Continuing the 4-player action co-op genre is a new team led by a lead developer from the Left 4 Dead series. Stray Bombay is just about to release their alien horde title The Anacrusis into Early Access on January 13th for Steam, Epic Games, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and on Game Pass. Luckily, I was able to get into the game a little earlier than that, provide the first look video above to show off gameplay from my first attempt at the first level, and put together some initial thoughts on the game’s current state. In short, the game is in need of quite a bit of work, but the potential is definitely there.
Gameplay
The early access for the game looks to offer three levels for players to play through. While that doesn't sound like a lot, these levels are incredibly long! Even in the first look above, you can see that it took about an hour for me to complete the first level, given that you add time for the section I didn't show off. Unfortunately, they didn't think to add checkpoints for continuing later in the middle of these levels despite having clear checkpoint moments that break the level up into different parts.
Starting off the level, you are in a small room with three different guns to choose from. Hopefully, they will expand on the number of gun types moving forward, but for now, you have a shotgun, rifle, and smg gun selection. While going through the level you can find a third gun or tool option that will be a unique and limited use item, such as a turret gun or laser. Of course, you always have your pistol as well which has infinite ammo.
The only way to refill ammo is by finding a recharge station. These are loaded in through random number generation (RNG), as are all the other aspects such as enemies, special weapons, grenades, and more. You can also sometimes find a gun on the floor which always seems to have full ammo, so swapping out a rifle for another rifle could be another way to refill your ammo.
Along with refill stations, you can come across a perk station which will let you choose one of three randomized options to improve your player. This isn't a limited use station, just as the recharge station isn't, and so every team member can use it when it is found.
Enemies all seem rather weak unless it is one of the few unique enemies. Even against a horde of standard enemies, they can be cleared quickly with a little spray-and-pray from the team. If they ever get too close, you can use a push shield option which actually seems to replace the melee attack option. It doesn't do any damage, but it will push enemies off of you, so utilizing this with a team in a consecutive manner could be a handy way to keep enemies away at all times. Unique enemies are not affected by the push shield though.
Your unique enemies, from the early access I've seen, include a flasher that blinds your surroundings, a spawner that spawns weird round enemies that can shoot at you, brutes that can push you back and do a hefty chunk of damage, gooers that will shoot goo that makes the player stuck until they are shot free by a teammate, and grabbers which will grab you with their tentacles and stab you to death. I also came across a strange enemy that I didn’t see a name for that just makes a weird noise but will gang up on you if awoken.
Expectations
This game definitely has a long road of updates ahead of it. The enemies, overall, feel very lackluster and are only really interesting or a threat when the random horde attacks happen. When clearing areas with regular enemies everywhere, there is literally no threat to them at all because shooting your gun doesn't bring them all to you. Hell, shooting at them and missing just slightly doesn't even grab their attention all the time.
The unique enemies were the only ones that seemed to be interesting at all and a lot of them were very similar to what we experienced in the Left 4 Dead series. With them changing it up to alien-type enemies, I hope they end up having a wider variety of unique enemies, even if that means removing some that are currently in the game.
As for the gear and weapons, there needs to be a lot more added in this area as well. The weapon choices are so few and even the special weapons felt rather limited. I'm sure they plan to bring a whole armory into the game, but right now it just feels bleak.
There are some in-game aspects that weren't good either. For instance, why is there no gore in the game? Big horde fighting games like this always need to have some level of gore yet this game has literally nothing, even when players are injured. Then there is the fact that you can't choose your character, you are just given one. Teaming up with friends may be easy to do, but games will load up and break the party for no reason – which I would rather it say 'failed to load' or something and push me back to lobby in this case.
They got a lot of things right with the game when it comes to a base layout, level build, grenade variety, and even enemy variety. However, they need to add checkpoints that players can leave and come back to rather than expecting them to just complete a huge level in one go, and they need to look into improving the limited amount of options they give players overall.
Verdict
The Anacrusis has a lot of potential, but a lot of flaws as well. I have high hopes that they will be able to get this game on the right track moving forward and am glad that this is only the early access version of the game. As long as they listen to their players and improve the game off of the feedback it is going to receive, then it has a chance to be an amazing co-op title by the end of 2022.
