Let’s be honest here for a second, shooting up an endless horde of creatures attempting to devour you is often times a boring slog. A mindless indulgence if there ever was one, the advent of the 4 player co-op shooter has led to more and more games where unloading bullets into disgusting monsters without anything unique or noteworthy to mark them out from their contemporaries becomes the norm.
Welcome in and wipe your shoes on the carpet The Anacrusis, a four-player co-op shooter currently in early access looking to add to the never-ending glut of similar experiences. OK OK, The Anacrusis has a few inspired interiors that look like they were ripped out from Ridley Scott’s 1979 classic Alien, and there are bleats of style with one character that sports a John Shaft-aping afro, but The Anacrusis doesn’t go anywhere near far enough to make its levels and presentation tenable.
Level designs do appear varied but lacking in the details to make them truly immersive. Long stretches of unfilled space takes you out of a sense of place and belonging. Thankfully there is a little bit of restitution from indoor confines with a citadel-like level with marble flooring, but the potential is scuppered here because of how barren and bereft it is to navigate.
The fresh alien meat and bland potatoes of this co-op shooter has you running around killing an onslaught of aliens, some of them even dress up for the occasion as they wear attires to make them look a tad more attractive and distinguished like they were going out on a dinner date with all their alien friends to devour your ass. Dresses, pyjamas and suits: these unorthodox aliens all wear such garments in the hopes of dining on your corpse, which admittedly gives the rank-and-file enemies some personality.
Your objective is to fight your way to an exit point where you can proceed to the next slaughtering ground where the same thing happens. It’s a rinse and repeat formula that overstays its welcome quickly. Developers Stray Bombay have championed the notion that no two battles will be the same, and while this in some ways is true courtesy of shake-ups in enemy compositions, it doesn’t change the rudimentary and rote aspects of the experience.
Regretfully, nothing fails to distract you from the utter technical shambles and the generic repetitive gameplay that’s like feeding on unexciting chocolate – at some point you can’t take anymore unless you want to get sick – though it could be passable with friends as a time-waster, but don’t be surprised if you migrate to a better offering sooner than later.
Enemies are both abundant and relatively threat-less, which vacuums up all the sense of fear and terror the game could’ve had pretty interiors notwithstanding. Urgency is important in shooters of this ilk and without it The Anacrusis unfortunately ends up a dry forgettable husk.
Sure you will likely fall if you get backed into a corner overwhelmed, but revivals from teammates are swift and you can continue without feeling like you’ve lost anything. This risk-free gameplay, much like the rest of the game, is tawdry.
The good news for The Anacrusis is firstly when you blast aliens, they go down without too much hassle, there has been some effort to make levels stand out like adding colours to interiors that might strike up reminders of children play pens or some glinting nostalgia trip, and at times it’s good to see behemoth bloater-like creatures that stand out from the rest of the horde.
The selection of weapons on offer do have a quasi-unique look and feel to them with arc, laser and plasma rifles bringing in some zing, a Blaster that packs a punch even though the snail’s pace fire rate and the annoying need to reload it often. A turret is available to use as well that’ll free your hands up and auto-fires at aliens is a useful tool to thin out the horde when they attempt to overrun you.
With concessions given to The Anacrusis’ status as an early access experience, the performance is still nothing short of atrocious. Blitzing repetitive alien infestations is one thing, but the sloppy movement will constantly cut you up so you could be moving and suddenly you teleport to a random wall. Furthermore, it’s not a competent game nor an enjoyable one, it’s just a stylish mess, like puking up a rainbow – someone still needs to clean it up, and The Anacrusis certainly needs to be given a mop, bucket and sponge to do so.
A few sparks of potential is all The Anacrusis has but perhaps when it comes out of early access and gets a full release its litany of issues can be rinsed away. Until then it’s not worth anything more outside of a curious session or few thanks to how forgettable and unexciting the action, the serious lack of urgency and the horrid performance jankiness. The set dressing does offer some appeal, but the entire game needs to revel in the ideas the game clearly has in terms of how it’s presenting itself to players instead of strafing away from its commendable features. Stray Bombay has a fission of what The Anacrusis could be after a serious overhaul, but for now there’s nowhere near enough reason to give it a prolonged time commitment.
This game was reviewed based on Xbox S|X review code, using an Xbox S|X console. All of the opinions and insights here are subject to that version. Game provided by publisher.
