Anomaly Warzone Earth Review

Strategy:There isn’t only one way to complete a level, sure we all have the same objective but the way we get there could be completely different. There were times I found myself going for the quickest route even if it meant using all my power ups to keep my squad defended and healed. Other times I changed my route many times to destroy every single enemy on the map. I love that you can use many different strategies to complete the levels and that the Heal, smokescreen, decoy, and airstrike powerups can play huge roles in them. You can use the commander to solely drop power ups or you can do what I did and use him to draw fire away from the squad as his health will recharge when not in a firefight. The possibilities are endless and I think the developers did a great job of letting us have our freedom to plan and play the way we want.Variety: Some people don’t enjoy the tower defense genre because they say it gets boring or stale because you are always doing the same thing. Well with Anomaly Warzone Earth the missions in the game aren’t always exactly the same. There are some missions that have you fighting your way to a specific objective. While others you have to clear a path for an escort mission, and there are even missions where you have to use stealth and find the fastest route to an objective before it is lost. The missions differentiating from one another keeps the game fresh and makes it have that one more level feeling we all love to hate.

Avatar Awards: The game has some really nice avatar awards for completing specific objectives and there is even a gamer picture to be unlocked. If you complete the first mission you get the commanders battle shirt, completion of a tactical trial will get you his pants, and finishing the story will net you his helmet. This outfit is even done very well and it shows that the developers love their creation.

Progression: The game adds new enemies and units in a way that gets you used to them before throwing tons of them at you. The difficulty progresses in a way that lets you actual learn about things before using them to make things much more challenging. You feel like you have a slight tutorial in each level so that you aren’t going in blind. Playing on the easiest difficulty even gets challenging at some points in the game and the harder difficulties will let the elite players shine.

Cons:

Multiplayer: While this isn’t a huge deal because the game truly shines as a single player experience, multiplayer could have been an interesting addition. The developers mentioned in our interview with them that at one time they were developing multiplayer and decided to scrap it to make a great single player experience. It would have been interesting to see how they executed this and I have faith it would have been amazing. Even if it was a 1v1 match mode with one person on offense while the other was on defense I could see it being great fun.

In Conclusion:

Anomaly Warzone Earth delivers an outstanding package. It may be the game we needed to let the sub-genre of tower offense rise up. The game is only ten dollars and even people with small amounts of space can experience it because it is only a 350 mb game. The new additions of tactical trials add more gameplay than the other versions have had and make it even more worth the price. It is easy to pick up and play and the ones that want to perfect it and climb the leaderboards will not be disappointed either. I would recommend everyone pick up the game or at least try it out as it is one of my personal XBLA GOTY contenders so far.

Score: 10/10