Anomaly: Warzone Earth

I'm always perplexed by game developers who don't seem to realize what they're developing, who miss the best points of their own products. Why, pray tell, did Majesty 2 build up such a charming "fantasy kingdom simulator" only to sink all its content development efforts into a linear, scripted campaign and restrictive scenarios instead of more freeform maps - instead of letting players simulate their own fantasy kingdoms? Why did No Man's Sky go to the trouble of laying the groundwork for dreamy, self-directed space exploration only to then build gameplay around idiotic arcade-style mole-whacking devoid of planning? Why did Spellforce 3's campaign mode undermine both its RPG side by forcing the player to break up his carefully-orchestrated 4-man band, and its RTS side by excluding the player's army from the grand finale? Why can't any of these jokers ever stay on message?

Anomaly: Warzone Earth must have come before 11bit really hit its stride. Its over-done voiceovers set my teeth on edge with their 1980s action flick writing and "acting." At least its interface is clean and direct and nearly completely mouse-driven. It over-invested in graphics and under-invested in content then tries to bleed customers even more for DLC packs amounting to what should have been the original release, an unfortunately common trend this past decade. It did, however, receive some well-deserved praise for providing a fresh playstyle.

Real-time "strategy" games negate their potential for strategy by forcing micromanagement, rewarding players for shuffling individual units back and forth to keep them from getting focus-fired, or cycling through two dozen identical spellcasters to get them all casting the same spell in ten seconds. "Tower Defense" game modes grew partly out of that frustration, letting the player strategize resource investment into defensive towers which automatically shoot down incrementally harder waves of enemies. Anomaly reversed the central gimmick by giving you a convoy to guide through a limited choice of routes among enemy towers. Not that anyone who's played FPS / RTS / MMOs is a stranger to convoy escorts, but hey, credit where it's due, 11bit managed to distill the basic concept to its most enjoyable. Your own character runs around on foot collecting and distributing buffs to your row of advancing tanks. You can upgrade those tanks as you blow up sedentary baddies for bounties. Good, clean fun.

And then one campaign mission hits you with a tower type which resurrects other enemies, charging up this ability by leeching power from you whenever you're in line of sight, and from the aforementioned buffs you need to drop to keep your units alive. Oh, it's not unbeatable, sure. You might dodge around cover, hide or delay your buffs to deny it its leeching, drop some air strikes on it, front-load your armor column to nuke your target down quickly (as it does no damage in itself) whatever. The problem's that it saps my willingness to beat the game. Because in fact while your column's in range of one of those towers, you are no longer playing. You can do almost nothing. Given your view tracks and snaps back automatically to your commander, you can barely even see what's happening while you hide.

Compounding this faux pas, there were plenty of better ways to spice up gameplay. Status effects are absent to that point (even basic DoT) and tank upgrades are completely linear, lacking choice. Maps offered few routing alternatives. Options and variations diverse and sundry should have been addressed before implementing a feature which runs so directly counter to the basic formula of (tanks+commander)/towers.