Many aspects need to be optimized
The Anacrusis is yet another proof that co-op shooters desperately need fresh blood. Almost all co-op shooters on the market use the Path to Survival routine, where four players need to make a living in the desperate zombie apocalypse or die at the hands of hordes of monsters. The overall gloominess of the game feels breathless, but does it really have to be designed so darkly for a team-based shooter?
Breaking with this stereotype, The Anacrusis uses a lot of bright colors in the game, and the style of the painting is a bit of the full and energetic feel of "The Jasons", which contrasts with the ruins of "Blood Revenge" and the hellish scenes in the zombie mode of GTFO and Call of Duty, which makes people feel bright.
Unfortunately, The Anacrusis failed to create a nervous tension, and therefore made the co-op experience lacking in character. In fact, after playing all three chapters of The Anacrusis Early Access, all that impressed me about the game's innovation was the fresh tones of the game.
You and your friends board a gorgeous orange spaceship and drift through the psychedelic outer space. The safe room is filled with guns and ammunition, all in a 1960s sci-fi-style porcelain protective case, and all you have to do is take these weapons with you and walk down the corridors to the next save point under the invasion of a large number of crazy Cthulhu-style aliens.
From this passage, it's not hard to see where The Anacrusis's character inspiration came from, and chet Faliszek, co-founder of Stray Bombay, the game's developer, contributed to the style, having worked on WDF and WDV 2 earlier while at Valve.
While the two games differ in their overall tone and setting, in The Anacrusis you'll need to kill thousands of zombies in alien skins and enter a magically impenetrable door to keep that group of enemies out.
In my opinion, the ultimate goal of the game is for players to go through a lot of hardships and obstacles to escape, for the whole team to experience the joy of victory after a seemingly impossible breakthrough. But that's not the case, and I'm already feeling the tedium of the game before I even finish the first level. Although I don't know why, Stray Bombay seems to have shown all his hole cards at the beginning of the game, leaving no further surprises for the subsequent gameplay.
The alien enemies I saw at the beginning of the game, both in appearance and attack, were identical to those in the later polar levels. Meanwhile, there are only three basic weapons in the game, which feel very similar, but lack the full and pulsating feedback of use like in Blood Revenge. I'm pretty sure the difference between plasma rifles and submachine guns is only that the former attacks slightly more slowly.
By the second chapter, I didn't care about the choice of weapon at all, because no matter how strong or weak the enemy was, no matter which weapon was chosen, the final effect feedback made no difference.
The enemy appeared, ate a large wave of bullets, and then died. Occasionally, several infective enemies with special names appear to enhance the power of the invasion, such as "The Gooper" whose ability traps the player with green slime with a paralyzing effect; "The Flasher" can throw flash projectiles that illuminate the entire screen, causing the player to lose vision; and "The Brute" is high damage and resistant to damage.
When faced with these enemies, players need to have some basic cooperation, of course, my friends and I did not feel any difficulty. Most of the time, we kept pressing the trigger until we finally won.
The difficulty of The Anacrusis actually changes dynamically with the player's performance, but until the end, I was really afraid of being killed twice, and these two times were the only nerve-tightening moments I had throughout the game.
To be clear, some of the best co-op games of all time were also popular for their brainless blasting (the first thing I could think of was the early Sam heroes series). Faliszek mentioned in an interview that he wanted The Anacrusis to give players a real feel for the game as if they were discussing a movie, rather than as a passive pastime. But I think his thinking limits The Anacrusis.
Players are not severely punished after being killed, teammates can be quickly revived after they fall, and they can be summoned back from the void with a very short cooldown, these mechanisms make the game lack a lot of tension, and the secret to the success of "The Way to Survive" lies in the tense atmosphere in the game, so that players have been in despair, such as making them realize that their lives are in danger and must flee to the rescue helicopter. The current "The Anacrusis" is missing this key element, which is why it is inexplicably boring.
I was disappointed by The Anacrusis' tedious environmental design, and I think that's the biggest shortcoming of the game. The game's background is actually very good, the overall can be regarded as "Summer of Love" set in the dark abyss of the galaxy, and the music in the game is Anaac Hayes-style guitar chords. The settings are great, but the ship in the game is boringly designed.
During the first hour of gameplay, I found myself in a huge serpentine shopping mall, looking forward to digging into the context of this psychedelic dystopian settlement. However, as I followed the guide down the stairs and explored the mall, I found that there were no words or pictures around me that would give me a better understanding of this worldview. The atmosphere is as thin as paper, and sometimes I don't even know what all these cookie-cutter boutiques are selling.
The Anacrusis doesn't use the traditional narrative mode (each chapter begins with a small plot screen, and subsequent stories build on this content), and while it's a good approach and the game's unique style, it's hard to fully immerse the player in the world.
I quickly grew tired of this method of breaking through doors in search of hidden grenades, and there wasn't any environmental narrative in the game that gave me an idea of what I was in. The plot review that appears at the end of the first chapter tells me that the entire team has killed more than 4,000 alien enemies, but I still don't know the identity of the enemy, I don't know who I am in the game, or even why I'm here.
Although The Anacrusis' Early Access edition doesn't include much content, and some players may be able to complete all three chapters in one night, Stray Bombay emphasizes that overplayability is at the heart of the game. To achieve this, the game borrows the concept of the "director system" from the Path to Survival series – there seems to be an invisible AI orchestral behind the game, and whenever players find different items, or encounter a different number or type of enemy because of different levels, the BGM changes, keeping the player alert at all times.
I myself have found that the setting of the enemy I encounter changes as the game progresses, but I still feel that I have been repeating the action of shooting during the game, and the slightly characteristic alien elements do not make up for the tedious gameplay.
During each chapter, there is also a somewhat rogue-lite-like design, such as a number of upgrade stations scattered throughout the ship, providing players with a small amount of additional rewards, including replenishing ammo, increasing damage, and increasing the speed of resurrection. But these straightforward improvements don't lead to different game styles, and players can't play a different role in the team or adopt a different approach to playing according to their own gameplay.
I was very hopeful that Stray Bombay would design the game based on the class category so that everyone I was on an adventure with would be able to take on different roles. If there were such a mechanism, I believe that the game would never be as boring as it is now, at least I will be able to experience every battle in the game from a different perspective.
It also has to be mentioned that there is an option to switch between equipment and weapon skins in the main menu of the game (I guess weapon skins can be obtained in the game level, or purchased through in-game currency), but I have never been rewarded with decorations or currency. I guess this feature should be related to the "SEASON" written at the top, and after clicking on it, a blank page of "Stay Tuned" appears.
The Ambitions of The Anacrusis are overwhelming, but frankly, the biggest problem with it is that I don't want to re-experience anything in it after playing it once.
For this review, I tried to revisit the game, but after experiencing it again, I still haven't changed anything about it. The starship is so full of obvious optimization issues that some parts of the scene look like they've been moved from a game that ran on Unreal 2 in 2005.
What infuriates me is that the teammates' game words are also back and forth, and it feels ridiculous to read too much and listen to them (the teammates keep shouting "Goo!"). I guess I won't be able to forget my dreams tonight).
My computer is configured as a Win 10 system, RTX 2070 Super graphics card, still repeatedly encounter stuttering problems in the game, continue to affect the frame rate and accuracy of the game, sometimes I obviously aim at the enemy's head from behind, but I watch the bullet fly towards the ceiling, I don't know if this is the game bug, or the game made a joke for me.
The signs in the levels are also infuriating and laughable, and there are no directional arrows on the signs, so I usually rely on the team's only words of advice, such as what to do after obtaining the nuclear energy tank. When teaming up with in-game AI teammates for adventures (Stray Bombay recommends AI mode as the lowest priority option), the problem becomes even more apparent, as they also often get lost.
In addition, I encountered a very strange bug that made my entire game interface unreadable, and a red "X" appeared on my game character avatar that seemed to indicate something. For a moment I even thought my character had broken the fourth wall and realized that he was in the game world, but this was more likely just a stutter in Early Access.
These kinds of bugs and bugs are common for many games that are constantly updated and developed, and I believe The Anacrusis will be able to deal with them after a while.
But after that, what kind of game will players play? Will it become a more powerful but still uninteresting co-op shooter? That's what worries me. With the game's release date of version 1.0, if it is to be successful, it is urgent to discover more attractive highlights.
summary
In The Anacrusis, players can explore a luxurious spaceship reminiscent of the traditional science fiction of the past. This is a nice setting for a co-op shooter, but the actual gameplay is not satisfactory, and in wave after wave of alien invasions, there is no other interesting setting except for changes in the scene. The shooting operation is boring, the enemies are exactly the same, and the few types of levels are intertwined, but the core is tired of repeating the battle.
Early Access has a lot of stuttering and strange modeling crashes, so for now, The Anacrusis isn't a recommended game. Maybe one day in the future, this psychedelic outer space game will be able to compete with the best in co-op shooters, and maybe I will be willing to reopen the game and fight against many alien enemies.
This article is compiled from IGN US related content, the original author Luke Winkie, unauthorized reproduction is prohibited.