Hidden Path Entertainment has released their highly-anticipated tower defense game, Defense Grid: The Awakening. For those of you unfamiliar with tower defense titles, they generally put you in charge of placing defenses along a predefined route on which enemy ‘creeps’ will attempt to pass by in an effort to attack your home base. These started quite a while ago but in recent years have become extremely popular as casual web titles. Defense Grid raises the bar, however.
While keeping the same tried-and-true tower defense gameplay, it boasts vibrant and well-detailed 3d graphics, which is something that cannot be said about most other TD games. In addition, it features an evolving storyline over its campaign which adds a much-needed narrative to what is going on. Finished, a level can be played from other modes such as sandbox-games, etc which allows for quite a bit of replayability as you try out different tower combinations.
Speaking of towers. In Defense Grid, you will find a vast assortment of tower-type, from basic machine gun turrets all the way to unguided artillery pieces. Each can be upgraded and look sufficiently different in each level of capability as well which is a nice touch. Effects are well done with vivid explosions and other weapon effects. All of these options in terms of which towers to place where creates a big dilemma for the budding player: what to put where? Certain towers play better off one another, such as starting off with a slowing ‘temporal tower’ followed by some area-effect ‘inferno’ fire towers. By learning what each tower does and planning accordingly, your wins will be far more elegant and brilliant to watch unfold.
Creeps are of the anime ‘mecha’ variety and, while not as well-detailed as the environments or turrets, do their jobs nicely. There are light, medium, and heavy creeps to deal with. Some even have shields which are harder to break through. Then there are the air units, which do not always travel on the same path as their terra firma-rooted brethren. All of this makes for a brilliant display of action on the screen as you are not always watching the same creep go by a thousand times in a row.
Available off the Steam digital distribution service for $19.99 (with a current 2008 Holiday sale for $14.99), it would be a shame to pass up this engaging and addictive game. Defense Grid: The Awakening is truly the best tower defense game to date and I hope Hidden Path has plans to go further in the genre as they truly have a knack for it and we just can’t wait to see what they have in store for a sequel.
