Publisher: Hidden Path Entertainment
Developer: Hidden Path Entertainment
Genre: Tower Defense
Release date: Available now

Let’s talk tower defense. No don’t leave, at least hear me out. I don’t usually play this type of game, so when I was asked to review Hidden Path’s Defense Grid: The Awakening, I wasn’t that excited. The prospect of not being able to send a tooled up character into a bloody firefight with accompanying large explosions and general pulse-racing chaos sends a cold chill down my spine. Still, seeing as I like a challenge, I reluctantly switched on my trusty Xbox and waited as the game downloaded. Within 10 minutes of playing I was addicted. I even ignored offers of tea (which, being English, isn’t normal), as I was furiously engaged in planning my next strategy and vanquishing the wily enemy.

Those of you who have turned your noses up at tower defense games might want to rethink. The concept of Defense Grid is simple. A computer program has awakened to find aliens trying to conquer your planet. You place a variety of weapon towers along a path to take out the invaders, who are attempting to steal your power cores. If they manage to exit the map with all of your cores, you lose. If, however, you save at least one core, you win and you can grin smugly at the TV screen. You start each level with a map that indicates where the aliens will enter and where they will try to exit. You have to choose your defenses and where to place them. You also have to consider whether you should hit the aliens hard as they appear, try to catch them as they escape, or do a bit of both. Some maps require different strategic approaches, particularly given that, as the game progresses, you are faced with different alien types and multiple entry and exit points. You have to lay out paths that delay them as long as possible. The added complication is that, when aliens who have stolen cores are destroyed, they drop their loot. Other aliens can pick these up en route and run with them. This brings a new dimension to the mayhem; it’s a race to see if you have enough firepower to stop the alien relay team.

Given that you start each map with a limited set of points on which to build towers, the game requires some thought. There are 10 types of towers, each with its particular ability and cost. Some towers work best against multiple targets, some against individuals. Some hit harder but are slower to fire, whilst others have a high fire rate but inflict low damage. There are towers that delay the enemy (temporal towers; these are very useful), and others that harvest more points from destroyed aliens within their sphere of influence. You also have to consider fields of fire and that each tower has a maximum range. Each time you destroy an alien you are rewarded with more points, which you can spend to deploy more towers. You can also level up your towers, increasing their firepower, efficiency or range.

The aliens provide a sufficiently mixed bag to ensure your blood pressure reaches questionable levels. These range from horde-type aliens who operate in fast, lightly armoured swarms, to the singles who are built like Arnold Schwarzenegger behemoths, slow but can take a bucket load of punishment. There’s also the nicely added touch of flying enemies; these travel a completely different path than the rest. Once these grab one of your cores, they simply fly off. When they first appeared, they forced some choice curses out of me. The 20 maps generally progress in terms of complexity and challenge. The last of these test even the most battle-hardened players of this genre. Also, as a downloadable Flash game it looks good. Defense Grid is rendered in beautiful 3D, with exceptionally fine detail and impressive flame, shadow and explosion effects. You can adjust the camera to zoom in on three levels, from a bird’s-eye view to up close and personal. The one slight issue with the camera is your inability to spin the angle around the map, a slight drawback but not something that seriously impedes your game experience. The display is very clean and organized, and you can switch the tower range illumination and flying enemy paths on or off quickly. The recon bar at the top of the screen details the upcoming wave with color-coded icons, exposing the type and strength of each oncoming group.

Hidden Path has produced a gold standard version with this release. It has also added some defining elements. There’s a fast-forward button that greatly speeds up the action, which is very handy when you are itching to see the next wave of aliens get pulverised by your elaborately laid-out defenses. There is also a checkpoint system that automatically saves your game at different points during a round. This also allows you to rewind back to any previous checkpoint and revise your strategies. This should be a required part of many games; how many of you have had to go back to the start to do a whole level all over again because you couldn’t save your progress? But the main bugbear I have about Defense Grid is the ever-annoying voice of the computer with which you are working. If I could have set my towers on top of this annoyingly opinionated piece of hardware, I would have.

Defense Grid: The Awakening is not overly original within the tower defense genre, but it provides a well executed game in an exceedingly bland XBLA world. I had a friend over who has played a lot of tower defense games on the PC. He got so wrapped up in Defense Grid that I nearly had to set the dog on him to make him leave in the wee small hours of the next day. It’s fun and addictive, and at only $10, it’s also a great deal.

Our Score:
Our Recommendation: