DotA burst forth from the Warcraft III mod scene with a mighty roar and a shower of blood, each drop growing into another independent MOBA, but tower defence games were a more creeping success. Oh sure, they'd been around before, but they bred madly in that weird environment then escaped into the wild. And, much like DotA, what's followed has never really strayed far from the original formula. 11 Bit Studios played with flipping it in Anomaly: Warzone Earth, controlling soldiers fighting through alien fortifications, but couldn't resist the lure of tower defence forever.
Its newly-announced Anomaly Defenders is a reverse-tower offence (or a reverse-reverse-tower defence) with the radical idea of building static defences to ward off advancing enemies.
]]>'Anomaly' remains a word my brain doggedly refuses to spell right, but fortunately the little red squiggly line in my word processor always knows what to do. One day we'll hire that guy, or girl. We're equal squiggly opportunities here, you know. 'Anomaly' is also the first word in the name of the upcoming sequel to 11-Bit Studios' inverted tower defence game, Anomaly: Warzone Earth. The sensibly subtitless Anomaly 2 arrives in just over a fortnight, on May 15, and while we usually don't post about preorder incentives because it's a slightly different weapon or a stupid hat or just being bullied by the man in Gamestop, when it's a free extra copy of the game it's rather less slight, stupid or bullying. It's still bloody preordering, of course, and you wouldn't preorder a car. You wouldn't preorder a handbag. You wouldn't preorder a television. You wouldn't preorder a movie. Actually, people probably do pre-order all those things, don't they? Political correctness gone mad, I call it.
]]>The greatest horror to befall popular culture in the last decade is not Michael Bublé, as is commonly believed. It is another Michael B entirely, and one infinitely more dangerous. Michael Bay's Transformers movies were, somehow, some of the biggest box-office grossing movies of all time, you see. This means a generation of young and/or money-hungry creators are convinced that the path to riches is to include spiky metal insecty things with pallid neon bits invading cyan-hued American cities, accompanied by a boomy orchestral soundtrack. We've just seen it in Crysis 3, and now 11-bit's tower-defence-in-reverse sequel Anomaly 2's at it. It's not right. Why can't game artists be inspired by Czech animation, Swedish architecture and Fleetwood Mac instead? I'd play the hell out of a game about asymmetrical clay bears trashing Malmo while Go Your Own Way plays.
BUT ANYWAY. Bayisms aside, the four levels of early Anomaly 2 code I've played suggest good things, building upon the RTS aspect of the tower-dodging action.
]]>Do you remember when 11 Bit Studios opened pre-orders for a game before telling anyone what the game was? Today is the day of the actual announcement, so for anyone who did pre-order, can we have a drumroll please? In fact, hold the drums - let me limber up the old saliva gland and prepare my flute for action. Sit back, listen up and prepare yourself for the grand reveal. Oh, cock, I gave it away in the headline didn't I? It's Anomaly 2, a sequel to the tower-defence-in-reverse game that Jim enjoyed back in the day. Trailer below.
]]>...Which I don't say to demean the fine contents of the latest Humble offering, but simply because there are slightly fewer games than usual, plus it's primarily an Android phone offering, albeit with PC/smug expensive PC/beardy defensive PC versions of the contents also available. Which is, of course, why I'm posting it. They're calling it the most cross-platformish bundle they've even done. Contents this time around are:
Anomaly: Warzone Earth (reverse tower defence), Osmos (cellular absorption puzzler), and EDGE (cubist physics puzzler). Pay over the average - currently in the $10 zone - and you'll get World of Goo too.
]]>Anomalies are so named because they go nom nom nom and eat everything that investigates them. It's true! Something else that's true is that tower-defence-but-in-reverse game Anomaly: Warzone Earth now has a demo out, and you can get it here. Jim got on well with Anomaly, calling it a "novel idea, well-presented... well-executed", and even comparing it to Defense Grid. I've spawned some footage of the game itself after the jump.
]]>11 Bit Studios' clever (and budget-priced) tower-defence-in-reverse game, Anomaly – Warzone Earth, is out today! The concept and presentation look neat, but is it a towering inferno, or a creepy cinder? What does that mean? I just don't know. I've been up all night playing videogames. But that won't let stop me telling you wot I think...
]]>Last week I went along to see the first game from 11 bit studios, the new independant developer that's made up by a collection of ex-CD Projekt staffers. The first thing the gentleman demoing the game did was apologise for the game's title- Anomaly: Warzone Earth. The second thing he did was explain that it was a tower defense game, which he didn't apologise for. That's because Warzone Earth is a tower defense game that you play... in reverse.
]]>WORLD EXCLUSIVE! It's true. 11bit Studios us send word of their new game, which they are saying is "an arcade approach to the real-time strategy genre." It's you versus alien robot baddies in urban environments. 11bit explain: "Prepare to be thrown into urban environments overrun by an alien scourge, and take command of an intense tactical combat experience. As the on-field commander, using advanced heavy armor military vehicles to create the perfect squad, plan your tactical route and fight to destroy the enemy machines." Sounds like we can expect this to be a fairly fast-paced top-down RTS, which some fancy anomalous visuals. The core game is apparently a story-driven campaign with "dynamically changing objectives". They've supplied a few more images, which you can see below. Examine them for clues!
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