I love the word absurd because of all the positive and negative connotations that can surround it. Describing someone as absurd can mean they are awesome and hilarious. It can also mean they are extremely dumb.
Anomaly Agent is absurd in every kind of way. Luckily, most of those ways are good! It’s a fast-paced and fun ride for the 5 hours it took me to beat, only slowed down by a purposely ridiculous story that is way too present for its own good.
Absurd Combat, Absurd Options
The core of Anomaly Agent is its 2D combat, and it has a stunning array of stylish and fun options for you to use. You have several different combos (that you can interweave with dodges), you can parry, you can use guns at times, you have a boomerang, and you have several special attacks, too. Combat is super slick and feels impactful. It’s incredibly satisfying to dodge through an enemy to avoid one attack, parry the next gunshot that comes in, and then unleash a giant fist into 5 different enemies at once. I was constantly tackling different scenarios in different ways, which means the combat never got dull for the entire ride.
As great as your core combat options are, the real star of the show ends up being the environments. While the environments themselves are pretty dull artistically, they are absolutely covered with various traps and obstacles. Lasers, pits, electric charged objects, these things are all everywhere. While there is fun in avoiding them, the real fun comes from being able to use these traps against your opponents. Bigger combos and special moves can send enemies flying, so it’s often very easy to even the odds with a big attack that does extra trap damage. It never got dull sending multiple enemies flying into a shock trap with a big punch or flipping a switch that causes a block to fall and crush five enemies.
The coolest part about all of these traps is how often the game manages to mix things up with them. All the way until the end the game, Anomaly Agent is either throwing new traps or new variations of old traps at you. It keeps things fresh throughout.
The attention to this makes up for a pretty mediocre variety of enemy types. Perhaps less attention was put on that because the main focus is on destroying dozens of enemies at a time, but I think a few more sections of challenging 1 v. 1 or 1 v. 2 combat would have been a nice change of pace. The occasional boss fights the game throws at you are pretty fun, so the developers definitely have the ability to create interesting villain attack patterns.
Anomaly Agent also has platforming segments to give you breaks from the combat, and these end up being OK. I thought they were mostly competent but kind of uninteresting. Platforming doesn’t feel that responsive, and the abilities and animations are all pretty basic. However, there are moments when platforming and combat blend together, and these segments end up being some of the most fun in the game.
Absurd Story, Absurd Bugs
There is one thing that holds back those awesome platforming + combat segments, and that is the game’s performance. As scenarios increasingly get more hectic, crowded, and action-packed, the more the game buckled under the pressure (I played on Nintendo Switch to be clear. I’m not sure if these are Switch specific issues). I encountered a surprising amount of slowdown and lagging in the second half of the game. This is pretty disappointing when a lot of the moments where this happens are probably supposed to be the highlights of the game. It’s still playable, but it really hampers the experience.
Anomaly Agent also has a pretty dull story. Be prepared to read a lot of dialogue where someone asks a question, and no one ever gives a straight answer to anything. I realized how little my investment was in the world was when a big decision that decides how your game ends didn’t even have me thinking in the slightest. I had no connection to anything in this world.
Honestly, the bad story wouldn’t bother me if it wasn’t so present at every turn. The game stops quite frequently for dialogue. And so little of it ever feels all that important. These breaks in the action really disrupted the flow of the game for me, and I tried to skip them as fast as I could, but it was never quick enough to not feel a bit annoyed by the end. The dialogue just never accomplishes anything, and it gets completely tiresome.
An Indie Gem, That Might Get Better?
But in the end, the few blemishes don’t take away that the core elements of this game are very well done. The combat is constantly engaging and fun, and in the end, that is what takes up the bulk of this game.
Interestingly, there is a menu option for a “Rogue Agent” mode that is not available yet. The story of the game also involves time loops. This certainly hints strongly at a roguelite mode that could be coming soon. A mode that is more laser focused on those core gameplay elements could end up being more fun than the actual main game was. So, while I did end up liking Anomaly Agent a fair bit, I’m also left wondering if a better actual Anomaly Agent game could already be on the horizon with this new mode. Perhaps in a few months, I will have to retroactively raise my review score, but for now, I feel pretty comfortable calling it an excellent game that falls a bit short of its potential.
Score: 8.0/10
Big Nerd Gaming 
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