Aww look at the cute little bunny rabbit… oh, he’s smashing up the town like a teen on an ASBO, but that’s okay because he’s very fluffy and has floppy ears; so adorable. Anyway, here we are with a brand new beat-em-up called Anarcute, developed by Anarteam, aiming to start a riot like no other. Will it bring down the house and deliver a delightfully destructive experience, or could Anarcute be all bark and no bite?
An evil force, known as the Brainwash Patrol, have taken over all the major capital cities of the world, brainwashed the police force and are now sharing their propaganda across all forms of media. You must lead a band of brothers and sisters from the animal kingdom into a revolution in a bid to overthrow the mind controlling baddies and reclaim the freedom of the world. Gather the troops; it’s time to fight back.
There’s only one mode in which to cause a riot within and in this campaign of sorts are four main cities – Tokyo, Paris, Miami and Reykjavik – with each containing a number of levels and a boss battle to finish off the revolutionary movement of that specific city. Starting the levels with mostly just a small amount of rioters, the aim is to roam around the various city-based areas, reuniting with already banged up rioters and recruiting ones that are randomly dotted about the place to increase your group numbers. You’ll be wandering through a sandbox city at your own pace to reach the main objective, which usually entails bringing down a Brainwash Patrol tower. Pulling a bigger group together will make taking down the BP far easier, but how is this cutesy gang going to eliminate evil? Using literally everything in their path as a weapon!
As you are in control of a whole group at once, picking up weapons for each animal is automatic to save any painstaking hassle of toggling between them; simply moving over an item of use will place it in the hands of a free rioter. It’s rather liberating to grab a bike or a trash can and throw it at a cop standing between you and your objective. These rioters have an angry Bruce Banner amount of strength, meaning larger stuff like cars can be launched at enemies to create explosions. Not all combat involves throwing though, the rioters also have a simple attack they can use, should they get close enough, a knockback stomp and a variety of unlockable abilities to help along the way.
The abilities kick into gear dependent on how many rioters are a part of your group at the time. You can earn coins for completing each level and these can be spent on unlocking new abilities such as a stronger stomp, being able to pick up entire buildings and increasing the explosiveness of explosions. Equipping abilities to suit the challenge ahead is always a good idea and having to unlock those using coins gave me something to aim for. That is until Anarcute bugged out with over 75% still locked prior to this, it presented me with all the abilities at once, thus nullifying coins completely. After a swift investigation I noticed I wasn’t the only one, so I hope they fix that.
Many of the levels will feel samey to a degree, even with the little obstacles like lasers and mines in place, but the constant introduction of new enemy types keeps the boredom at bay. Learning the attack type of the new enemies is key to avoid a swarm of your gang being banished from play, as these rioters are pretty weak when it comes to sustaining any kind of damage. There are snipers, standard officers, ball and chain wielding brutes and even drones to take note of.
Boss battles aren’t frequent but really round off each area nicely with truly strategic encounters with a robotic spider and a rather large fish, intent on dropping mines all over your poor critters. Much like the standard levels, you’ll be lucky if they last more than five minutes apiece and so those with a diminutive attention span should get along well with Anarcute.
Rioting is a pretty serious and dangerous activity, but Anarteam have done really well to mask the destruction of these well known cities with a kawaii art style to lighten the mood completely. Add this cute Japanese look of the animals to the adorably catchy soundtrack and you’d be forgiven for fancying inciting a riot. It’s so lovely. I don’t condone such violence though; unless of course you’re a bright eyed racoon, then crack on.
I’d be lying if I said I loved every moment of Anarcute because deep down I feel it does have a few repetition issues. There are a couple of cool ideas and being able to use so much of the environment as weapons makes for some interesting action for sure; I learnt the hard way that beach balls just won’t cut it. It does have a genuinely lovely atmosphere to it all and the boss battles were very tactical affairs. Where it falters the most is in the story, due mainly to the incredibly basic cutscenes that offer no spoken words and little visual storytelling; everything I know came from the game description!
Anarcute could certainly be considered as a good game but nothing more and it’s maybe a tad overpriced.
Related: Let’s Play Anarcute on Xbox One!
