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2008 has been a hell of a year for tower defense games. Things kicked off with the stellar PixelJunk Monsters, and then kept chugging along with titles like Ninjatown, FieldRunners, and everything in between.
To close out 2008, Steam recently saw the release of the bigger-than-usual-polish for a tower defense game title Defense Grid: The Awakening. But was it all flash and no substance, or did Defense Grid close out the year in style?
Traditionally, tower defense games come in two distinct flavors. On one hand, you have games where your enemies march along a pre-determined path. Games like this usually have you setting up your defenses at predetermined locations along the path. On the other hand you have the "empty field" style of gameplay. While the enemies will consistently enter the map through the same entrances, it's up to you to create the path they'll follow by creating maze-like patterns with your towers. Defense Grid: The Awakening does something special. It evolves the genre by combining the two styles of play into something new, and it works. While the enemies follow a pre-determined path, certain stages provide so many possible paths that you'll find yourself trying to seal off many of these with towers to guide the baddies to the path you want them to take. It's new gameplay that blends old mechanics, and it works really well. But gameplay isn't the only place that Defense Grid evolves the genre.
The production value is leaps and bounds above anything else we've ever seen in the genre. When tower defense games first appeared on the scene a few years back, the industry was flooded with low-budget/high-quality flash titles. Sure they cemented this style of play as a new and important niche in the market, but on a technical level they weren't much to look at. And while bigger titles like PixelJunk Monsters on the PlayStation Store may have smacked of style and polish, they weren't going to knock anybody's socks off with their technical prowess. This is somewhere that Defense Grid excels.
Three levels of zoom let you adjust your view from a distant full-sized map view to a nose-to-the-ground angle that shows off how gorgeous this game truly is. The art style sometimes makes you feel like you're playing Halo Tower Defense, but that's more of a compliment than a criticism. Fighting off an alien invasion is hard work, and the look of the game doesn't let you forget that. The aliens are mean, varied, and increasingly tough. The environments and towers seem to offer a bleak view of a world ravaged by invaders. It's stark and cold, and does a great job of setting the atmosphere.
The game offers up 20 levels in the main campaign that loosely attempt to tell a story, though for the most part the twists and turns serve as little more than context for each level (or new gameplay element that level introduces.) Once you complete a level some non-campaign challenges open up that'll create solid reasons for replay. Things like "complete the level with 10 or less towers in play," or "complete the level with only 10,000 in resources" -- that sort of thing. For the completionist in all of us Defense Grid: The Awakening also offers a pretty wide range of Steam achievements.
As far as wrinkles go, the game has very few. Tower defense games on the whole are pretty hard to screw up, and Defense Grid has such a high level of polish and improves the formula in such a solid way that any criticisms I have about the game are really just nitpicky gripes. The main control, for example, takes a bit to get used to. Rather than using a traditional cursor approach, the mouse controls the entire screen. You make your selections by highlighting items with a selection tool in the middle of the screen. It's definitely a weird vibe at first, but you get used to it quick. As well, I remember reading in the advanced press somewhere that a multiplayer mode was supposed to be part of the title, but it looks like it didn't make the cut in the final game. Comments on the official site seems to suggest that it may be coming down the road though, so I'll keep my fingers crossed.
2008 was a fantastic year for tower defense games. Off the top of my head I can name four games in the genre that should easily have met with universal acclaim, and Defense Grid: The Awakening is amongst them. With a great visual look, a new style of play, and a surprising amount of personality courtesy of your bodiless companion, it's both $19.99 well spent for anyone that loves tower defense games and a great entrance to the genre for TD noobs.
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