Xboxist

Defense Grid Review

Someday we'll discover that tower defense games are actually a secret plot by the communists to sap the productivity of American workers. These addictive little games, which started out as simple flash applications, have spread to just about every platform imaginable, from the PC to mobile phones. The games are deceptively simple: monsters enter from one side of the map, and the player must put towers in their path to kill them before they can get to the other side. But there are any number of different strategies to trap and kill the monsters, and only the best strategy will reap the highest score, which is what makes these games so addictive. Now the Xbox 360 has its first entry in the "tower defense" genre, and it is a very well-made example.

Defense Grid has players protecting energy "cores" from an army of invading aliens. A campaign mode spread across 20 unique levels pits you and your trusty raspberry-loving AI assistant up against an army of determined - if not particularly intelligent - aliens. You might balk at shelling out 10$ (800 MSFT points) for a game that is more or less the same as many free online flash titles, but it offers tremendous variety and value for your money.

Gameplay consists of the straightforward task of building and upgrading towers to dispatch waves of progressively tougher enemies. However, the developers have added some new twists to the genre that shake things up from one level to the next. In certain stages, the enemies will enter and exit from more than one point. Sometimes the player can build her own maze of towers, and other times the task is to redirect enemies along a pre-set circuit. Level design is quite varied, with some of the best examples taking place on multiple heights in 3D space, where towers can fire from above and below at concentrated groups of foes. If we have a complaint, it is that the whole experience was over rather soon (around 8 hours to complete the main campaign). Of course, real fanatics will be able to get much more value from the game if they take on the difficult challenge modes.

Defense Grid is extremely well-balanced, and requires careful use of just about all of the towers in the game in order to succeed. Once the player masters the correct placement of each tower, however, there isn't much additional depth to the game. We would have liked to see some of the more interesting gameplay features better explained. For example, the game tells you that "Certain enemies are more susceptible to specific kinds of towers". The player is left to haphazardly experiment to find out what those combinations are. We would have liked for the game to include some kind of color-coding system to help identify the elemental weakness of each enemy, thus providing another layer of strategy to the game besides "build every type of tower". The core system is also not fully explained to the player. Essentially, having more cores installed in the base increases the player's rate of resource generation. When cores are in the hands of enemies walking through the maze, resources come at a slower pace. It would have been better for this system to be clearly explained to the player, perhaps with a clear "score multiplier" displayed on the screen. That way, the cores themselves would have provided another layer of depth beyond simply "protect them".

Defense grid is a very detailed-looking game, with high-quality 3D art used for levels, enemies and gun turrets. There are plenty of gorgeous graphical effects on display as you cut through hordes of enemies, and we never noticed any slowdown below 30 frames per second on the Xbox 360. The resolution of 720p is more than enough to capture the sharp details of the game. On an artistic note, I personally don't care for the hyper-detailed look of the game. The bright colors and sharp angles actually gave me eyestrain after staring at the game for more than an hour, and I would have preferred a simpler design that made it easier to see your towers and the current enemies on the map. Still, it is clear that a lot of effort has gone into polishing this title, from the charming voice acting to the graphics.

Defense Grid is a very good introduction to the tower defense genre for curious newcomers. It captures all of the key features from other successful games and ties them together in a very attractive package. Tower defense pros might not get as much value from the title, as its story campaign is relatively short and might not provide enough challenge for them. Similarly, while the game is very well balanced, it lacks an additional layer of depth for truly obsessed tower freaks to dig their teeth into. Hopefully with their next game, the folks at Hidden Path will incorporate some innovative new ideas that expand both the depth and scope of the basic tower defense idea.