As the title suggests, I know this is an unfair assessment. This is an Early Access review, and the finished product isn't out yet. These are just my thoughts on the game before the final release (as of this writing, the last update was Hotfix 2 to Update 6, dated October 19). However, I've been stewing with these thoughts for a while ever since I first played the game, and I'd like to put my thoughts down because I think it might be interesting to compare this with the finished product when it's finally out and I also want to organize my thoughts on this game.
The date is November 5, 2022 and I have just played through The Anacrusis, an early access four-player coop shooter, for the third time. Much like many other coop shooters of the current day, this game cannot shake the eternal spectre of the incredible hits Left 4 Dead and Left 4 Dead 2. Like Back 4 Blood, but unlike several others, this game has a little more of a rightful claim to the L4D throne than others: the game is being worked on by Stray Bombay, a company co-founded by none other than Chet Faliszek, one of Left 4 Dead's lead writers. Unlike L4D, The Anacrusis feels like a dull, meandering, uninspired, unbalanced, unsatisfying clone of a much tighter game. Also interesting to me is the fact that the L4D1 and 2 shadow overwhelms The Anacrusis like a titan, always looming overhead, from which The Anacrusis is never able to escape.
Let me start with the positives. The loading times are great. While in a campaign, maps often only take mere seconds to transition, getting you right back into the action. This is actually rather remarkable considering how long the maps can be. I also have to compliment the music. Taking place in a fictional futuristic 70s-funk world, the action music is notably fun and upbeat, playing into the use of bright colors and wavy shapes like a 70s discotheque. The characters are, simply put, fine. None of them are really that remarkable but the character design is good and overall voice work suitably fits each character, even if they're somewhat barren in the personality department. The outfits you can work towards unlocking are nicely futuristic, reminiscent in a way of 70s-era Star Trek, with formalwear that still features bright colors, giving it a unique clash between serious and fun. The matter compilers are a good idea, adding bonuses and variety and randomness to each playthrough but also giving you an element of choice. The maps are fairly long and detailed, and they go through a range of environments that are mostly utilitarian but usually somewhat creative in their approach. There are lots of ramps, and in fact the geometry in general is mostly very smooth. Lastly, this game purports to be very moddable, with some custom maps already out (and tried by myself).
So this is where the positives start to dry up. I'm the target demographic for this game. I've clocked in over 2700 hours in Left 4 Dead 2, over 500 in Vermintide 1, over 500 again in Vermintide 2, I've played Earthfall and am enjoying Back 4 Blood. The Anacrusis is seriously lacking in many departments. There's so much that needs work in this game. Let me start with the basics. When you begin the game you have no idea what's happening, where you are, when you are, who you are, what you're doing, or what's happening. Nor do you ever find out. You just start out in a saferoom and, I guess you just have to assume this is a horde shooter so go shoot stuff. Usually that's enough for me, I mean hell, I played the dang game. But usually a game gives you something. Okay well that's fine, maybe something's on its way in development. Well here's something that's not in development, but already in the game: the enemies.
I'm sorry, but the enemies suck in this game. They common enemies look like the Gorn from that one Star Trek episode, except with suits on. I don't know why they wear suits, but they do. Their attacks suck. They run up to you (really fast) and swing at you seemingly without any purpose. Their animations are lazily done. With L4D2 the common infected appropriately amble around, make very easily telegraphed swings, and more or less look menacing and a bit enraged when they notice the player. In The Anacrusis there's no emotion, they just run at the player and swing. Their swings aren't even that exaggerated or larger than life, they're just like realistically taking a swipe at you. It comes across as low-effort development. How do you block attacks, you might ask? Well, this game has decided, rather poorly I might add, to feature not a bash but a 180 degree (360?) push-back button called a pulse, which once used is on a recharge timer. On the page this is really terrible, though it works decently when you're only fighting a few enemies at a time. Where this really falls on its face is in two places: firstly when you use it to block one attacker and then immediately get jumped by another from around a corner you couldn't possibly see, which is additionally a problem because they're so aggressively fast, and secondly when you're in a horde. You only begin with one pulse on Normal difficulty, and to my knowledge you can only increase this number with matter compilers, which are hidden throughout the levels and are completely random, so will probably not contain this upgrade. There are some bonuses you can add to the pulse but it recharges so slowly that you're bound to get hit in massive crowds. And boy does this game love its crowds.
I don't think I've ever played a horde shooter that spams enemies as much as this game during its horde events. At the end of Episode 4, which mind you was only three maps long, we tallied upwards of 2000 enemies killed. That's fairly insane, and also in the finales rather unreasonable and uncreative. It's kind of an interesting concept because you take so little damage from the few stragglers in most of the maps, and then when you get flooded it's suddenly going from running through tissue paper to hitting a brick wall. Increasing enemy numbers is an obvious way to ratchet up the difficulty, every horde shooter does this. However it feels really fake and artificial when the flow is constant and the game hits you with a three or four specials at once. The specials require their own discussion.
I've played through Earthfall more times than I'll care to admit, and I seriously think the specials in that game are better balanced That's saying a lot. The Anacrusis to my recollection has five specials: grabbers, spawners, goopers, flashers, and brutes. Not only is that fewer than Earthfall's and Left 4 Dead 2's, that's about as lacking as it can get while still claiming to have variety. Let's go from best to worst. The brute is probably the least bad. It's essentially like a miniature version of the L4D tank in that it's big, deals heavy damage, and picks one target to aggressively attack, although what separates it from the tank is that it's fast, agile, and has slightly less HP. All players should ideally focus their attention on the brute, but due to it being somewhat weaker than the tank and being susceptible to grenades, it's not exactly at the same level as a tank event. I presume that's why the Anacrusis has started spawning two brutes at a time, which usually will down one player (typically the bot), and hold up forward level progress for a minute or two. The brute is the least offensive enemy because it is somewhat of a test of teamwork and it fills the role of the tank decently. What it really needs is a sound cue so that you can prepare for it. The special slightly worse than the brute is the flasher. This creature will randomly appear in various spots around the levels and create a blinding field of orange light in its section of the room, although it usually makes the entire room blindingly bright. I don't like this thing, and it usually appears with hordes, making them a much bigger bitch to deal with. It has a recognizable call, but by the time you hear it it's usually too late. The real problem is that if you're blinded by it's light, there's no reasonable way you can be expected to find this thing. It's like trying to find a flashbang grenade while you're flashbanged. It really needs more direct sound cues with stereo sound so you can find it by using your ears, so then it might be an interesting opponent.
Worse than the flasher, we get the gooper. This thing doesn't make much sense to me. It spits goo (or goop) at you, slowing you down if it hits the floor by you, but its real problem is that a direct hit at you will immobilize you, forcing you to get shot by an ally to free you. I know you're supposed to deflect the goop by pulsing at the right time, but that's where the recharge time will screw you, plus because of the massive pile-up of hordes, you're almost guaranteed to A) not have a pulse ready, B) not be able to move out of the way because you're surrounded, and C) never see the shot coming. The penalty for getting gooped can be bad, and it's made worse by the fact that when there's a horde, your allies probably won't even be able to shoot you because of the hordes they're dealing with. It can feel annoying when you get gooped. Below the gooper, there's the grabber. These sons of bitches are somewhat big tentacle creatures that fly around and grab a player, pulling them close in and dealing damage. The big problem here is that the grab is commonly unavoidable (especially in hordes), and they frequently pull their victims away from the line of sight from allies. I suppose it's supposed to be like a smoker, except an AI smoker in L4D is always exposed as its window for line of sight is very specific. It feels as though a grabber can be anywhere and pull a player behind a staircase or down a level.
However, by far the worst special is the spawner. Not only are these fuckers ridiculous, they make no sense. They look like malboros from Final Fantasy, they hide behind cover and spawn an infinite number of fast, mobile turrets that roll around and shoot at you. Turrets usually spawn two or more at a time, and there's basically no delay or recharge time between spawn-ins for groups of these turrets. If you don't find the spawner because it's in an unreachable location, it will keep spamming you and spamming you with turrets until you're red in the face. This is a huge problem during hordes because you'll basically be immobilized by the common aliens, if not by other specials. The spawner will keep camping behind cover like a little bitch and spawning turrets over and over. This doesn't even make sense, if the turrets were tiny and the spawner shat them out like eggs, maybe it could make sense, but the turrets are as big as the spawner itself, how does it call so many? If any of these need to be reworked, it's definitely the spawner. I guess I should also mention the 'eggs' that you will occasionally see during the level, too. I suppose this fits the role of the witch, since it's a stationary problem that needs to be carefully avoided. However in my experience they usually aren't avoidable. Even worse, the bots can wake them up. It's made a little bit easier because of grenades like the stasis grenade or the special weapon (in the third slot), but they're still obnoxious and feel unavoidable. The specials here more or less feel cheaply made and getting caught by them feels more like you couldn't really avoid it, where in L4D and L4D2 the Source engine has such a feeling of physicality that you really feel like a badass when you stop a hunter pounce by bashing it at the perfect time, or cut a smoker tongue with a bladed weapon, or dodge a charger's charge, or punch a jockey in the face.
Speaking of weapons, let's talk about them. In a recent update, they said they added thousands of weapons. This is untrue. They added modifications that can slightly alter the stats of weapons, but these are still the same five or six weapons. In fact, as far as primaries go, you only get three: a blaster (shotgun), SMB (SMG), and plasma rifle (assault rifle). As far as secondaries go, you still only get one pistol! There's some variety with special weapons (which can't be reloaded or have their ammo replenished), which includes a laser cutter, a minigun, and an auto-turret, but seriously, one secondary weapon? I get that you're going for the whole attachment thing that Back 4 Blood does, but one secondary being the pistol is pathetic. Not even a melee weapon. If you want this game to compete against DarkTide, Vermintide 2, Back 4 Blood, hell, even Vermintide 1, you're going to have to see that this is pretty unacceptable. If you don't find a special weapon, we're talking four weapons max. Sure you might get more firepower or a higher rate of fire, but it doesn't change the basic identity of what the weapon is. Now Vermintide 2, that game has real weapon variety.
In addition to that, the firing effect and killing aliens is just so...boring and lackluster. Enemies flop to the ground like fish when killed, and firing the blaster, plasma rifle, and pistol feels so lifeless. At least the SMB has a little bit of sound to it, but all the other standards weapons are just so low energy and lifeless. Adding tracers, a brighter muzzle flash, and punchier sounds would do these weapons more good. And here's where I have to go on a little rant.
I feel like for a lot of my criticisms the devs will say "But this game's moddable, you can make the weapons look, sound, and feel different if you want! If you don't like the enemies, you can change them yourself!" I don't buy games to be the last step in the development process. You're not paying me to make this game, I've paid you to make this game, and if there's something minor I'd like to tweak to my own personal preference or if I'd like to extend playability through custom maps or additional weapons, moddability is a great feature. I'm a huge supporter of mods. I've made mods for Left 4 Dead 2, Aliens versus Predator Classic 2000, and Black Mesa, and I've made maps. I love mods. But mods aren't a substitute for the base game. I feel like this game from the beginning, which has been stated as supporting mods, has used that attitude as a crutch for crafting a skeleton of a game that will need players to do the heavy lifting to finish the last stages of the game. That would be really sad.
From the first time I started the game, and also every time I play it, The Anacrusis has always felt like a base that was intended to have improvement mods and peripherals tacked onto it to really make it feature-complete. The scenery looks good but all the combat, enemies, and gameplay feels unpolished, as though the base game is one iteration of what could be the game, but in someone else's hands it could take place on Earth against velociraptors, and in someone else's hands it could be against hellish demons in a fiery inferno. It's like building the framework of a house, which could then be turned into a house that's colonial style, victorian style, cape cod, French country style, ranch style, Tudor style, Mediterranean style, etc. It feels like what the Source engine is, a basic framework onto which modders create their own visions. The difference is that the Source engine is an engine, The Anacrusis is a game. I hope I'm wrong and that they really step everything up and fix the incomplete parts of this game (lackluster enemy design, bad animations, weak combat, annoying specials) and don't rely on others to do the last leg of the development for them.
I suppose I should finish by addressing something I said in the beginning. I said that this game can't shake off the shadow of L4D1 and 2 in the background, and I really do mean that. I feel like this game could lean much more heavily into the fun and ridiculous, almost campy even, nature of the funky futuristic so this game wouldn't really have that dissonance between happy and grim. It feels like the saferooms are there because L4D did it. It feels like specials are there because L4D did it. It feels like pinners are there because L4D did it. It feels like four players are there because L4D did it. What I'd like to see this game break free from the restrictions of L4D. Now, I have no idea where to go from that, but I'm not a creative on the team. Perhaps this just shows us yet again how limited games have become. You can't make a spunky, happy-go-lucky futuristic space game without it being a first-person shooter. I don't think that's what this game had to be. It's decent fun for the most part but it won't live up to its potential if the spectre of L4D keeps holding it back. It definitely won't live up to its potential if the game is released as a "part one" for the need of a "part two" created by the public.