A little less than a year ago, Hidden Path Entertainment released the tower defense game Defense Grid: The Awakening on the PC and we were very pleased with what they had to offer, praising its polish, creativity and style.  Now Hidden Path has released Defense Grid on Xbox Live Arcade, offering the non-PC gamer a chance at taking on the oncoming alien hordes for only 800 MS points ($10).

To be honest, I haven’t had a lot of experience with the tower defense genre, so when given the opportunity to review Defense Grid: The Awakening I was a little wary of whether or not I would be able to give it a fair and comprehensive review.  I’m not good with strategy games.  My attention span doesn’t do well with cohesive planning or thought-out utilization of resources.  I usually need to blow stuff up…and like, RIGHT NOW.  Generally the most strategy I can wrap my wayward brain around is in sports games, and even then, Madden is generally too much of a think-piece for me.  Because of this I thought I’d download the demo for Defense Grid: The Awakening before checking out the full version.  After about 10 minutes of playing the demo I was hooked.  Put me in Sarge!  I’m ready to fight!...er…write!

The Story Mode starts off politely enough, as I am introduced to my Defense Grid computer who is voiced by some sort of Patrick Stewart/Ian McKellan hybrid.  Naturally that gets my geek-strings strummed and I’m already enjoying myself.  The first couple of levels are pretty much tutorials as I learn about my prime directive (can’t review a game with a Picard-esque voice and not drop a Trek-bomb in here somewhere), tower placement, and the other basic elements of the game.  The controls are simple and fluid.  Your left stick controls a reticule for highlighting items on the screen, and the right stick controls your camera, which offers three different zoom levels.  I place my towers, drones come in, drones go boom.  I get it…and easily.

As the game progresses I learn about the different towers at my disposal, and as I get more towers to use the attacking aliens throw different types of aliens at me.  If I’m not sure which tower I should use or what alien-type has just entered the fray, there’s a mini-encyclopedia in the pause-menu for me to educate myself.  As I progress as a Defense Grid operator, I come to realize that it’s not just what towers you place that make a difference but where you place them as well.  The more I play Defense Grid: The Awakening, the less it feels like a strategy game and the more it feels like a puzzle game.  It reminds me of games like The Incredible Machine or Lemmings, except instead of catching a mouse or leading rodents to their death, I’m kerploding dozens of onrushing aliens.  Who can’t find fun in that?

The beauty of Defense Grid: The Awakening, lays in its simplicity and flexibility.  While I need to pay attention to where I’m placing my towers and what kind of towers I’m placing, I don’t feel as if there is a perfect formula for each level.  I can experiment with different groupings, and on the more open levels (if I’ve failed on initial attempts) I can try different arrays of towers guiding the aliens along different paths.

I got cocky after the first few levels.  My success went right to my head.  Suddenly I had to start trying different paths and tower groupings after my initial plotting was foiled.  These aliens?  They’re crafty. They’ll take different routes just to mess with my head.  If I’m not careful and forget to plug a hole, they’ll find it and exploit it.  If I block them off completely, they’ll just bust right through my towers and go whichever way they want.  There’s a fine line between a good defensive set-up and a bad one, but not so fine that it becomes frustrating; it stays fun.

Defense Grid: The Awakening is aesthetically pleasing as well, both in the visual and the aural sense.  The mountainous canyon regions are well designed, and a high level of artistry is apparent.  The alien designs, for the most part, are interesting and there are times when I catch myself paying more attention to them at the highest level of zoom and forgetting that I’m trying to stop these jerks from stealing my resources.  The audio effects are great as well.  The banter of the computer is fun and never annoying, and the same holds true for the soundtrack.  It’s dramatic enough to set the scene of battle while never feeling repetitive or ridiculous.  Even if the music does grow tiresome, the player can take advantage of the custom soundtrack option and blow up the infiltrators to their own beats.  The Xbox Live Arcade version also serves up some extra levels and challenges that were not included in the original PC version.  Once the main Story mode is finished there are fun challenge modes to tackle, including a 10 Tower Limit mode, a Reverse Story Mode (the aliens charge in an opposite direction), and a Poison Core Mode…which needs to be played as an explanation could not possibly do it justice.

All in all, Defense Grid: The Awakening for the Xbox Live Arcade is a fantastic game.  It works on various levels and isn’t too oppressive with its strategic aspects.  If you want a great strategic challenge, you will get that.  If you aren’t that much of a serious thinker, but still like solving the occasional puzzle, you’ll get that too.  While it isn’t as intensely deep as a full-fledged, store-bought title, you will definitely get vastly more than you money’s worth, and a little more fun than you bargained for as well.

Yay! Look Mom!  I'm thinkin'...and I like it!!  Strategic fun that isn't over-whelming in its complexity.  A lot of bang for your few bucks.
Nay! Some sort of versus mode would be fun.  More so the idea of player one's alien hordes vs. player two's tower defense abilities.

For those of you who really hate reading, or only learned to read numbers: 8/10

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