Some folks will tell you that comparisons are a lazy crutch for critics. Don’t tell your reader what a game is like; tell them how it stands on its own merits. The problem is that game design is an iterative process. One of the first video games was *Tennis for Two*, but the first breakout hit was eerily similar, yet much more refined: *Pong*. Hell, we used to call FPSs “Doom clones.”
Comparison is a useful tool because so much of game design is based on iterating on the competition. *Ananta* takes this logical endpoint by essentially acting as a blender to emulsify popular game mechanics together for something bizarrely unique in its sheer lack of new ideas.
### An Everything Bagel Game
So, what is NetEase’s next big game? Well, to use a useful crutch, it is one part *Grand Theft Auto* open world, one part *Batman Arkham* combat. There is a dash of *Like A Dragon*’s zany side-missions, a touch of *Spider-Man* movement, alongside some of the bones of a linear Sony first-party action game. There is also a sprinkle of *Persona* character building.
All of this is held loosely together with an anime aesthetic and gacha structure that amounts to a game feeling like a dozen experiences you’ve had before—resulting in something less than the sum of its many parts.
In a lot of ways, it’s like an everything bagel. Or, well, maybe more accurately, it’s like when you were a kid and your friends mixed together every flavor drink at the freestyle machine for something truly nightmarish.
*Ananta* isn’t going to make you want to throw up like a Coke-Pepsi-Seven-Up-milk combo drink. But even after a thirty-minute demo, I can tell that its “everything, everywhere, all at once” game design approach is making me wince in places.
### Great Alone, Cluttered Together
None of these elements are bad; in fact, taken in isolation, they are excellent distillations of the core ideas they borrow from other games. Developer Naked Rain clearly understands that video game innovation comes from iteration.
However, when this many elements are combined together after being recreated so authentically, the disparate pieces quickly begin to rub against each other, causing an untold amount of friction in the act of playing *Ananta*.
### Concessions in the Name of Volume
This first became apparent as soon as I started playing. The demo kicks off with a story mission where our Spider-Man in a sharp business suit is ambushed by countless assailants. This is where you are introduced to the first form of combat: hand-to-hand Arkham-style brawling.
In theory, this combat plays out just like a *Batman: Arkham* game, or *Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor*, or *Mad Max*. Take your pick.
However, in practice, because so many buttons on the controller are reserved for movement abilities used in the open world, punching and blocking are shifted to the shoulder buttons, making combat feel much less comfortable.
This is further exacerbated when you take out a gun, as the triggers are reserved for special moves, meaning aiming and shooting are also mapped to the shoulder buttons.
Although, when you are in a scripted mission like the one I played, it’s not like you’ll need to worry about hitting your shots—the car chase I went through was nearly impossible to fail.
In these segments, you magically forgo the need to reload your assault rifle, letting loose an endless barrage of bullets.
These issues are far from deal breakers, but every element of the game feels like it has to cede ground to several other mechanics and ideas in order for things to keep functioning.
The game does have GTA-inspired driving, which I describe that way because the driving model feels just like GTA rather than other open-world driving games. However, why would you ever use that when playing as the main character, or Captain, who can literally swing above the traffic at twice the speed? Or when you could just fast travel on the subway (which, yes, also has the Spider-Man-esque loading screens of the Captain commuting with city locals)?
### Gacha Theft Auto
It is worth noting that this gameplay diversity is somewhat justified both narratively and structurally.
You see, *Ananta* will apparently be a free-to-play gacha game, meaning you’ll take on the role of an ever-growing cast of characters, expanded through updates and endless pulls.
So, yeah, it makes sense that one character controls like Peter Parker while another has an electric unicycle to get around quickly.
In fact, gacha mechanics are one of the few things that seem cleanly integrated with the overall GTA-like open world.
You can even create a roster of three characters to quickly swap between via a “zoom out on a world map and then zoom back in” quick menu, which is right out of *GTA 5*—down to the fact that you’ll usually pick up with your new character in the middle of a funny little encounter.
Keeping up the pattern of borrowing beloved mechanics, the character building of *GTA: San Andreas* is also here. After trying some side-missions, I found myself taking one of my characters to the gym to level up their stats and abilities like CJ trying to get cut.
Are gacha pulls and character leveling really something I wanted in my GTA-like? Not really. I can’t exactly see myself excited to spend a bunch of money to pull a legendary future cop.
However, I am clearly in the minority, considering the game’s recent TGS trailer has over five million views on the official PlayStation YouTube channel alone.
### Like Like A Dragon
So after all that, and having played the game myself, I still can’t help but wonder: what am I doing in *Ananta*? What is this game?
Yes, it will have a main narrative focusing on the Captain, with set pieces and the like, but what am I doing with the roster of gacha characters? Why would I continue to put time and money into a free-to-play GTA-like?
It seems like each character you gain access to will have their own set of missions. These missions lean into the wackiness of *Like A Dragon* sub-stories, with the structure of GTA filler content.
In the mission I played, I was tasked with delivering a mysterious crate in the back of a kei truck to a destination. After a quick hand-to-hand brawl and a bit of driving, it quickly became clear that what I was delivering was a sleeping vampire, who eventually awoke due to our driving to vomit up rainbows.
Yeah, I don’t really know either.
This mission was capped off with an admittedly pretty funny sequence where the bunnygirl I was playing as was recruited to continue making similar deliveries before they could even protest.
However, while this cutscene was fun, I realized that I was ultimately partaking in the much-derided GTA mission structure, which has rightfully been called out as padded filler since *GTA 3*.
I drove to a place, beat up some guys, got in a car, listened to some character dialogue as I drove, and finished the mission.
While games like *Genshin Impact* and *Honkai Starrail* have similarly repetitive mission structures, the gameplay they’re based on is inherently a bit more engaging moment to moment.
*Genshin’s* exploration and *Honkai’s* turn-based combat both lend themselves to you finding a satisfying rhythm of completing dailies.
I am skeptical that I would ever find similar joy driving the same streets, over and over, for missions like the one I played in *Ananta*.
### Less Is More
The more I think about it, the more *Ananta* might well and truly be the everything bagel of video games.
It sounds great on paper because I am getting a bunch of all the things I love, all filled with salmon and other toppings.
However, halfway through eating an everything bagel, I usually have the same thought: “I kinda wish I was just having a poppy-seed bagel with cream cheese. Nothing fancy, but doing one thing better than anyone else.”
I may well end up eating my words, but I wish *Ananta* was doing less.
The idea of anime-style GTA is fun, but there are so many systems and ideas taken wholesale from other games that it ends up cluttering itself with constant bloat.
While gaming innovation usually starts with borrowing someone else’s good idea and building on it, I don’t know if yanking a dozen different ideas and adding nothing to them will lead to anything other than an overcomplicated bagel.
https://www.shacknews.com/article/146329/anantas-kitchen-sink-approach-to-game-design-is-as-overwhelming-as-it-is-impressive
