Tokyo Game Show 2025

Hands-On with Ananta, The Surprise Hit of TGS 2025

If there was an unquestioned dark horse winner of Tokyo Game Show 2025, it was Ananta. From the crowd that surrounded the booth in the hopes of getting in a demo line that opened only for a few seconds each hour to backpack swag-bags featuring bunny girl Taffy, it was impossible not to be aware of the game.

If you've encountered Ananta online, you probably know it as the game that's “anime Grand Theft Auto meets Marvel's Spider-Man.” After spending time with it at its first hands-on showing, I'm here to report it's exactly that, with more than a few other big-name titles in the mix as well.

The Tokyo Game Show demo was divided into two distinct parts. The first (which has been uploaded to the game's official YouTube) was taken from the game's story mode. It begins with a brawl that acclimates you to the game's combat. This is centered around two buttons—one to attack and one to block/counter. To anyone who's played the Batman Arkham and Marvel Spider-Man games, the combat mechanics will feel instantly familiar. You're also able to pick up and use objects as weapons—or simply throw them at enemies. There are also many contextual moves (activated with a click of the thumbstick) that use either weapons or the environment to finish off stunned enemies in brutal fashion.

The rest of the story mode half of the demo was an Uncharted-style car chase with you in the passenger seat, shooting pursuing vehicles. At one point, you end up in the driver's seat and have to ram the motorcycles harassing you as you steer through crowded streets.

In this section, I noticed two curious things. The first is that the game's aim assist was very high. Just aiming in the general direction of an enemy causes your sights to snap to them for an easy kill. Even when I was aiming for the tires, my reticle would often jump up to the car's window with the enemy hanging out of it. Then, when behind the wheel, I noticed that I didn't really have as much control as it appeared. There was an element of auto-steering that was designed to keep me on the prescribed path through the city streets—to stop me from crashing, getting stuck, or taking a wrong turn.

The final part of the story mode was a series of quick-time events in a scene straight out of a Spider-Man game, which were easy enough to hit. All in all, it was a decent action set piece, but what really excited me was the back half of the demo, the game's free-roam mode.

With only 4 minutes remaining, I spent my first bit of time as the protagonist, testing his web-slinging abilities. If you've played the PlayStation Spider-Man games, you know exactly what to expect here. That said, in practice, it lacked a bit of the polish—it felt a little more stiff and less responsive—but was perfectly serviceable overall.

Then, I switched over to Taffy, which is treated as calling her on the phone. The result was a cute cutscene of her secretly slacking off while supposedly hard at work. While I may have been supposed to just jump out of her window and into the city, I instead explored her apartment and—just to see if it could be done—tried to ride the elevator. To my surprise, it worked!

Once on the street, I discovered that, rather than web-slinging, Taffy moves around by turning her weapon—a hammer—into a supercharged segway. I then drove to the nearest group of enemies I could find to test out her combat. Like with the protagonist, Taffy's basic combat revolves around the same two buttons—one to attack and one to block/counter—though, with bullets now thrown into the mix, dodge rolls also became important. I finished the fight by beating one guy with a crowbar before throwing it at the last enemy, knocking him over, and smashing him with my giant hammer—and felt super cool after doing so.

With my last few seconds, I tried to switch over to the third playable character, Richie, but was only able to see her switch-over cutscene before I ran out of time.

In the end, I had a blast with Ananta—though I wish I hadn't been forced to play the story mode so I could have had some more time to explore the world and play around with all the characters. My overall impression is that it is a game standing on the shoulders of giants. It takes nearly all of its basic gameplay components from other games, and while it doesn't feel as polished or refined as those, it's still very playable and tons of fun. It was easily my most anticipated game going into the show and remains that after playing it.