SG E3 2011: Anarchy Reigns Camera Ruins the Fun
For this year’s E3, I was wondering if SEGA and Platinum Games could surprise me again like they did with Vanquish. I had not even heard of the game until I was at last year’s expo and the trailer caught my eye. When the game finally released, I loved the fast-action gameplay and it was the game that got me through Extra Life. Anarchy Reigns looks like it can deliver that same level of entertainment, but only if they hire a better camera man.
Anarchy Reigns is a multiplayer action brawler and a sequel to Madworld, but with a different story all of its own. The characters looked impressive just in the trailers alone, so I was very excited to try out their moves for myself.
My character choice was Sasha, a blonde woman with a skin-tight cybernetic-looking suit. The mode I played was 4-player deathmatch, but there will be other modes available once the game releases, such as battle royale and survival mode. You have standard melee combos as well as grab attacks and killer weapons. When the gauge is full for the usage of the killer weapon, it activates some unique massive attacks. You also have a 360 attack to push everyone away when you’re surrounded and overwhelmed. Sasha’s powers consisted of snow spikes and freezing powers.
To play this game, you cannot rely on random button presses to win. Anarchy Reigns will require some skills to master the button combinations, as well as good timing with your attacks. It is not like Mortal Kombat where you can get lucky every and a while if you just keep mashing buttons on your controller (I still love that game though).
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYCQYbb77HE&w=425&h=350]
Sadly, one thing that really drags the game down is the camera. The camera was so disorientating I was struggling with that more than actually fighting my opponents. The camera is in third-person mode, but it’s all over the place so you have to remember to control it the entire time. The only real way to steady the camera is if you lock on one opponent, but even then it is not much of an improvement.
Since it is a multiplayer brawler game, you are fighting many people at once. You’ll most likely be getting hit from several different angles, so to be forced to lock on to one opponent just to keep the camera steady can be counterproductive.
If Platinum Games manages to fix that little snafu, this game will be awesome when it releases in January 2012.