Connoisseurs of the tower-defense genre rightly have a soft spot for the Anomaly series. The cinematic production qualities of the games are top-notch, there's never a shortage of value for money, and the decidedly offensive take on the defense genre is a welcome break from the rather static gameplay of genre contemporaries.
The Good
Anomaly 2 carries on the tradition of the previous games with a confident stride, and is for the most part a very solid case of more-of-the-same. Yet the ability to morph units into alternative powerhouses to meet changing circumstances also adds a great deal of variety. The ability to change your force's routes remains in this sequel, a system which adds as much challenge to the game as you wish to take on. Do you travel the longer road and bag some bonus points - at the risk of failure - or play it safe and merely slink your way home? In this manner, Anomaly 2 continues to cater for all of its players extremely well. If you've really got the chops for it, there's multiplayer to get stuck into as well.
The Bad
Only two things take a little of the shine off Anomaly 2, both of which can presumably be tweaked in a patch. Firstly, and even on a fourth-generation iPad, there was a certain amount of sluggishness to the framerate. As a result, there's a second minor problem - a sense of lag when selecting options or moving around the play area. To be clear, these issues aren't deal-breakers by any means, but you'll have to adjust to them, and you'll wish you didn't have to. It's also a pretty safe evolution of the game series, all things considered
The Verdict
Despite a handful of technical hiccups, Anomaly 2 is everything fans of the previous games in the series would have asked for, and is a very easy sale for existing Anomaly nuts. Those who are put off by the typically static, reactive gameplay of the tower-defense genre, could do a lot worse than Anomaly 2 if they wish to discover what this gaming scene is really capable of.
The Good
Anomaly 2 carries on the tradition of the previous games with a confident stride, and is for the most part a very solid case of more-of-the-same. Yet the ability to morph units into alternative powerhouses to meet changing circumstances also adds a great deal of variety. The ability to change your force's routes remains in this sequel, a system which adds as much challenge to the game as you wish to take on. Do you travel the longer road and bag some bonus points - at the risk of failure - or play it safe and merely slink your way home? In this manner, Anomaly 2 continues to cater for all of its players extremely well. If you've really got the chops for it, there's multiplayer to get stuck into as well.
The Bad
Only two things take a little of the shine off Anomaly 2, both of which can presumably be tweaked in a patch. Firstly, and even on a fourth-generation iPad, there was a certain amount of sluggishness to the framerate. As a result, there's a second minor problem - a sense of lag when selecting options or moving around the play area. To be clear, these issues aren't deal-breakers by any means, but you'll have to adjust to them, and you'll wish you didn't have to. It's also a pretty safe evolution of the game series, all things considered
The Verdict
Despite a handful of technical hiccups, Anomaly 2 is everything fans of the previous games in the series would have asked for, and is a very easy sale for existing Anomaly nuts. Those who are put off by the typically static, reactive gameplay of the tower-defense genre, could do a lot worse than Anomaly 2 if they wish to discover what this gaming scene is really capable of.
