In Anomaly 2, your objective in each campaign level may vary, but usually it's fairly straight-forward, head towards your goal. There are many paths you can take, and rewards for going out of your way to do things like clearing out the map of alien towers. The general idea is to make sure you reach your goal without losing all your units, and if the situation calls for it, not losing any important units.
If you played the original game, then you'll be happy to know everything has been polished. While it's basically more of the same, new features and units added make the gameplay continue to feel fresh. It also helps that it's still a unique game, there aren't any others like it that I know of.
What makes Anomaly 2 very interesting is it's highly tactical gameplay. You've got to make plans about how you'll be progressing forwards, change them based on the situation, and actively support your units with abilities as they work towards their goal. In the sequel we see a new feature added to increase your strategic options, the ability to morph your units. Every unit has 2 forms, each with a unique purpose depending on your surroundings and needs.
There are 4 difficulties in Anomaly 2, so if you find that you're breezing through levels, you can up the difficulty for a better experience. What I liked about the difficulties in this game was that normal was actually challenging. It was a difficulty that wasn't so simple that it disregarded what the game was all about, and yet didn't make you have to work too hard to figure out how to proceed. Far too many games these days have a normal difficulty that players no longer expect to have too much trouble with a normal difficulty, thinking they can just breeze through the game.
The dialogue in the game isn't too bad, the voice acting is nice, but there's a problem. My one qualm with the voices in this game is what happens when I speed up the game during a level. Units accelerate, towers shoot faster, you move quicker, it's all as expected, except for the speech. The radio suddenly cuts off when you reach a certain point, and suddenly the talking continues from where the line ended. It's not a massive problem, but it does break the immersion and just doesn't feel quite right when you're listening to the talking happening. The dialogue should continue to work as normal even if you accelerate a bit.
Anomaly 2 makes you think about what you're doing, and it does a good job of it too. A tactical map is provided for you, filled with details about enemy positions, pathing options and more. When you need to think about your next move, the tactical map is a great help. The map is easy-to-use, it's detailed, and the game pauses when you use it, giving you a moment to calmly analyze the situation and plan your move.
The game really helps keep you constantly in the action, giving you support abilities to help make your way past the destructive towers. The downfall of the support abilities is your ability to use them. When you need to use your abilities, it's always a fast-paced situation, you don't have the time to slowly move your mouse to the ability icon and then to your desired target point. The abilities are helpful and great to use, but the inability to hit a hotkey to select an abiltiy and then set a destination for where you want to place it really makes using them more difficult. If you hit a hotkey, the ability activates at the position you're currently at. It's convenient for when you want to activate something where you stand, but having to move somewhere and then press the hotkey causes the ability to activate sometimes in a position you weren't expecting.
All other features of the game are just great though. Thinking about line of sight for your units, morphing to take advantage of the different forms, planning the units you need for the mission and such, making the best use of your resources, all the tactical options available to you work well. Anomaly 2 is a well polished game
The sequel to Anomaly adds a competitive multiplayer mode. Basically, one player makes towers, and the other makes a convoy. You compete for score, by either destroying towers and generators, or by demolishing the units of the convoy. You win if you reach the scoring goal or have a large enough advantage in score. There are multiple maps to play, and it can be very exciting. However, it will take practice to play as the towers. You've got to learn to take full advantage of all your towers and exploit your opponent's weaknesses.
Most people will be more comfortable playing as the convoy at first as that's what the campaign focuses on. Thankfully, 3 tutorials that help you ease into playing as towers are provided. They don't touch on everything you'll need to know to win, but they definitely help you go in the right direction.
As you continue to play in matches with other people, your grade will go up. Not much purpose except for comparisons, but it's always exciting to compare with friends and see who's better. There's also a neat little statistics page for you to see how many big numbers you can get.
Anomaly 2 is a wonderful game that players who like to make plans and strategize will enjoy. It's got a good challenge, and if the campaign isn't enough for you, then multiplayer will continue to satisfy you for as long as the community keeps going. The new additions and improvements from the original can definitely be seen, and it's all been for the better.
8/10
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