Tower defense turned on its head

In the future, if aliens should crash-land in both Tokyo and Baghdad, they’ll call on you to fight them. And Jason Statham’s voice will guide you. Or at least that’s how it is in Anomaly: Warzone Earth. Sort of a “reverse tower defense” game, it has you guide an armored column through fortified routes, providing upgrades, decoys, and repairs to keep your units alive. The end result is a real-time strategy game that pushes you to figure out the best possible route for your convoy while weighing the pros and cons of sending your units into harm’s way for additional funds to buy upgrades.

Tower defense is a classic genre, and it’s cool to see the reverse in action. Even if your lone hero isn’t capable of destroying much, you can weave in and out of buildings and wreckage, apply repairs, and act as a moving target. Plus, it’s got nifty graphics, good voice acting, and a nice dual-speed mode that lets you speed up the action when the gameplay is slow.

Get ready to repair your units on the fly as they pass enemy turrets.

An assortment of nice touches adds value. You can choose a custom difficulty at the start of each level, as hardcore or casual as you like. You can also pause and choose a new route on the fly, the game happily hurling a few curveballs your way in the form of extra enemies teleporting in.

You’ll need about 20 minutes to get used to the controls. While your hero is responsive and it’s easy to snag airdropped items, you can’t scroll around the map with the arrow keys as you’d expect. It’s not a deal breaker, but it takes some adjustment on your part.

The bottom line. Even so, everything is where it needs to be. Gameplay is incredibly fun, the application performed like a dream, and we were left hankering to finish each level. Now if only Jason Statham would just stop yelling at me…