting up their route).

This thing ain't from Cincinnati, that's for sure! 

"As you destroy towers, rack up combos and score multiplier(yes it has scores and combos), you get more drops. I would describe it as being similar to how MMORPG’s do loot drops except not exactly similar"

You are represented by this small commander dude on the map which you control(using mouse or keyboard controls). The commander is a very important role as you’re the one who’ll be placing down special abilities down to support and keep your convoys survival rates up. Plonk down repair to… well… repair your vehicles, or drop down smoke to mask your vehicles positions(abilities have a cool down and a timer for how long they’ll be up). You only have a limited number of these but you can pick the abilities up as they are dropped(they accumulate).

Plan your route here. You don't want to avoid those tower. They are key to earning more abilities and money

And this is the bit where this game is brilliant. As you destroy towers, rack up combos and score multiplier(yes it has scores and combos), you get more drops. I would describe it as being similar to how MMORPG’s do loot drops except not exactly similar. The abilities are pretty equal in importance, there is no one ability that is more crucial than the rest or is of a ‘higher level’.

But there is just something about picking up these drops that is so very intrinsically satisfying. Dare I say, It’s a bit like gambling. It becomes imperative to actually take down turrets and not to try to avoid them altogether as picking up these drops could be key to survival in much tougher areas. With your convoy waiting for no man(or commander) and as they continue moving on, you really do have to consider the opportunity cost(that’s a fancy shmancy economic term for calculating the pros and cons of alternative actions) of trekking it to collect the drops and leave your convoy without your help for a brief moment.

FIRST KILL! Build up that combo and multipliers!

There are also pyramid like alien artifacts on the map that if your convoy fires at it, you get money to upgrade and buy new vehicles to add to your convoy(they get air dropped down). Much like everything in the game, these alien artifacts are precariously placed in risky routes(you also gain some money for killing turrets but not as much as these alien pyramid thingies). These are not that common so money is scarce and you’ll have to try your best to keep the vehicles you have alive.

While it may seem like a good thing to have many vehicles and a large convoy, often, it only puts more emphasis on your role as convoy support and placing down abilities. It gets a little tedious and a big convoy won’t get completely covered by your repair ability radius and other abilities. Cue ‘Yakety Saks’ music as you run around trying to keep all of them alive. I found it best to keep a convoy of about 4 vehicles and upgrade them to keep the convoy manageable and having more firepower and armour.

Just to show you it isn't always only in Baghdad. See! Tokyo! You know that by that Pagoda like building

Conclusion

Anomaly Warzone Earth is an extremely polished, fun and addictive tower defence game. There are no multiplayer modes and you only have the single player story which starts off in Baghdad and then takes you to Tokyo(introducing new units and towers along the way). As you complete the story mode, you unlock a more challenging Baghdad Mayhem and Tokyo Raid challenge missions.

For USD$9.99, you get an excellent tower defence game that manages to stay fresh and unique while also keeping the gameplay varied as it introduces new concepts on each new level. If you’re looking to try a quick and easy to pick up strategy game, Anomaly Warzone Earth is easily recommendable. You can try out the demo for yourself here(look for the yellow PC Demo Box on the top right corner).


Pros:

• Excellent use of risk reward mechanics to suck you in
  
• A very unique spin on tower defence(tower attack)
  
• Excellent variety of mission types. One level you’ll have to clear a path for a chopper to get through to its landing zone. In another, you have towers that temporarily mind control your convoy.
  
• Very addictive
  
• A polished game. Everything runs smoothly and the game is very well balanced. No one single ability is overpowered or useless.
  
• Very impressive graphics for a small indie game
  
• It’s quick to play. You can jump in, and play a mission for about 10 minutes(you can't save in a mission though, it uses a check point system)
  
• It’s cheap

Cons:

• Bad voice acting
  
• Forgettable story
  
• Having a big convoy gets tricky and tedious to support
  
• No health/damage indicator of vehicles when convoy is off screen(when you run to pick drops away from the convoy)
  
• There is no mouse and keyboard combination controls(together). It’s either solely mouse or keyboard which is a bit of a weird choice. I would have expected that having keyboard controls for your commander and mouse controls for opening up your strategic map and buying stuff would have been the best control. But you will get used to the mouse controls after a while, so no biggie.

Verdict: Anomaly Warzone Earth is simple, addictive & surprisingly good