A much, much more fitting title to this game would have been "State of Insanity : Master of repetition".
Hello, and welcome to my review of State of Anarchy.
State of Anarchy is a top down twin stick shooter. You are an unnamed citizen, caught between rioters looting the city you find yourself in, and an unnamed alien race, bent on total world domination. Why this is happening, how it started, and exactly how you managed to get the skills to survive aren't told to you, as you dive right into a world of madness.
How does this translate to the overall game? Lets take a look.
STORYMost if not all of the story was revealed in the header.
You are tasked with walking (or driving) between bank locations to stop rioters from the looting in progress. Every few levels, you fight a flying saucer, or are abducted by aliens attempting to stop you, and you must escape, destroy part of their invasion force, and land back on the planet as you attempt to keep going.
In all honesty, that's it. The games 47 levels cycle between this theme, with level 48 having you fight the games final boss (a bigger flying saucer) and though it's meant to be a climactic encounter, not much sets it apart from the rest of the game.
CONTROLS / GAME PLAYYou move with the left stick, you fire your first weapon with the right stick, your "special", or second weapon with the left bumper, get in and out of cars with the A button, and drive cars with the right trigger (same stick/bumper setup to shoot, left stick to direct yourself).
While the walking/shooting mechanics are done well enough, I have to mention that driving was actually rather awkward, and the number of times you have to do it to chase flying saucers was a bit of a drag. If you are stuck with a weapon with horrible range or shoot mechanics, these chase scene can drag on.
Every level, the boss at the end, be it a saucer, bank robber, alien boss what have you, will drop a weapon that you must pickup to progress. This will change your first or secondary weapon until you replace it.
(Now is a decent time to mention that when I would load up the game for the first time, when I chose my level, it would have a weapon associated with that level, such as a twin uzi for my first weapon. On occasion though, that meant that my secondary weapon (or vice versa) would actually be different than what I had my first time around.)
Outside of a leach life perk, the only way to heal is to pick up medkits, dropped randomly as you kill enemies.
You gain a perk every 2 levels, giving choices such as increased life or speed, and again a chance to leach life after a kill and such.
Killing enemies drops cash, which can be used to upgrade things such as gun damage, range, fire rate.
Though the game tries to change things up at times, there are only a few varieties of enemies, aliens, cars and saucers to fight. Though the waves of enemies are somewhat randomized there are only so many combinations you can have before you continue seeing the same enemies over and over.
GRAPHICS / SOUNDThe game looks like it was drawn by a grade schooler and given life. A few steps above stick figures like Fancy Pants or Stick Type, but not by much. The cars, enemies, flying saucers, meteors, landscapes, everything this game has to offer has a simple design. Based on the nature of the game, this doesn't take too much away from the overall experience, as levels are somewhat quick if you manage not to die.
The SOUND, on the other hand, is just as simple and repetitive, which actually proves detrimental to the experience.
The game has ONE soundtrack that it replays. 2/3 of the time you hear the soundtrack and the other 1/3 you don't hear much at all besides the shooting of your guns or the deaths and explosions of enemies. As the sound isn't needed, for full disclosure I can tell you I was playing a youtube playlist during game play after about an hour.
DIFFICULTY4 if you are good at twin sticks, 5-7 if you aren't or if you get tripped up with the changing gun mechanics.
If you die, you restart a level.
Though you keep earned cash/levels, the game gradually gets harder as you level up your character and beat the levels of the game. This makes it more challenging to get random weapons, as you might find yourself in a situation where the weapons you have aren't that well suited for the task.
As stated in the above sections, you get a different weapon every level, and the weapon setup makes the game a little more challenging, as some weapons have awkward shoot patterns, do different damage, or have different ranges, changing how you have to take on situations and bosses.
SCORE / COMPLETIONThis game is incredibly repetitive, made only more difficult by the random factor of your weapons.
Though the game has 48 levels, its a rinse and repeat cycle of where you go and what you do.
On top of that, many of the games achievements are incredibly grind heavy, with special mention of getting to level 90. This is because if you make it through all the levels, no deaths and in record time, you will sit around level 40. You'll be around 50 or so if you do die, or take time to grind before the game is over.
The game also does not have achievement tracking of any kind, so you have no way of knowing how close or far away "Shooting 3000 rioters" is going to be to get.
Though the completion time sits at 6-8 hours, my overall time was 17. There were a few times that I got stuck, or found a weapon setup to just be awful, which had me putting the game down for a bit and coming back later. (This does include idle time however so I can't 100% say you'd be even close to that number.)
Overall, I can't give this game over 2 stars. 2.5/3 for the "ability" to 100%If it had less grinding, less repetition, any more variety, or even fewer luck based missions, it could be scored higher.
Unfortunately, after the first hour or so of game play, you know exactly whats in store for you for the rest of the experience. There isn't much to break up the monotony, there isn't much to do against cheap deaths than to try again, and there isn't anything to really unlock, collect, or do besides shoot waves of enemies.
This makes State of Anarchy a game best played in bursts, or just setting aside the time to run through and be done with. It isn't game changing or ground breaking by any means so won't likely stick with you after its completion.
For 7.99$, there are worse games, but also ones far more enjoyable.
2.0