Anarchy Does Reign, Unfortunately Gameplay Does Not
Anarchy Reigns has been a long time coming for Platinum Games, the game has only just launched here yet Japan have been enjoying it since July last year. The reason for such a delay is due to the game’s publisher Sega not having much faith in the title’s ability to sell but somewhere along the way they’ve had a change of heart. There’s also been a change of price as Anarchy Reigns arrives with at only £20 but is it enough?
Going into Anarchy Reigns I didn’t know much about the game, all I knew was that it was an online brawler with Jack Cayman and Bayonetta making appearances. Now that I’ve finished the game and spent some time online I understand what Anarchy Reigns is all about or perhaps what it should of been all about.
Upon starting the game you’re presented with several different modes, training mode is a good place to start as it takes little under 10 minutes to come to grips with the gameplay mechanics of Anarchy Reigns. Once that’s done it’s best to jump into the campaign which was never advertised as the main appeal of the game yet remains a big portion of the overall product.
Shortly after the first cut-scene plays out the game offers players the choice of two sides, black and white. The white side has you playing as Leo and the black side features Jack Cayman of MadWorld fame. Leo didn’t really catch my attention and having played MadWorld I was already going into Anarchy Reigns as a Jack fan. The guy has a chainsaw on his right arm and is a total badass, what’s not to like?
If you’ve ever played 2D scrolling fighters such as Final Fight or Streets of Rage then in some ways you already know what to expect. There’s random enemies on the streets and the game is broken up into four different stages, rather than defeat everyone in order to move on, Anarchy Reigns offers more freedom than that though it’s not exactly a sandbox game either.
In order to progress in the world of Anarchy Reigns players have to clear what the game calls “main missions” but these missions are only unlocked once a certain score requirement is met. There’s basically two ways to build your score and it’s by defeating random enemies or by clearing side missions. Defeating enemies on the streets nets you next to nothing so side missions are the best way to quickly increase your score. Unfortunately the side missions are a bit of hit and miss, guiding a helicopter around shooting enemies is great but defeating three tough enemies under a set time limit who keep running away isn’t.
Repetition is the name of the game in Anarchy Reigns, you’ll often have to repeat side missions in order to unlock main missions. If you fail a side mission then none of the points will count and since there are so few side missions it means that the game has a very basic structure.
- Defeat enemies to unlock side mission
- Complete side mission once or twice to unlock main mission
- Complete main mission
- Repeat first three steps until three main missions are complete
Now imagine repeating those four steps in each of the four stages that game throws at you. Hold on it gets worse, remember I mentioned about the black and white side? Well you do get a choice at the start but eventually you’ll have to finish both sides in order to unlock a final red side which acts as the game’s final conclusion. The cut-scenes differ and the story is told from a different side but the environments are the same. Sure some of the areas are slightly tweaked and side missions are new but it’s the same game remixed around.
Games live and die by their gameplay and Anarchy Reigns ends up being a mixed bag but let’s break it down. The face buttons are used to jump, weak attack, strong attack and grab enemies. The left trigger is your killer weapon, in the case of Jack it’s the chainsaw but it has a bar which needs to be filled in order for it to be used so players can’t go round spamming the most powerful attacks. There’s also a separate bar which fills up and once filled can be used to send your character into rampage mode which is always good fun as you take no damage, can abuse your killer weapon and unleash Kenshiro style attacks.
Everything that’s in Anarchy Reigns works (we’ll get to online in a bit) but the problem here is lack of depth. Though the game offers you a range of characters to play as they all feel the same and the combat itself is pretty repetitive. There’s nothing in Anarchy Reigns that really pushes you to learn the game, just mash weak and strong attacks in addition to the killer weapon to get through the game. In some ways this game feels like a successor to the amazing God Hand on PS2 yet the combat feels like a watered down version of that and the game is none the better for it.
Graphics in Anarchy Reigns are again a bit mixed, it doesn’t look particularly great but at the same time it does animate nicely and there’s nothing wrong with what’s being displayed on screen. The problem here is that Anarchy Reigns is lacking an appealing art style, everything just feels extremely generic which is a shame considering this is coming from Platinum Games. The cut-scenes look great and taking a look at some of the unlockable concept art does show much promise but the final game does feels disconnected from those drawings.
Let’s start to focus on the good because despite the tone of the review I did enjoy my time with Anarchy Reigns. It’s an odd place to start but the cut-scenes as mentioned as great, in fact it’s one of the highlights of the game. The story itself is utterly forgettable but the cut-scenes show Platinum Games have an eye for all things fighting related, I don’t want to spoil anything but towards the end things really heat up.
Whilst I was knocking the visuals for being serviceable yet lacking in style the soundtrack in Anarchy Reigns is a different case. It’s made up of fast tracks usually comprising of rap and hip hop, it’s EXACTLY the type of stuff you want to be fighting to. I don’t like slow boring tracks designed to “set the mood” like other games, if I’m fighting someone then I want the soundtrack to get my blood rushing and Anarchy Reigns succeeds in that regard. Those of you who have played MadWorld will know what to expect here, it’s a little strange hearing this type of soundtrack from a Japanese developer yet it’s totally awesome.
Cut-scenes aside, the main missions are basically where you’ll have the most fun in the campaign mode. The main missions are always a boss battle and normally a pretty good one at that, one of my favourites is fighting a giant Kraken at sea. It makes no sense what so ever, it’s completely random and yet it’s utterly awesome but sadly moments like these are far and few in-between meaning it’s always a grind through the bad to get to the good.
In some ways it’s possible to ignore the campaign mode as Anarchy Reigns appears to be an online brawler with a campaign mode thrown in. What’s strange however is that the the online aspect of Anarchy Reigns isn’t much fun at all, at least not in my experience. There’s a ton of different game types ranging from team deathmatch to tag battles to even capture the flag and they are pretty lag free despite my fears. The maps are large and some modes even allow up to 16 players to fight at once even if it does make for a messy fight.
At the time of writing Anarchy Reigns is busted online, it’s next to impossible to enjoy the game for what it is for the simple fact that many characters if not all appear to have infinite combo strings. My debut match in Anarchy Reigns consisted of a cage match against a fellow Bayonetta player who juggled me to death no matter how hard I tried to evade her attacks. I paid YouTube a quick visit and yes you can find infinite attacks for most characters meaning the online mode is just a matter of who attacks first.
Surely a patch could be issued and the problem resolved right? No quiet, see the combat system in Anarchy Reigns feels more suited to fighting against the CPU that it does other human players. When you have 16 players all running around attacking each other you’ll see the lock-on system which works well offline is suddenly a pain in the ass. It’s also not much fun beating someone down to low life only to have someone else come in and deliver the final blow raking in the rewards. All in all the online aspect of Anarchy Reigns despite the healthy range of modes isn’t much fun and just ends up being a frustrating experience.
By now you will have seen the score and assumed I hate the game but that’s not exactly the case, it’s an enjoyable brawler so long as you don’t have high expectations. My main issue with it is that Anarchy Reigns feels like a game that could be so much more but only delivers so little. It’s obvious this wasn’t the most high priority game at Platinum Games which is a great shame because with a little bit more love and attention Anarchy Reigns could of been a modern day Streets of Rage.
There’s nothing like Anarchy Reigns on the market so in some ways it succeeds by default and I even considered giving it a higher score given the low price tag it carries. I decided against it because a low price tag does not entitle Anarchy Reigns to a free pass especially when you consider there’s some fantastic titles on PSN and XBLA with an even lower price tag. It took me a long time to figure out the best way to sum up Anarchy Reigns but eventually I got it.
Anarchy Reigns is both fun and repetitive but you could do a lot worse with £20.
Hopefully not the last time we see Jack Cayman.
