Nothing seems normal in the world of Anomaly Agent, and it’s you who has to put an end to it.
Not to be bitter, but cyberpunk has become the genre that people are pushing to the max when it comes to creating a game. A shooter? Cyberpunk. Something political? Cyberpunk. A platformer? Of course, it has to be cyberpunk because that is what sells nowadays. Not to be too bothered by it, but the sudden emergence of anything dystopian falls under the same category of whatever popular is being milked in terms of what makes up on top of the charts. We do not blame people’s preferences, though; if I were to be fed medieval fantasy during the 2000s all the time, I’d eventually get sick of it, too.
Like anyone else, though, this little gaming studio called Phew Phew Game recently came up with its own cyberpunk title. Knowing the relations between the country it’s based in and the gaming culture, I expected a rather harsh approach. The way I mean approach should not be confused with a “half-assed” game, but rather understanding the basics wrong or not implementing the mechanics in a bad way that would put people off from attempting to play their game. Fortunately, Phew Phew Games’ first project, Anomaly Agent, has done well for several reasons.
As I mentioned, choosing a dystopian theme would always work if you are creating a game; it is not a cheap option per se, but if you opt for the route, it has to come out as a solid entry for its respective genre. Anomaly Agent is a cyberpunk 2D platformer with beat ’em up styled gameplay, filled with puns, jokes, and the overall good cop/bad cop mentality. Since it is a beat ’em up game at its core, being used to fast-paced games is always an upside, though you can ease the difficulty by letting the game match your pace instead.
Anomaly Agent’s story unfolds immediately as you are thrown into action with dialogue options. I know having a platformer to interact with other people on the line sounds a bit silly. Still, later, it promises a great deal regarding the main character’s personality. The agent might speak, but it is up to you to make him more appealing or unbearable with the dialogue options you choose. A great deal of sarcasm and irony can also be found in Anomaly Agent, making it more of a sensible game rather than looking like a forcefully scripted B-movie.
The story follows our agent on his last mission before being promoted to become a chief agent. Like plot twists can be obnoxious from miles away, four different anomalies appear before his promotion, letting the chief send him to hunt down the rest of the Anomalies. Anomalies are called beings that break the space-time continuum, and to keep the flow safe, we are tasked to bring them down. Four of them mean four different boss fights, so the game is relatively short if you are a master at beat ’em ups.
The meat and potatoes are now the topic; I am talking about the fighting, of course. The game offers a wide range of fighting styles for beating up clones- because God forbid we hit real people in the future. Everyone is either a mechanical clone or a cyborg, and we are the only fleshy beings that only exist, just like any other cyberpunk fiction out there- anyways, not to deviate too much off from the topic, the clones you encounter range from melee-only to gun-carrying henchmen and you have your ways to counter their attacks either by rolling or parrying.
The game starts easy by only letting you do melee combos. Still, as you progress further, new mechanics such as ranged weapons, throwable stunners, and even heavy damaging extra attacks can be unlocked. These require specific button combinations; subsequently, you can pair the combos to work well with ranged or heavy attacks for quick damage output. Ranged weapons start pretty weak, confusing as guns wouldn’t do less damage in a cyberpunk environment. They were weak enough not to kill a regular enemy with four to five bullets; upgrading them in the stations as you play along should suffice for tougher enemies in the later levels, though.
One thing about Anomaly Agent that I thought was unique was the merging of enemies. If two of the same type of clone get very close to each other, they can merge into a bigger enemy with more health; of course, this puts you in danger more than anyone else. Luckily, you can interrupt the merging animation to separate them before they become more trouble than they already are. What makes merging more interesting is the fact that the merger doesn’t stop between two basic clones; you can encounter bigger enemies merging, too.
Talking about enemies, I felt like they were quite a hit-sponge, even during a normal difficulty playthrough. Evading their attacks becomes a chore rather than setting up your combos, and for some odd reason, you are always doing considerably small melee damage despite it being a nice-looking beat ’em up. Unfortunately, Doing less damage converts to spending more time fighting against enemies and slows the pace. It is quite worse when it comes to a place where it’s fully stacked with enemies, and they are approaching from all sides.
With enough side-scrolling roguelikes in my experience bank, I thought playing Anomaly Agent would make me feel at least competent diving in, but later I realized it wasn’t the case. Usually, I would only blame myself for it due to not being the person I have thought of, but the controls are completely something else, and I do not mean it in a good way. The game utilizes all buttons possible on the controller, and how they laid it out felt quite mind-boggling.
What should have happened was that once you get used to a single mechanic, like throwing cards or parrying, you instinctively remember which button to use. But the game keeps adding new mechanics after every boss fight, leading to learning a new tactic on top of what you learned not 30 minutes ago. An ideal situation should be that you’d work on the new mechanic for a while, upgrade it, and get accustomed to it, but Anomaly Agent adds something new to confuse you deliberately. For example, parrying is done with the LT, but I easily made mistakes when I pressed RT, as it was bound to evade.
Both parry and evade are in shoulder buttons, making it somewhat uncomfortable to get your hands around it, but let’s say it was bound to the B button on the controller, like the BlazBlue game I played recently. It worked wonders because you instinctively look for a lower button for other combos instead of fiddling with your point fingers to make combos. It was quite an experience to get used to the control scheme of Anomaly Agent; I’d probably still make mistakes if I were to hop back into it if I am honest.
Not everything is bad about Anomaly Agent, though; do not get me wrong. The review might have started with a heavy criticism about how some games tend to be unoriginal, but Anomaly Agent also provides some neat tidbits. The gameplay is great, and there is no doubt about that; it showcases that at least some QA testing went through to see if slots fit into their designated spots rather than selling the game for a QA test and then apologizing for releasing a game too early- which happens quite a lot these days. The soundtrack fit the atmosphere and the game’s current mood. Mystery and playing the good cop also play a big role in the Anomaly Agent.
The addition of good cop/bad cop options is a neat thing to see. Think of it this way, while you are an agent trying to save the world, you can choose two options to reply to the people you talk to during your adventures. This dialogue option is written in gold rather than white, and depending on your answer, you get good or bad feedback. Your responses do not change the flow of the story; the game does not care if you tend to be a meanie. However, depending on your answer, you get emotions that can be used to purchase health bonuses or converted to cash instead. As expected, the cash you earn has to do something, right?
Although it might be tough to spot, Anomaly Agent does include a progression system within its ecosystem of managing substories, fighting bad guys, and other miscellaneous stuff. There are upgrade bots scattered around; for a sum of money you drop from your enemies or opening chests, you can purchase upgrades to amp up your damage, make bullets do poison damage, or recharge your parries faster. They are nice to see, but the implementation of the new purchases you make barely becomes noticeable during the combat.
Talking about combat, there is this particular feeling when you get everything done so that the feedback of the game rewards you for recognizing attack patterns. Parrying incoming attacks and following up with punches becomes rather addictive, and adding a long-range attack into the combo also feels satisfying. But again, you need to get used to how Anomaly Agent plays, which can take one or two playthroughs.
Boss fights are… A lot to be desired, I’d say. There is nothing wrong with how they play, though; in fact, they are adequately paced with your respective levels. But in the end, they just feel like any other enemy you’d come across at a regular level, just a bit more beefy and have different attack patterns than usual. One might think the appeal must be the characteristics, but even then, their personalities are watered-down cliches of the 80s. So you can guess their traits from miles away, even if they try to be smart with their seriousness- or the complete opposite- their humorous behaviors.
While telling you the story, the Anomaly Agent’s route is odd but nothing unheard of. You might get random dialogs thrown at you during the gameplay due to the humorous nature, but the main character is always as confused as you are, so it is somewhat understandable. Somehow, I felt like the game was quite familiar to my tastes of joking. I’d instead want the game to break a fourth wall or make absurd jokes to entertain players instead of depending on situational irony or basic puns. The Anomaly Agent was self-aware and didn’t feel forced to be funny.
Graphics were a mix of stylized drawings of prominent characters you’d come across and 2D-pixel art; I’d say it’s more of 8-bit artwork rather than 16, as you can’t see anyone’s face, and they do not even animate when they talk. Some people thought this was a downer in the age of highly realistic graphics are the norm, but we are talking about a short project that happens to be the first game to come out from the studio, so it gets a pass.
With its short playtime filled with well-done gameplay, humor, and execution, Anomaly Agent is worthy of your time to go through, even if there are some lackluster moments you’d come across. I had to seriously sit down and play through whether it provides what it advertises, and I must say it is impressive for a newly established company. However, expectations should not be stretched to the moon as the gameplay does not bring anything new to that table unless you are below the said table, which means go ahead, absolutely try it.
