Finished: Anomaly: Warzone Earth

Forgot to grab a shot from the end of the final mission

The first title I've moved from Unfinished to Finished on the game list is Anomaly: Warzone Earth. It is one of the few games on the list that I also have on Android (the list does not normally contain any mobile games), this is a result of The Humble Android Bundle. This is why on the screenshots in this post you can see the ICS action bar at the bottom of the screen.

Anomaly is an unusual game, it is marketed as reverse tower defense. When you start a mission you get an overview which looks something like this

The assumption I had initially held was that you would assign resources, such as the ordering of troops and set the initial path through the enemy towers. This isn't the case, in most missions you can add, reorder and upgrade troops at any time provided you have enough money and you earn money from the destruction of enemy towers and also the collection of those yellow symbols which are resource nodes.

In order to play well you have to alter the course during play, you bounce between watching your guys follow the course and actively managing them his the judicious use of various power ups and the route management/squad upgrade screens.

The combat screen

Purchasing and upgrading your troops

Changing your route mid-game

The story is pretty simple, a mysterious alien race has.attacked bagdad, leaving a pile of tourers and a mysterious done over this anomaly. You lead the 11th in a series of missions against them. Very little story about the aliens is actually told to you, which fixes with your role as a soldier, you are provided with the information you need to complete your objectives.

The android version worked really well on my tablet, with the only flaw being that it was not quite up to date meaning there were a few glitches with smoke here and there. Nothing that actually got in the way and I am sure that the most recent version has fixed these minor glitches. The touch controls work really though also feel like they were pretty analogous to the mouse controls I would expect a title like this to have.

Minor glitch with some smoke

Overall I enjoyed my time with this game, it does have another squad assault mode, but I tend to not bother with those. Back to Batman: Arkham City.