14 DAY TRIAL // Anomaly 2 was announced earlier this year as a sequel to the very impressive Anomaly: Warzone Earth with not only fresh mechanics and more varied gameplay but also with a multiplayer mode, for the first time in the series.
We have already posted a special preview of the game's single-player campaign and now we finally had a chance to try out Anomaly 2's closed multiplayer beta.
Does the new mode make a great addition to Anomaly 2 or should you stick with its single-player campaign? Let's find out.
Anomaly 2's multiplayer has a rather great premise, as it puts the two players on opposing sides. One of them controls the humans and plays just like in the traditional single-player campaign in a tower offense style, while the other controls the alien towers and plays a more classic tower defense experience.
They both end up on a map where the aliens have a few crucial generators. Both players need to reach a certain number of points by completing different tasks, such as destroying each other's units.
Both factions can deploy different powers, ranging from decoys and EMP attacks for humans, to Berseker or Kamikaze abilities for the aliens.
Of course, humans can still choose the route of their units, which can't be seen by the aliens. As a result, the defenders need to carefully study the tactical map, on which all units are shown, and then spend money on building towers once they guess where enemies will go to.
Things get even more complex thanks to a leveling up mechanic, as players can spend their hard-earned credits on advancing to the next level in order to unlock new units and passive powers.
While in theory the Anomaly 2 multiplayer sounds pretty fun, in practice, especially at the beginning, it's quite confusing and you won't even be able to figure out all of the different and quite complex mechanics until you lose some matches.
It certainly has a lot of potential but deploying power-ups is a bit confusing, mainly because the fast paced action makes tiny mistakes or delays play a big role in winning or losing a match.
Developer 11 Bit Studios promises to continue polishing the game ahead of its release this summer so let's hope the studio will be able to make the whole experience a bit less complex and decrease its tempo.
Check out segments from two Anomaly 2 multiplayer beta matches in the gameplay video above.