The Anacrusis - L4D follow-up by Chet

Another co-op horde FPS. Made by Stray Bombay, the studio Chet Faliszek co-founded after leaving Valve. Features “AI Director 2.0”

What does “vibe” mean in this context?

/oldman

LOL @chet

Also probably worth pointing out that it releases on Game Pass day one.

Ha ha – man, I was thinking the same thing. I have no idea what that even means. It may not be the game for us!

Dont get me wrong – branding is where hope goes to die – but “The Anacrusis”? Someone should go to video game jail for that name.

(Me having this take probably means that it’s the perfect name and it’s going to sell a hojillion copies.)

Right there with you, I put it on my steam Wishlist based off these words alone: “AI director 2.0”.

The game name in my view also is laughably bad.

Sometimes a name just needs to be unique and it can become memorable. What the heck is an Anachronox after all?

It looks interesting, but in the bit of video I watched it was too fast-paced for me. I don’t really play shooters. I’ve never played Fortnite or Team Fortress or L4D, etc. The last one I played was the one where you’re a sniper shooting nazi zombies because nazi zombies! I didn’t get very far in that.

Very first impression, is that the main enemy looks weird. And not in the good sense, but in the goofy sense. And they all look the same, and the animations were a bit iffy.

The environments reminded me slightly of Brink.

The not-so-subtext of the PC Gamer piece is that they’re actually comparing it to Back 4 Blood which is very frantic, still has bugs around special Infected/Ridden spawns, and is optimized at the highest difficulty by speedrunning past most of the content.

Will definitely check this out on Gamepass when it’s out.

I’m not even sure how to pronounce it. What’s a ‘crusis’?

The opposiste of this thing, apparently.

Welp, so I did understand what “vibing” meant. I guess I’m just that hip! But how is that even going to work in a multiplayer shooter? If I wanted to “vibe” with my friends, we would play an MMO or a strategy game and not a multiplayer shooter. What a weird way to position a game. I’m guessing that’s just PC Gamer’s contribution and not something the developer actually said?

About five pounds.

I also would have accepted, “Crusis? I don’t even know her!”

-Tom

People, we have an @Crusis – he writes books and rides a bike and posts interesting things. He may be the authority on whatever an Anacrusis might be.

I agree with Tom that the vibing thing is something PC Gamer came up with because being relaxed and chilling in a team shooter seems a bit more frantic than vibing, if I now understand what vibing means.

So this is from Stray Bombay’s website:

The Anacrusis is a four-player, co-op first-person shooter designed from the ground up to be more than just a play space, it’s also a social space. In 2018, when Kim and Chet started talking about potential game concepts, the idea of games as social spaces was novel.

After the events of 2020, that idea that people might want to just hang out and share space with their friends in games has gone mainstream. I think we all know people who hosted birthday parties in Animal Crossing, visit with distant loved ones in Fortnite or Valorant, and take game night virtual with Discord, Jackbox, and Tabletop Simulator.

What is The Anacrusis? Our game starts with four unlikely heroes—Nessa, Guion, Lance, and Liu— searching for signs of other survivors on the Isolode, a massive starship ravaged by hostile aliens on the edge of explored space. After exploring space for hundreds of years without finding signs of intelligent life, humanity found intelligent aliens. Rather, the aliens found us. It didn’t go well.

Sounds cool, but how is a co-op shooter going to be a social space for chilling and hosting birthday parties? Not saying it can’t happen, but when I imagine a co-op shooter I think of the game starting and non-stop action. Then again, as I said upstream, I don’t play these things so maybe it is common to jump in a game and hang and chat?

Back 4 Blood is fine

I just took it to mean the pacing might be a bit more like L4D and L4D2, both of which have lulls between each main engagement.

One reason games like Call of Duty, Fortnite, and many more are popular is because people leisurely play them with their friends damn near every night. Old people play strategy games on MMOs. Young people play first person shooters.

Most of these games aren’t about playing the damn game, you nerds, it’s an excuse to hang with your buds and talk shit!

We do?

An anacrusis is like an introduction in writing or music. ‘Oh’ in The Star Spangled Banner for instance. It’s also an obscure prog metal band from the 80/90s and I always liked the term. Thus - Crusis. Cool game title.