New VR missions round out the strong extras. It's still easy to manage your team amidst eruptions of frantic combat, and having to balance fluctuating attack plans with the need to defend your own convoy keeps things moving at a brisk pace. Controls on the XBLA version aren't quite as streamlined as they are on the PC, but they work equally well. Anomaly: Warzone Earth is all about playing mother hen to your growing squad of armored alien-stompers, and the challenge of ferrying your forces through some of the bigger, crazier maps unscathed is enough to make you feel like a champ when you power through the hairy stretches successfully.īetween putting careful thought into the paths you pick and deploying power-ups with split-second timing at just the right spot, there's a lot to juggle, but it's a fun blend of chaos. Additionally, you can bring up a tactical map screen at any point to adjust the travel route of your convoy on the fly or scope out the action ahead to concoct an appropriate battle plan. While they're slowly traveling along the path, blasting at any foes within weapons range, you get to run around on foot to scout ahead, distract enemy turrets, and deploy weapon power-ups to keep them safe. Instead of having direct control over your convoy's armored vehicle units, you plot a course for them on a strategic map and let 'em rip. However, Anomaly's creative take on tower defense goes well beyond a mere role reversal in the combat department. This requires shoehorning your forces through heavily fortified enemy positions with a limited amount of funds and units available for resupply. As the head of an armored military column, your mission is to find a way to break through the energy barriers, battle your way to their core, and shut down your extraterrestrial foes before they can wipe out the entire planet. Mysterious alien invaders have landed in Baghdad and Tokyo, erecting force fields around both cities and digging in for a hard fight. The action gets off to a weird start, thanks to an outlandish plot setup, but everything soon settles into a steady groove. Warzones look just as crisp and detailed on the Xbox 360. The need to continually plot pathways, adapt to new adversaries, and lay down a constant stream of support power-ups to keep your convoy from being annihilated is thrilling stuff. Leading a convoy of high-tech military vehicles through the mazelike streets of a postapocalyptic Baghdad to infiltrate a giant energy dome and take down heavily entrenched alien forces is an enthralling exercise in combat strategy and quick thinking. 11 Bit Studios takes traditional tower defense gameplay and turns it inside out by putting you on the offensive in Anomaly: Warzone Earth.

There are many different creative tricks game developers use to add spice into well-worn genres to keep them feeling fresh, but sometimes, it's the simplest and least-expected ideas that yield the most alluring fruit.

Anomaly warzone earth review