Beaten 1st time on difficulty – N/A

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What a disappointment…

Switching to open world was a huge mistake in this case, I think. For start, the city roofs are poorly designed, with corners and surfaces where you can get stuck if you look hard for collectibles. Some buildings have a single, tiny bridge connecting to other buildings, making runner’s vision mandatory to reach the objective. More areas closer to street level would be welcome too, in first game it was a nice change to run so close to the ground for a change. There is one big area on ground but it is an empty construction area :/ The city is filled with collectibles/interactables that give you XP and if you try to grab them all you will stop constantly, killing the momentum. You kinda need them because DICE introduced a talent tree and many useful skills are locked behind it, including few that you had from the beginning in the previous game.

Combat is atrocious and I would like my guns back.

For some reason this is a reboot so although there are many elements and story bits that made it from first game to this, this game is not connected to the previous one. I personally liked the first ME better with its setting somewhere between today or very near future. Catalyst is more futuristic compared to first game, futuristic looking cars speeding on the ground and drones speeding over the roofs, animated billboards everywhere. By the way, some of them are put in ridiculous places where you could only see and hear the commercial if you stood on the roof in a specific place, where you probably shouldn’t be if you were just a normal citizen. And that’s just one example for poor open world design.

The game shines during its closed story missions, with areas designed specifically for player to speed through and do cool parkour shit. Occasionally you are interrupted to do a combat section. The running and parkour-ing(?) is still fun and without the 60fps lock it feels better than first game. Running in free mode can be fun too in some sections and when you know the way. It is also a pretty game to look at. It is supposed to be a capitalist dystopia but idk, I feel like DICE failed at that again, it often doesn’t really feel like it. The first game had the same issue and the only hint that it isn’t was other characters telling you so and cops being too trigger-happy. Perhaps that’s the point that it looks like that at first glance, but under the surface it isn’t. I think DICE just found a cool aesthetic and they stuck to it. Besides the two ME I also played Battlefield 3 campaign and let’s be real, DICE is not capable of writing deep, meaningful stories or worlds lol.

There is a story but like first game, it is forgettable. However in the first game I didn’t find any of the characters obnoxious. Here we have Plastic, a teenage hacker who I found incredibly annoying and Rebecca, a wanna-be revolutionary who tries to sway Faith that killing all of middle-class and upper-class is the best way to fix the world.

Game worked fine 99% of time, I had couple crashes to desktop for no reason, but overall it works much better than the first game. Raising the FPS cap is a great improvement too, running and doing parkour at 165fps was amazing.

But it’s hard to recommend. Introducing talent trees and turning this game into full open world was a mistake, combat is even worse than first game. At least if you didn’t like the melee combat in first game you could just take the gun from one of enemies and shoot them and DICE knows how to make guns feel good to shoot.

Beaten 1st time on difficulty – Normal
Favorite OST:
02 – Village of the Doomed
05 – Wonderland Woods
06 – Time to Die

Before starting “Alice: Madness Returns” I wanted to play the OG game and luckily there’s an easy way to play it through “Madness Returns”. I won’t link the steam guide for it as I’m pretty sure it’s not legal, but it’s easy to find via game’s community hub. The version I played is a remastered version that was bundled with special edition of A:MR, comes with widescreen support and other improvements for modern systems, but AFAIK gameplay and story is unchanged.

I never read the book but it’s pretty obvious from start that wonderland is a reflection of Alice’s psyche. From bits I saw, the original wonderland is nothing like this new Wonderland. When Alice lands in wonderland it’s dark, twisted. And first native we meet is a cat with very skinny body, tail with pointy end and big paws and head, with an evil smile. Although he doesn’t look very trustworthy, he’s our only guide sticking with us through the entire game and one of few allies in this new dangerous Wonderland. Going a bit further we find ourselves in a village that’s under rule of Queen of Hearts. In fact the whole Wonderland is ruled by the Queen with Jacks of Spades/Hearts/Diamonds/Clubs being the common enemy and enforcers of her rule.

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This game drips with atmosphere!

Atmosphere and the world carry this game a lot IMO because the combat is pretty basic and platforming is easy. Sometimes they throw a unique puzzle in, like that one in Chess Kingdom where you are turned into a chess piece and you can only move like that chess piece on board. There are some platforming sections, sometimes with enemies throwed in that spawn only when you reach a tight spot 😵 You have 8 weapons, with knife being your starting weapon. Besides health you also have Mana or Will or whatever it’s called in this game. Most weapons have alternate fire mode which is nice. Besides slicing with the knife you can also throw it and it will reappear in Alice hand after 3-4 seconds. This and left-click attack of Croque Mallet are only weapons that don’t use mana. Everything else use one shared pool of mana.

Design of every creature and location is incredible in this game and it running on Quake III engine adds extra atmosphere as you can make some really dark and gothic looking levels. Music is composed by Chris Vrenna, drummer from Nine Inch Nails and using various kind of child instruments mixed with standard instruments, it sounds incredible.

Story in a nutshell is Alice trying to overcome her depression and grief after her entire family dies in a fire and she’s the only survivor. As mentioned before, the wonderland is a reflection of her psyche, which now is a twisted and dark place. It seems hopeless the further you go but maybe there is hope for Alice?

It sucks that with time you won’t be able to get this game anymore. There is only one legit way to get it nowadays - buy an old boxed version. EA used to sell “Alice: Madness Returns” Special Edition but stopped selling it for some reason and you can only buy standard version (that doesn’t have this game) so your only hope is finding a working key somewhere. Humble Bundle used to sell Origin keys for $30 but no more :/ It’s a game worth saving in my opinion, even if gameplay is a bit lackluster. EA sells some of their old games on GOG, so maybe one day we’ll get a proper re-release? For now, you can use that steam guide I mentioned. I can at least confirm it works and my game didn’t turned into bitcoin farming machine, I launched it via “Alice: Madness Returns” but it should work stand-alone, in theory.

But overall I recommend it, I enjoy games with atmosphere like this and as I found out it’s not the darkest Alice game out of two that we got so far!

Beaten 1st time on difficulty – Normal
Favorite OST:
11 – Card Castles in the Sky

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Alice is now 19 years old. She’s stuck in orphanage in London, two places that are not very good for your mental health. She’s under the care of Dr. Bumby, a psychiatrist who specializes in using hypnosis to help his patients, the children in the orphanage and of course our Alice. His advices are questionable as he insists that the best solution is to just forget which is not how you deal with mental health problems. While doing some errand for the Doctor and going through streets of London in some poor district full of shady men, whores and grim looking policemen, we get our first hallucination. Alice finds herself in Wonderland. It’s different, it’s still really strange but this time it’s beautiful, idyllic almost. And our old friend the Cheshire Cat is back!

We get few peaceful moments in this beautiful Wonderland learning how to move etc. before we run into enemies made out of black sludge. This black sludge, as we later find out, infested all of the Wonderland and along with Infernal Train that is riding through the Wonderland is causing it to slowly fall apart, threating the only safe haven Alice has from the outside world.

The biggest improvement is probably the combat system and weapons. We only have 4 weapons and each for specific purpose. Knife returns and is the main melee weapon. It’s fast, deals decent damage and the combat in general is way more spectacular but knife especially where Alice cuts and cuts with knife producing flashes of blue and red lights and time slows down just for a split second with each cut. You can now lock onto a specific enemy, useful especially for ranged kills because there’s some weird mouse acceleration when you try to target manually with ranged weapons. Pepper grinder is our main ranged weapon, it can overheat and is unusable for few seconds if that happens. Hobby Horse is the heavy melee weapon for enemies with armor or other protection that needs breaking. And lastly teapot cannon, which is a ranged weapon that is good for groups of enemies and can be charged for more powerful shot. It’s a good change because although previous game had 8 weapons with alternative fire, I only used like three or four 95% of time. And combat feels much more focused and more thoughtful.

My old friend...

The Infernal Train.

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The biggest downgrade is the Soundtrack. It’s simply forgettable, a background music so the game is never completely silent. The only exception is “Card Castles in the Sky” and you hear it on your way to the castle of the Queen of Hearts, the main enemy of the last game. It fits the location so well and is sad and beautiful at the same time. But that’s it out of over 30 tracks!

And another downside… The game is just too damn long. Every chapter is unnecessarily long with mostly the same combat situations and repeatable puzzles and platforming. The game just drags on and on. This is a common criticism towards this game, which I found out after I beated it and was curious what others say. This game could easily be 4-5 hours shorter and it would make much better experience. It’s such a shame because I feel like I would enjoy it much, much more and overall the game would be better.

Unique puzzles/minigames return, some I enjoyed like when Alice is turned into a giant and she has to smash the defenses of Red Castle, some I hated like in the Fine China chapter where game turns into 2D platformer.

Your outfit and even some weapons change depending on the chapter, which is a cool detail! I especially love the outfit Alice has in the Red Queen's castle.

The story and themes are even darker than the first game. The Infernal train and black sludge are outside forces that are there to destroy a secret Alice knows and is buried somewhere deep within her mind. First game dealt with feelings of guilt and depression, but this game goes further and touches subject like abuse (in many different forms). The game looks less grim on the outside but the looks are deceptive. The ending brings some resolution but the fate of Alice is… uncertain. And if you read the news, it will stay like this as “Alice: Asylum” will never come out. Shame!

It's worth playing despite its issues and like previous game, I recommend this. It tackles topics that are never touched in AAA games and sometimes in indie games. Great combat, just unnecessary long. And this one you can still buy, but beware it sometimes is removed from store only to return after a year, idk what EA is smoking. Grab it on nearest sale before EA decides to remove it permanently.

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Beaten 1st time on difficulty – Legendary
Favorite OST:
06 – Heretic, Hero
24 – Mombasa Suite
30 – Reclaimer

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Enjoyed this sequel very much and I’m hyped to play Halo 3 soon! I’m only sad it ended when it did, I thought that at least the prophet arc would be over, but it seems before we deal with Gravemind in 3 we gotta start with the Prophet.

There’s some changes in gameplay, health is gone and you only have shields now. Dual wielding is introduced for some weapons like new SMG and Covenant weapons like plasma pistols, you can mix them too, but I avoided SMGs as they are basically like Assault Rifle from first game, insane spread, medium damage, pretty useless on legendary difficulty. And about that AR, it’s gone and replaced by Battle Rifle, 3 fire burst, 2x scope, decent damage against shield-less Covenant, pretty good!

This game is just evil on Legendary difficulty! Like in 1st game there are a lot more enemies and you are very squishy, but now added into mix are jackal snipers that one shot you even at 100% shields and often land a hit on first shot :| They are introduced in 2nd mission I think and pop up pretty consistently throughout the Master Chief campaign. I don’t mind the challenge but getting one shot by enemy sniper the second they spot you is just frustrating and sometimes I had to kill half a dozen of them before getting next checkpoint.

Getting to play as one of the Covenant was a surprise, but a welcome one :) I feel like Bungie could just gotten away with more Master Chief + all the gameplay additions/changes that are present and this game would be a success, but having this new covenant angle was an excellent addition! Getting to see how Covenant function was interesting, lots of good story pieces and missions.

Halo: CE felt a little dated but I think Halo 2 is better and holds up. I played mostly on classic graphics because I feel like new graphics don’t retain the same atmosphere of old visuals + they have the same issue where some pieces of environment are bigger and think they give you cover, but in fact enemies see & shoot right through it, meanwhile old visuals don’t have that issue.

Soundtrack is mostly composed of remixes from first game but there’s few new, awesome tracks.

Next – Halo 3. I’m excited for it!

Beaten 1st time on difficulty – Hard
Mods/fixes used: Tweaking visual settings in .ini file
Favorite OST:
02 – Everything Is Going To Be Ok
09 – Alex Theme
14 – Mind Game

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Another Arkane game. While Dishonored was an immersive sim heavily inspired by games like Thief, Prey is more similar to System Shock, where player is stuck on one giant station where they can roam freely. Some sections are closed off at start, for story reasons obviously. The Talos I station is massive and so is its exterior that we can use to travel faster between sections, after we get equipment to survive in space.

Prey is set in alternative future, where the soviets first discovered an alien called Typhon after one of their satellites orbiting the moon stopped responding. They sent an investigation team, after it looked undamaged from outside, they tried to breach it and got wiped by aliens. Couple years later they contact US and explain the situation and ask for help, which results in joint program called "Kletka" (cage) where they build a station around the abandoned satellite to contain the aliens and maybe learn something from them. That same year, Harvey Lee Oswald attempts to assassinate President Kennedy. He fails, after which Kennedy's administration decides to take full control of the station and focus on researching Typhon for military and commercial purposes. It didn't took long for Typhon to breach the research station. They killed entire US research personnel and since no major discoveries were made the US decides to abandon the station and let it orbit the moon. In year 2030 the TranStar corporation takes control of the abandoned station, transforms it into a gigantic Talos I station and makes major discoveries, one of the results of that is production of Neuromods. That's our backstory. The year is 2035 and we play as Morgan Yu, vice president and Director of Research of TranStar Industries, and after picking either female or male Morgan, we go through a very impressive intro/tutorial. It’s one of the more memorable parts of the game and quite weird at first, but it makes more sense as you learn about the world and Yu’s past.

Calling it FPS is weird as while there are firearms and you do play for first person perspective, you don’t have to solve every problem with a gun or by killing something. There’s almost always an alternative path for sneaking or a spot to hide in rooms with one entry/exit. Though sometimes the game forces you to kill something, which is different from Dishonored where you could finish the mission without killing anyone, you can be stealthy most of time. But when you have to kill something, it’s Typhon, not human. But if you want to kill every human you meet, you can and this game takes that into account.

Prey has similar character look to Dishonored characters, but they are a bit more grounded in this game – no more guards with oversized shoulders and hands for example! As for station, living quarters and sections meant for guests and visitors have this very luxurious look and something called “art deco”. From rooms to normal items like lamps and chairs, they all have a very strong art deco look. As for more industrial sections and sections focused on science, they have the looks you’d expect. One section that stands out is Arboretum built at the very top of the station, an artificial park with lush greenery and where most food is grown for station inhabitants. The only thing separating this section from outer space is a giant transparent dome.

But even with this art direction the game does not look good at maximum settings. Draw distance is very low and you can see slight texture popping, the Lobby is a perfect example as it is a big and open space and you can see some exterior through its giant window. Texture quality on its own is just not good, like from first Dishonored game but Prey is from 2017, not 2012… Anti-aliasing doesn’t work and you have to force it via text edits. This was a game I wanted to play for a long time and I thought it would be a great test for my new GPU but honestly I could probably run this easily on my old 660Ti, very disappointing in this regard. I know screenshots on store page are usually made to look slightly better but this is criminal what Arkane/Bethesda did, the game does not look at all like it does on official screenshots.

This is what game looks like after I did some .ini tweaks

Yu family. What a friendly looking bunch!

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Besides picking if we want to fight every enemy or sneak around them, we also get to pick what kind of Morgan we want to be. A good Morgan who helps people, even if it’s something insignificant that will only make one guy feel better, or a selfish Morgan who only focuses on more important goals and doing perhaps morally questionable things? It may not be an easy choice as we learn more about Typhon and get mixed messages from past Morgan who tells us one thing but then a different thing via video messages and robots with his/her voice. After all, as Vice President and Director of Research, Morgan is one of the people “in the know” so maybe we should listen to past ourselves even if it may seem like a bad idea from our point of view? Oh and did I mention Morgan has amnesia when we get to play him/her? A cliché, but not the worst sin this game commits, but I won’t spoil the game’s story further 😊

And back to choices, I made a choice to not inject myself with Neuromods that give you Typhon powers. In general I decided to stay human through my playthrough, saving every human I can and staying “clean” but I still used Neuromods that give you more human powers. This however resulted in me missing out on some very cool combat powers and made fights less fun and more repeatable over time. I don’t think most players will do that on their 1st playthrough and the punishment of acquiring Typhon powers is that deployable turrets will think you’re a Typhon. Sounds bad but turrets deal so little damage and are easily destroyed or disabled that it’s a small trade-off.

There’s a good dose of horror/dread in this game, not enough to call this a horror but couple jump scares and situations that made me feel uneasy. Typhon themselves can give you few scares by just their natural behavior, especially mimics who are spider-like creatures that can turn into anything smaller or slightly bigger than them. You get a tool to detect them later on (which I hate because it ruins that enemy imo) but before it you have to either check everything with wrench or pay attention to your surroundings. Maybe it’s that second chair next to the desk or extra cup… their AI makes decision what to pick and it’s never the same, but sometimes they make dumb decision like turning into a garbage can on top of a desk, but it’s rare. Phantoms are tough humanoid creatures and even late in game having to fight two at the same time was a bit stressful, at least on hard difficulty and with my choices. And they come in different flavors, fire Phantom that can burn you, electric Phantom that disables everything in close vicinity (some of your weapons included), ethereal Phantom that can make a perfect copy of itself… Telepath and Technopath are just giant floating blocks of Typhon matter, former can mind control humans and will send them at you, latter can hack any AI and likes to attach hacked turrets to itself while also spawning balls of lightning near you.

I won’t spoil the ending but it is disappointing… Like I said before, it’s another cliché, it is not as bad as it could be in other games given the context and some implications buuuuut it is still disappointing. And you have to wait for credits to end before you get to see it, I wonder how many players have missed that xD

Best Arkane game? Nah, I think I liked Dishonored 2 a bit more. But overall I had fun with this, great world, great characters, great level design, okay-ish combat. Recommended!

Bye!

Beaten 1st time on difficulty – Normal
Mods/fixes used: N/A
Favorite OST:
04 – Old War Machines
11 – Cataclysm
15 – Pinnacle Robotics

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ITB is a turn based game where we have a squad consisting of 3 mechs fighting giant bugs called Vek. After you place your units on the map, Vek make their move, setting up attacks on your units or the civilian buildings that you must protect. When Vek are done, you know exactly who or what they’re going to attack, how much damage their attack will do and if it will leave a mark on one of the tiles (like setting nearby forest on fire or covering a tile in pool of acid). Your next turn is to figure out the best counter. You can kill the Vek if you have enough firepower or if the type of enemy is squishy, you can move them to redirect the attack or attack each other, cancel their attacks with smoke, push them to death (they can’t swim, for example :P). You usually have plenty of options and I don’t know if I’m making this up, but the AI almost always sets their units in a way that there’s a solution where you can take no damage, if you can find it. Sometimes it’s obvious, sometimes you need to carefully plan your steps to execute a good turn. However to get the AI to setup in such a way, you need to have 4 or less Vek units on the map. Usually 3 of them will focus on building, the last one on your unit, so in this scenario you simply move the unit that’s targeted and focus on killing or pushing units that are targeting the buildings. If you can’t contain the Vek numbers though, you will quickly find yourself in situation where the best you can do is minimize the damage.

There are 4 islands, each with different environments and unique missions and the final island “The Last Stand” that you can access after clearing at least 2 islands. When you play for the first time, you only have access to island owned by “Archive Inc.” corporation. Secure it once, you get access to RST island, secure RST once and get access to Pinnacle Robotics and secure PR to get Detritus. When you unlock 2nd island it’s up to you which islands you want to clear and in what order. The islands and their respective corporations are:

Archive Inc. – Earth like island, with forests and lots of green. It’s also a sort of museum of Human civilization, before the oceans swallowed most of land. First island you have access to and the easiest. There’s a lot of missions where you have an advantage, like old Earth MLR’s or air support.

R.S.T. Corporation – Desert like island with lots of tiles covered in sand and when hit they create a smoke, smoke cancels attacks of any unit standing on it. Somewhat more fair island, there’s one mission where you get insta-killing terraformer, but others have environmental effects where both sides are affected.

Pinnacle Robotics – Icy island. Runned by AI. And you often get a missions that involve robots. Sometimes you need to protect said robots to get more reputation, even if the robots attack you or do something that makes it harder for both sides to move. If there’s water it’s frozen (duh) but you can break the ice to have option for insta killing Vek.

Detritus Disposal – Waste Island, trash, toxic industrial environment. Somewhat balanced, has unique tiles like teleporters or conveyor belts. And because of that Vek might position themselves in a way that requires you to use them to get the best result. Also lots of tiles with acid on it, units covered in acid take 2x damage and sometimes a perfect position to deal with a Vek is right on top of acid tile… At first may seem like an island where odds are stacked against you slightly, but it’s pretty balanced, just requires some more patience and planning.

The Last Stand – Final. Small volcanic island. Just one, two stage mission and it’s the destruction of Vek hive. On normal and hard difficulties the odds are against and you often have to cheese it to win. If you decide to tackle it early without clearing all islands, you’ll get less alpha versions of Vek but it still can be hard as your mechs don’t have many upgrades.

Example of unique objectives as seen in top right, on Archive Inc. island. Water from Dam will kill any Vek on its way and will make manoeuvre-ing for Vek more difficult. Mechs can't drown :) But they can't attack in water!

Achievements play an important role in this game, they’re not just trophies but your way of obtaining currency to unlock new mech squads. There are global achievements that you can do with any squad and squad achievements tied to specific mech squad. That can be a problem for some people as some achievements can be difficult to pull off unless you get really lucky or setup for them. And without achievements you get less coins to unlock squads, you get less options. Luckily you don’t have to do them all to get all squads. And you can do them on easy difficulty too, so you can always do run on easy to get achievements and continue on higher difficulty if you want.

Mechs are split into squads and they usually specialize in one or two things. For example Rusting Hulks specialize in covering the map tiles in as much smoke as they can and one of the mechs gives you a passive bonus that any enemy unit standing in smoke will get 1 point of dmg at the start of next turn. Flame Behemoths specialize in spreading fire and are immune to it. Blitzkrieg rely heavily on Lightning mech within that unit that has electric whip that can chain attacks to nearby units, but it can hurt your units too. You can make custom squads too, with the mechs from squads you unlocked, or create a random squad. Both custom and random squads have their achievements too.

You can make squads even stronger with special pilots. And after a lost/won game you can keep one pilot, and they keep their bonuses from leveling up. My favorite combo is Rusting Hulks with Camila Vera inside Jet Mech, Camila is immune to smoke and Vek web, so she cannot be immobilized and can attack while standing on smoke tile. It can be a pretty OP combination as it’s possible to get so much smoke on map that Vek AI gets confused and sometimes stuck. Abe Isamu is another favorite as he has “Armored” passive and blocks 1 damage. Superb in early game before Alpha Vek start to appear as most normal Vek deal 1 damage and he can just tank them with no consequence. Morgan Lejuene is another favorite, on every kill she gains “Boosted” which increases Mechs move and damage for next turn, it’s possible to keep the buff for entire mission if you can get kill on every turn with her. All pilots have some personality too, aforementioned Abe Isamu is very cold and determined to destroy the Vek, pilot named Adam is a sort of religious fanatic, Lily Reed is a little childish and sees this war like a video game. Morgan is very curious about Vek and how they communicate, how they function, she constantly wants to gather more samples and data. Even non-unique pilots have some personality to them and by their clothing you can tell from which island they originate.

Special pilots get their unique bonuses from the start, but like normal pilots they can level up and you get a random bonus. Before “Advanced Edition” update the bonuses were very simple, +2 HP or +1 reactor energy, as some examples. Advanced edition introduced bonuses like “Thick Skin” that gives immunity to fire and acid, “Masochist” which gives you +2 move when not at full HP, “Technician” that repairs your Mech by 1 at the start of enemy turn. “Normal” pilots can get any of the mentioned and not mentioned level up bonuses, but unique pilots are obviously better. It is possible to have a full squad with unique pilots as at the start of a mission there is a chance that a time pod will crash on the map and if you recover it during mission or the Vek won’t crush it, there’s a chance a unique pilot will be inside (this is also how you unlock them, as at the start of new game you can pick one unique pilot from the pool).

There’s some RNG in this game. You don’t know at what turn a specific enemy will spawn, but before picking an island you know what types of enemies are going to be present and what boss waits at the end. Missions give you reputation that you spend after clearing an island, but you don’t know what weapons or passive bonuses you will see there. And the “shop” is random as you get weapons for Mech class that you don’t have, you can still use that weapon but it will require one extra power to work. AI is not fully predictable either. While having 4 or less Vek you almost always have tools to deal with it, when you get say 6 Vek their decisions can be weird. Sometimes 4-5 will focus on your units and you can avoid most of attacks by just moving, sometimes all of them will focus on buildings. But if you have this many Vek on screen that means you made mistakes 99% of time. But that’s it I think… Hell, you even get information of attack order for Vek, perhaps a Vek attacking 1st that can be moved, could kill that other Vek attacking 2nd that cannot be moved, you have information to set it up like this. But point is while there is some RNG, I never felt like I got screwed by it.

Buildings have a chance to resist damage, in this run I managed to up my defense to 36%. This is really high and was done on easy difficulty, you start with 15% and usually it stays at this number.

ITB has some interesting story and world, though it’s never in your face, you learn about it via short dialogues that pop up during or between missions, and from dialogues of unique pilots. It also uses the idea of multiple timelines to justify you playing the same game over and over. Once you defeat the Vek or loose trying, you are sent to the next timeline to fight Vek there. Like I said before you can take one pilot with you to the next timeline and there’s no limit into how many timelines you can take them. In my current state I have one pilot with experience from 20 previous timelines :) Aforementioned time pods are obviously from different timelines. You can abandon the timeline at any point in the game, even in middle of the mission.

Overall I really enjoyed this game and after dozens of runs it serves great as a game to run a podcast or YT video in background, as sound is not needed to play this. It is from creators of FTL but it is different, though they are very familiar in some regards (art, font, music by the same guy, some game mechanics). ITB is completely turn based, FTL has pause button to issue commands and your crew carries them out in real-time, combat is in real-time too. FTL was way more tense sometimes, in this game the worst that can happen is you realizing you’re screwed after running all options in your head and just accepting it. I can’t promise you’ll enjoy this one if you enjoyed FTL and vice versa. But I highly recommend both games.

Beaten 1st time on difficulty – Advanced
Mods/Fixes used: N/A

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This is a reversed tower defense game, or tower offense in other words. YOU are the attacker and have to build a squad of units to destroy or just survive the attacks of towers on your path. It’s an interesting concept, I don’t know if this is the first game of this kind but regardless I liked Anomaly.

The story is pretty simple – some kind of alien ship crashlands in Baghdad. Surrounding area starts to grow in some kind of red mold, towers begin to emerge from ground and attack anything in its range. You, the commander of 14th armored platoon is sent to investigate and it won’t take long for you to find out that aliens are hostile. And so you push on to the center of the crash site to secure the ship and its technology. The red mold thing is weird tho, as the towers are fully mechanical and not organic in any way. One of characters calls it “growth” and then it’s never mentioned again, sometimes you’ll see it on the ground on some levels but that’s it. As you play you’ll find out there is a little more to the story, one more alien race is involved and maybe there is some bigger conflict happening in the background, but I guess this was left for sequel and other parts of series. Anomaly series has 5 games in total, including this one. And besides Baghdad we also get to visit Tokyo where another ship crashed.

Each mission starts with X amount of money at your disposal, you build your squad then you set a path for your squad. For example, you start on a straight street and at its end you can either go left or right. And after you pick either side, it goes straight and along its path there are another turns and so on. You can set your entire path at start and you can also change every turn on fly, you have a free hand most of times how your units go. Sometimes a mission begins with a very long road with no turns, but that mostly happens at the beginning of campaign where you are still being taught how to play. Other times a mission requires you to reach a point in X amount of time, then you have to take the most optimal path. At start you only have access to two unit types – APC and crawlers, the latter is 4-legged robot with rocket launchers and it’s a powerful unit even in the end game. APCs are cheap, have ok armor and deal little damage but I wouldn’t recommend using them in late game. There are shield generators that generate a shield (duh!) for itself, a unit in front of it and for unit in the back. Dragon has twin flamethrowers, I find it great as a front and more tanky unit. Tank, which is actually not the best tanky unit in the game imo! And lastly a Supply truck which spawns extra consumable for your commander once X amount of towers is destroyed. Six unit types and you can have up to six units on field at the same time. And in addition to having units that move on set path, you have a commander that you can move around with, drop various power-ups and even bait towers! That last one is an actual mechanic you can use against towers that turn veeeery slowly. Well, there’s only one tower type where it really works, but say your units are not in range of tower, you run in with commando and stand at the opposite direction from where your units are coming from, it starts shooting at you and when your units are in range attacking it, it takes 3-4 seconds for that tower to turn before it can shoot at your units. It’s a really cool mechanic but it only works on one type of tower, other types turn so fast it makes almost no difference.

"Welcome to the oil fields"
Your commander cannot be killed, but they can be knocked down for few seconds. This can be really serious when your units are entering a street filled with towers and you cannot be there and pop up healing consumables, decoys etc. sometimes it can end in mission reset, so running into every tower cluster is not a very good idea :D

There are 18 missions in campaign + 3 bonus modes, first 2-3 missions are tutorials, then game keeps getting harder and harder. It never stops innovating, the last tower type is introduced somewhere around mission 13 and some missions have unique tasks or quirks about them. 18 missions is not a lot but devs managed to make them varied and keep things interesting. I played the whole game on “Advanced” difficulty which is 2nd difficulty choice out of 3. You have “Casual”, “Advanced” and “Hardcore” and so while 2nd is named “Advanced” in every other game it would be named “Normal”. I never touched Hardcore because I don’t think I’m that good at this game + there’s no achievements tied to this difficulty so… I think there were only 2-3 missions that I really struggled with on “Advanced” and one of them being the final mission.

OST is kind of bland. And idk why they picked Iraq where 2/3 of campaign mission happens, it’s a game from 2011 and I think every military shooter was set in middle east back then? It’s the only reason I can think of and maybe this way they wanted to interest more players? I have no idea.

To end this… Maybe there are better reverse tower defense games, but I liked Anomaly.