Anomaly Agent [Review]
Beat-em-up platformer Anomaly Agent features combat that makes the game shine.
Image credit: Phew Phew Games
Phew Phew Games’ Anomaly Agent stars Agent 70 of TDAY, a government agency in charge of monitoring temporal threats in the cyberpunk future. On the day he receives a promotion, a group of anomalies begins to wreak havoc and he must save the city and the timeline before he can start his new job.
Anomaly Agent’s gameplay combines sidescrolling platforming with beat-em-up action. Agent 70 can double jump to get around platforms and dodge to avoid traps such as lasers. Platforming here isn’t much of a challenge; the real meat of the game is in the combat.
The player only starts with a simple attack and dodge. At this point, I feared the game would be a dull affair, but new actions begin to unlock soon after. The player gets a ranged attack, a “temporal bat” strong attack, and the ability to parry. These abilities get complemented with combos that lead to stronger bat strikes and a trio of slow to recharge super moves. Agent 70 can also pick up and use guns dropped by enemies: pistols, shotguns, and magnums. Combat begins to get truly interesting when the game introduces attacks that can’t be parried and the player must fight larger crowds.
Image credit: Phew Phew Games
The combat becomes really fluid once you begin to master the attacks and recognize enemy rhythms. It’s especially important to get into that zone during the game’s boss fights, tests of endurance as just a few mistakes will make you lose. Thankfully the game is forgiving—some boss fights have checkpoints between phases. Each of the game’s rooms also has its own checkpoint for retries and you get your health refilled from one room to the next.
As you fight through the game, Agent 70 earns coins that he can spend upgrading his abilities. Upgrades include doing more damage, higher ammo capacity for guns, improved cooldowns, and added status effects for attacks. Some of these become essential as crowd control becomes a challenge.
The game’s story serves more as an excuse for the action and isn’t very engaging. However, the game has a great sense of humor that shines through your conversations with many of the characters you encounter. Agent 70 gets dialogue choices throughout the game, with choices that will have an effect highlighted in yellow. These are all either “positive” or “negative,” and reward happy or sad points based on your choice. Happy points convert to life upgrades and sad points convert to coins. The effect of any choice isn’t clear aside from changes in the dialogue that follow it. As far as I can tell, the game simply offers two endings and presents that choice to the player at the end of the game.
Image credit: Phew Phew Games
Anomaly Agent has pixel art graphics, with an overall quality that feels sloppy, particularly the backgrounds when viewed on a large screen. Everything looks like it was drawn in MS Paint and left half finished, without any attention to linework, texture, or detail. A loose style is fine—but here it’s all very rough and could have used a bit more polish or at least a second pass. The style of the sprites is great; combat and character animations don’t have many frames but are good enough. The characters are best appreciated when they’re in action.
Image credit: Phew Phew Games
The game has a New Game+ feature and an alternative gameplay mode that’s listed on the main menu as “coming soon.” I’ll be giving this game another play once the new mode launches!
Anomaly Agent is available now for PC, Nintendo Switch, and Xbox One / Series X|S.
Overall Score: 7/10
Played on: Xbox Series X
