Winning with Anomaly: Warzone Earth

11 Bit Studios‘ action-strategy game Anomaly: Warzone Earth came to me via Day 5 of Splitkick.com’s Holiday Giveaway competitions!

This is a reverse tower defense set in a future Earth where aliens have crash-landed, leaving large energy domes, or Anomalies, in several major cities.  You play as the Commander, leading a platoon of armoured units into the Anomaly to explore, and then re-take the city.

The first level has you enter the anomaly, and serves as the tutorial.. setting a path for the platoon, adjusting this to avoid falling asteroids, and repairing units which took damage..

Adjustments to the path are made in the tactical view, which freezes the action while you plan your new route.. avoid obstacles, or take a second pass of a not-quite-dead tower.  I found a lot of items were dropped after killing a tower, so I aimed for them on most missions 🙂

The commander can place smoke screen and decoys, and repair your armoured units.  I found him surprisingly strong.. able to take some fire from the towers, but regenerating very quickly once out of fire again.  He went down only once, while I was planting a decoy in the middle of a large group of towers.. and even this was only a three second knockdown before he was back on his feet!

Each unit has their own strengths and weaknesses.. tanks are well armoured but less offensive than crawlers, and shield-generators are unable to fire at all.  Setup of the platoon is mostly down to the player, although some units are added as part of the story, such as the shield generator drone and tank.  As you earn money during a mission, you can upgrade units or add more to your platoon too.

This means you can play as you want.. I mostly went with an APV or tank, shield-generator and crawler and upgraded them rather than add to the platoon.

Splitkick.com’s Holiday Giveaway also provided me with a Riot Nassus skin for League of Legends.. another game I want to revisit 🙂

I love tower defense, but I loved destroying towers for a change 🙂

Merry Christmas 2011!

Finally finished with work.. and the Christmas shopping.. time for games!

Well, time for finishing off a Christmas and pony related drawing for a friend, and attempting some of the Great Gift Pile objectives on Steam!  A fairly straightforward objective was to find an Xmas present in any multiplayer level of PAYDAY: The Heist.  In the First World Bank, the presents were waiting in the vault with the money 🙂

We also noticed new “beef” masks had been added to the game.. so here’s a friendly Tyrannosaurus with a gun! 😀

More games..

A friend bought us Renegade Ops, an action game by Avalanche Studios, featuring top-down driving destruction.. there’s 4-player co-op, so I can crash into my friends while I destroy things 😉

I took up an offer a while back for a different Christmas bundle; the Intermediaware Christmas bundle which also came with copies for friends too.  This pack contained eight games from Intermediaware.. shooters: Absolute Blue, Impact and Defense of Yano, puzzle games.. Captain Backwater, Temple of Tangram, Psychoballs and Atom Antics, and turn-based board game Kabama, for one or two players.  This bundle arrived by email as promised, on Christmas Eve!

I also won another game.. 11 Bit Studios‘ action-strategy Anomaly: Warzone Earth, from Day 5 of Splitkick.com’s Holiday Giveaway!

Need More Time.. Oh Wait!

Over the last week I’ve added yet more to my list of unplayed games.  I would normally say “I need more time”.. but I’ve now finished work, and it’s Christmas!  Though I’ll soon have to start on some projects, it means I do have a lot more free time 🙂

Today was partly spent trying to achieve a Gold Badge in the adrenaline challenge mode of Defense Grid: The Awakening.. trying, but not succeeding.  I completed the map, but didn’t score highly enough to get gold.

Earning a Gold Badge, and thereby getting the Flurry achievement was one of the objectives of Valve’s latest sale and competition: The Great Gift Pile.. collecting coal and winning prizes, with the chance to win everything on Steam via the Epic Holiday Giveaway on the 2nd Jan.  Everything on Steam.. wow.. I really wouldn’t have enough time!

Last week, I acquired Empire Earth: Gold Edition via GOG.com.. Empire Earth and expansion The Art of Conquest were being given away to anyone who came to the Good Old Games site!  Empire Earth is a real-time strategy by Stainless Steel Studios, said to be somewhat like my beloved Age of Empires, but going from the Stone Age all the way to the Space Age.  Looking forward to this one..

I previously noted that I’d won a copy of EA’s Alice: Madness Returns for the 360, through DR Gaming‘s 12 Days of Christmas giveaway on Facebook..  the game arrived this week, and better still, it came with a bonus Xbox LIVE code for the original American McGee’s Alice!  I remember playing the PC version of this game during my first Christmas together with Tim, on his recommendation 😉

Via a GameSpot UK competition, I won a Cyborg RAT 9 gaming mouse and “gaming surface” aka mousemat 😉
I’ve handed my address over and now await the postman!  Great timing too.. my mouse has been failing intermittently for a while now!  I also won a copy of Orcs Must Die! for Tim, through Day 2 of Splitkick.com’s Holiday Giveaway 2011.  Note: I’m not keeping track of the number of competitions I haven’t won 😉

Yet other new games have arrived thanks to the Humble Indie Bundle.. the contents of Bundle #3 have been added as bonus gifts for those who paid over the average!  This bundle contained Crayon Physics Deluxe, which I got from the Humble Introversion Bundle, and Lazy 8 Studios’ Cogs, which a friend gave me earlier in the year, as well as VVVVVV, Hammerfight and And Yet It Moves.

VVVVVV is a 2d platformer by Terry Cavanagh, with an interesting gravity-switching mechanic which you use to travel and avoid hazards.  I’m hopeful that this doesn’t require too much flailing at the keyboard to manage, otherwise I’ll find it more frustrating than fun.  Hammerfight, by Kranx Productions, is an aerial combat game where you control airships outfitted with hammers and swords!

The final game of the list is Broken Rules’ And Yet It Moves.  It isn’t a horror game, as I first thought when I heard the title, but a 2d puzzle where you control the orientation of the game environment as well as the player character.  This is the game I’m looking forward to most out of the three as I expect the puzzles to be quite fun!