The greatest horror to befall popular culture in the last decade is not Michael Bublé, as is commonly believed. It is another Michael B entirely, and one infinitely more dangerous. Michael Bay’s Transformers movies were, somehow, some of the biggest box-office grossing movies of all time, you see. This means a generation of young and/or money-hungry creators are convinced that the path to riches is to spiky metal insecty things with pallid neon bits invading cyan-hued American cities, accompanied by a boomy orchestral soundtrack. We’ve just seen it in Crysis 3, and now 11-bit’s tower-defence-in-reverse sequel Anomaly 2‘s at it. It’s not right. Why can’t game artists be inspired by Czech animation, Swedish architecture and Fleetwood Mac instead? I’d play the hell out of a game about asymmetrical clay bears trashing Malmo while Go Your Own Way plays.

BUT ANYWAY. Bayisms aside, the four levels of early Anomaly 2 code I’ve played suggest good things, building upon the RTS aspect of the tower-dodging action.(more…)