Anomalous

I really dislike to give negative reviews. And it hurts because this game is so close to being actually really good. Status: I played the game on medium difficulty and after 3.4 hours i am in the final level at the final boss and i am cancelling this now. [b]The Good[/b] - it's well designed, looks nice. - Movement is fine - leveldesign is mostly good [b]The Mid[/b] - sound is sometimes good - sound is sometimes not as good as it could be, especially the shotgun sounds so weak [b]The Ugly[/b] - theres bugs. I had progress breaking bugs. I clipped and fell through walls. I had enemies not do ♥♥♥♥. I had eemies shoot through walls. - the grapple hook levels are annoying as hell - final boss fight level is completely broken if you dare to save And most damningly: The weapon hit detection is just awful. This alone brings the fun down so much, it is a tragedy. This game is two weeks of work away being pretty good. Just fix that ♥♥♥♥, and then tell me because i want to play this when it is good.

Anomalous is a pretty fun if very short boomer shooter with fun movement and a half life look to it. Its pretty impressive considering one guy made it and its clear there is love and care put into it. I did have a few performance issues where some levels dipped down from 300 fps down to 60 or so in certain parts of levels and there is no autosaving in the game. This becomes a big issue if you die in level because you either lose a lot of progress if you forget to save or start the level back with only an axe. Other than those two issues, Anomalous is a very enjoyable, short and charming boomer shooter

Ktoś wziął assety z Half-Life 2, spiął je razem w strzelankowym stylu ('nowego') Dooma, a wszystko to działa jakby w ramach projektu "Mój pierwszy FPS w UE". I teraz sobie życzy za to pieniędzy. Wszystko tu jest nijakie - bronie, przeciwnicy, styl graficzny, gameplay, fabuła. Jest mnóstwo tańszych i lepszych gier w tym gatunku, nic tu nie jest warte uwagi.

Some jank here and there, but it was still good for what it was.

Anomalous is a game that really nails a unique mixture of old Soviet grey concrete dystopia, and cyberpunk. There are a lot of reasons that I could recommend this game: amazing level settings (if you're into brutalism), awesome horde carnage, decent weapon selection, secret hunting, etc etc. But, this game has two major flaws that I think will make most players stop halfway through or so. Number one, the health restores are incredibly unevenly spaced apart. In most modern FPS games, you have some kind of additional mechanic to restore health, be it regeneration or health packs or maybe some kind of rechargeable heal, or as with Half-life that had breakables spawn health sometimes. The reason we moved on from the placed health packs paradigm way back in the 90s was precisely because of the problem this game has with it. Health "debt" in a level is horrible when you've had some bad scrapes, and since most enemies in this game are ridiculously accurate, you're going to end up this way in many levels, forcing you to save scum or restart the level, losing progress. Number two, for some inexplicable reason, the game has the most annoying grapple system I've ever encountered in a game. Yes, that's unfortunately what I'm going to remember the most from this game, the terrible grappling system. The way its set up is that when you tab the use key on a target, you'll get boosted, but the boost is extremely erratic and you can't hold down the key to continue boosting, it's just tap and off you go. Usually it ends up with you randomly falling into pitfalls that are instantly going to kill you with zero recovery options. Air control is also horridly bad which in normal gameplay isn't much of a problem, but when you have to chain together several grapples to gain height, you'll more often than not fail because of the above mentioned reasons. The simple way to fix this system is to make grapples hold based, or make them consistently have you overshoot your target with a lot more air control. Then there's enough play room for the player to turn around and move in the air and hit the platforms they're trying to reach. The final boss as well is an extreme bullet sponge, which normally wouldn't be a problem except the final arena where you fight said boss has zero health restoratives. So yeah, you're looking at maybe ten minutes of running around the arena, plinking at it. And, if it hits you a few times, you die and have to restart the whole tedious fight again. In my case, I gave up after I tried save scumming and the center of the arena became inaccessible due to clipping walls. (This is a simple script fix really) After that, I turned on god mode and just hammed it up just to get through it all, because I was beyond frustrated with the game at that point. So while I ultimately want to recommend it only for the mood, I can't in good conscience do so since it's so incredibly janky and frustrating. I do hope the dev continues refining their skills, because there is so much good in this game that I want to see more of. EDIT: Also, I completely forgot about the music in this game. THAT is actually something that was thoroughly enjoyable throughout the whole thing. Honestly hat off to the composer, there's a nice range from Retrowave to darkwave to synthwave and then some good ol Gordon metal thrown in to spice it up.

This game can easily be summed up in a single sentence: Really wants to be DOOM 2016, ends up being Serious Sam 2 instead. This is entirely because I don't think the developers realized what makes DOOM 2016 or DOOM in general good. Before we get into that, though, I want to get my petty squabbles out of the way. First off, the music. It's boring. It's just industrial power metal, again. Which, hey, if that's your thing then you will love this. But I really don't. Aside from that, I don't really like how this game looks on a micro level. On a macro level, sure, it looks good, but the decision to pixelate every texture instead of just having it be the proper size just makes everything look muddy. I think it would've fared a lot better if they just let the textures be smooth. For my final petty squabble I'd like to point out how they just took the "double ammo on easiest/hardest difficulty" thing straight from doom. Yeah, that's really petty, but that immediately signaled to me that this game was ultimately just gonna be really derivative. Now, let's get into the bigger "issues" (in reality your mileage may vary) that I have with the game. So, this game, as I said before, is completely derivative; it does things not because it services the gameplay, but only because it is cool. Why can you dual-wield the first 3 weapons you get? Because it's cool. Why does this game have both a crossbow and a sniper rifle? Or both a rocket launcher and a grenade launcher? Because it is cool. Why does this game have a bunch of jump pads and endless death pits? Probably because DOOM 2016 did it, but also because it is cool. Now, I don't think that inherently is the worst idea, just doing things because they are cool, but since it never actually serves the general gameplay it makes the game as a whole feel empty. Like yeah, dual-wielding shotguns and assault rifles is cool, up until you realize that because the enemies as a whole aren't hard to deal with, you can just spam those two weapons for the entire game and be okay. Like seriously, there's no reason to use the rocket launcher, or the super shotgun, or the crossbow, because the enemies are so weak that the basic weapons always get the job done. And THAT is where my ultimate issue with the game comes in: this game is balanced in such a hackneyed way that it literally just feels like a spiritual successor to Serious Sam 2. Now, because I actually liked parts of this game, it already has a leg up on SS2 and I feel comfortable calling this a better game, but that's not exactly high praise. To be more specific, though, all of the enemies have nearly the same health pool, act basically the same as each other, and have very similar sizes that there's no reason to do anything other than W+M1 your way through the whole game. Enemies are needlessly spammed throughout each arena, seemingly with no thought other than to overwhelm the player, and the player needn't much thought either as they can just spam dual wield shotguns or assault rifles and be done with it. Couple that with incredibly linear levels that don't have much to do other than walk forward and you have a recipe for a game that feels practically braindead to play through. I dunno, in a primal sort of way it's fun, but I want more than that in my games. I feel like if this game actually took the time to understand why DOOM 2016 was so fun and revered, even by me who's kinda jaded by FPS games ([strike]eternal's better tho hhaghahga[/strike]), then it could've turned out to be a fairly worthwhile game. Instead, however, we just get yet another boomer shooter that's no different than the 100s of others out there and doesn't really do anything special other than the absolute most basic of having a unique art style and level design. I'd really like to love this game more but I really can't muster up anything more than just saying it's okay. Yeah, at the end of the day, it's an okay game, like a 6/10 if I needed to simplify it. 6/10s though just don't really do it for me unless it's special in some way, which as I've said many times before, this game really isn't. But hey, if you love Serious Sam 2, then you might love this game as well, so don't take my word for gospel. I don't.

I haven't seen this much screen tearing in anything in a long time, and I tried messing around with the options to get rid of it for quite a while. The feel of the guns is not that great. I don't like the designs of the enemies. The music is pretty nice.

Gun randomly not firing, enemies shooting you through walls, enemies blinking across your field of vision, enemies not spawning when they should spawn, enemies spawning but not "activating", doors not re-opening without interacting with them several times, invisible blockers when walking back up a ramp, grenades bouncing off of an open doorway instead of going through the doorway, enemies teleporting into the floor, a soundtrack song ending and no music replacing it, and you falling through levels are the most annoying bugs encountered so far. Given the choice between ~10 weapons and 5 weapons that feel impactful to use, I'd choose the latter. The shotgun, sniper, and bow and arrow feel especially rinky-dink (although the double shotgun's rhythm is satisfying). The grenade launcher doesn't feel super necessary. Despite all the above, this game is still fun to play - DOOM in Half Life skin is a winning combo. It's just a pain in the ass to reload multiple missions because you fall through the level.

I was going to recommend this game but a potential game breaking bug at the control level caused me to change my mind. This is a great single dev game that should be commended, rather than criticized, for what it has achieved. The issue is that the game has not been updated to resolve a problem seen by some players (reference the community section). As such, leaving the game at an unplayable state for customers who have paid for your product, even as an indie developer, is not a goold look. Byron Dunwoody, fix the game. You have potential.

A lot of jank and quite some issues that make this look rather unfinished. Getting stuck on loads of little edges and thresholds limits the speed and fun of the gameplay. Enemies do silly amounts of damage on normal while their hitboxes are really weird at times. Needs a lot more work to be a recommendation. Decent effort for an indie title / passion project, but no competition to most other games out there.