Anomaly: Warzone Earth Review

I’m sure you’re pretty familiar with the Tower Defence genre, there’s a gallon of different games out there based on it. Anomaly: Warzone Earth for the PC and iPad however is a little different.

It’s a game its makers like to label “Tower offense”. Instead of protecting yourself from damage, you must cause it. Baghdad is subject to a large-scale alien invasion, and you must guide a small group of humans to stop the attack. The aliens have built turrets, towers and power nodes all over the place, your job is to destroy them before they take over not only the city, but Earth itself.

At the beginning of a mission, you chose which units you want to send into a situation, and how they must carry out their mission, i.e. what paths, strategies etc. they should use. You can send in walking missile launchers, tanks, shield generators, it’s all pretty high-tech stuff. It may sound easy now, but unless you’re a hardened tactics expert, a few rounds with this baby will render you a gibbering-wreck. The first few rounds start off pretty easy, but as you might guess, it gets much harder. Eventually, you get to the point where the screen is completely filled with flying missiles, smoke screens, moving bombs and other crafty shenanigans. Pretty crazy if you ask me.

Finishing the game will see you unlock a mode called Commander Trials, which sees you fighting through the missions again, this time with a set of rules and challenges in place. For example, one set up has you fighting your way through a whole mission with only four repair charges to help you, meaning that the action gets pretty heated at times.

Squad Assault mode is Anomaly’s answer to Gears of War’s horde, but with some pretty big differences. You have a small squad, and with that squad you must take on endless waves of nasty baddies, oh, and with a time limit too. The latter stages will see you concentrating on not only severing the heads off some nasty beasties, but also sharing out and preserving your resources, afterall, if you run out power-ups at the start of a level, you’ve got some serious problems.

Anomaly: Warzone Earth is available for the PC and iPad, retailing on the App store at £2.49 for the latter. Bargain. If you’re looking for a nice looking game with the ability to steal at least half a dozen hours of your life, then take a look at Anomaly, it’s too cheap for you to miss.

REVIEW CODE: A complimentary PC code was provided to Brash Games for this review. Please send all review code enquiries to editor@brashgames.co.uk.

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