When I first saw this game I had to stop and think for a moment. How many retail games are there that are solely a tower defense game? Possibly born from the conglomeration of tower defense maps that litter Warcraft 3's battlenet, Defense Grid: The Awakening takes the idea and transforms it into something even greater. The controls are simple and intuitive, gameplay is exactly what I would expect from a solid tower defense game, and the graphics are shiny and attractive to boot. There's even a mild flavor of narrative in the game, giving it just a little bigger spark of life.
Simple and convenient, that's just how I like the controls. The designers created a system that allows for both scrolling the view and select things by centering the camera around your cursor. While it takes a few minutes to truly get used to the idea, it eliminates any frustration brought on by having to use the arrow keys (Or sidescrolling with the cursor!) to move your camera view. The build menu is also very simple, allowing for quick construction without having to dig through menu after menu to find what you want.
As you start the game off on the first level, you are only given some of the tower types, supposedly to ease you into the game. It felt a little slow to me, as there are 9 tower types and only one or two were unlocked in each of the first few levels. You must complete one level to unlock the next. Each level has a distinct playing field, some allowing for more 'mazing' than others. You can only build towers on defined locations, which at first struck me as a bad idea. As I continued to play, my opinion changed to respect for the additional strategy involved in making efficient use of this tower real estate. In order to maximize the strength of your towers in this limited space, you can upgrade them. Each tower has 3 levels, and each upgrade gets increasingly more expensive than the last. For your convenience, all the towers are color coded based on their upgrade level. First level towers are noticeably green, while second level towers are yellow, and third level towers are red. This applies to enemy strength as well, so you can know what's coming your way. It allows for quick identification of weak points in your defense, or immediately recognizing a need to upgrade for that next level of enemy.
The graphics in the game are suitably polished. While they may not be extraordinary or hyperrealistic, they do provide plenty of eye candy without causing your computer to explode in agony. Overall, its a beautifully crafted game, and I have no regrets about purchasing it. Not once was I frustrated by any design element within the game, and with a $20 pricetag it's hard to go wrong.
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Sunday, June 21, 2009
Golden Axe: Beast Rider
As an obligatory introduction, I want to say these reviews will be perfect in every way, giving an unbiased and universally understandable conclusion. This is probably not how it will turn out. I only promise to give my own opinion, and share my experiences while playing through these games. You have been warned!
Now, on with my first game review! Today, I will be talking about the latest in the Golden Axe series, Golden Axe: Beast Rider for the PS3. I will begin by saying that almost every aspect of Beast Rider irks me. The battle system is simplistic at best, the controls are clunky and often sluggish, and the graphics are less than mediocre. The story is developed only as far as it needs to in order to give you an understandable objective. I dont know how long they spent in development, but it clearly was not nearly long enough.
You might think a simple battle system could be nice since it would be easier to learn, right? Sorry, not in this case. You have three basic attacks at your disposal. There is a quick attack, a slow power attack, and a knockback move. They can be chained together with some decent timing to make fairly powerful combo attacks. The enemies also have three special attacks for you to contend with. One attack makes their weapon glow orange, and must be dodged. Another causes their weapon to glow blue, and needs to be blocked. The third causes their weapon to glow green, and can be either blocked or dodged. Some enemies have a fourth attack that glows a color which is virtually indistinguishable from the orange attacks, and cannot be blocked or dodged. In order to dodge it, you need to jump. Despite being a fairly simple fighting scheme, it becomes increasingly frustrating as you constantly get overwhelmed by numerous enemies, and you cannot possibly dodge/block all their attacks.
The controls also suffer from a similar lack of quality. Blocking especially has a slight delay before your block takes effect, and lasts mere moments. Good timing is required to successfully block an attack from a single enemy, let alone half a dozen at once. Couple this with an infuriatingly squiggly camera control, and it makes for some very difficult fights. Top it off with their clunky aiming interface when throwing the golden axe to break statues (a rather gimmicky attempt at gameplay depth, if you ask me) and you have yourself a game that is nigh indistinguishable from the myriad of rushed movies-turned-videogames on the market.
In my opinion the graphics are one of the least important part of a game. If it has solid gameplay and a decent plotline, it has plenty of entertainment potential even if its graphics are subpar. Golden Axe: Beast Rider has neither solid gameplay nor a great plot, and the graphics are subpar for the PS3 to boot. In fact, the finely rendered cutscenes are about what one could expect from a higher end retail game, and the actual game graphics are several notches down on the eyecandy scale. A game can be excused for having one of these three elements be of low quality, but when all three are lacking, you might wonder whether the development team was taking any pride in their work at all.
Now, on with my first game review! Today, I will be talking about the latest in the Golden Axe series, Golden Axe: Beast Rider for the PS3. I will begin by saying that almost every aspect of Beast Rider irks me. The battle system is simplistic at best, the controls are clunky and often sluggish, and the graphics are less than mediocre. The story is developed only as far as it needs to in order to give you an understandable objective. I dont know how long they spent in development, but it clearly was not nearly long enough.
You might think a simple battle system could be nice since it would be easier to learn, right? Sorry, not in this case. You have three basic attacks at your disposal. There is a quick attack, a slow power attack, and a knockback move. They can be chained together with some decent timing to make fairly powerful combo attacks. The enemies also have three special attacks for you to contend with. One attack makes their weapon glow orange, and must be dodged. Another causes their weapon to glow blue, and needs to be blocked. The third causes their weapon to glow green, and can be either blocked or dodged. Some enemies have a fourth attack that glows a color which is virtually indistinguishable from the orange attacks, and cannot be blocked or dodged. In order to dodge it, you need to jump. Despite being a fairly simple fighting scheme, it becomes increasingly frustrating as you constantly get overwhelmed by numerous enemies, and you cannot possibly dodge/block all their attacks.
The controls also suffer from a similar lack of quality. Blocking especially has a slight delay before your block takes effect, and lasts mere moments. Good timing is required to successfully block an attack from a single enemy, let alone half a dozen at once. Couple this with an infuriatingly squiggly camera control, and it makes for some very difficult fights. Top it off with their clunky aiming interface when throwing the golden axe to break statues (a rather gimmicky attempt at gameplay depth, if you ask me) and you have yourself a game that is nigh indistinguishable from the myriad of rushed movies-turned-videogames on the market.
In my opinion the graphics are one of the least important part of a game. If it has solid gameplay and a decent plotline, it has plenty of entertainment potential even if its graphics are subpar. Golden Axe: Beast Rider has neither solid gameplay nor a great plot, and the graphics are subpar for the PS3 to boot. In fact, the finely rendered cutscenes are about what one could expect from a higher end retail game, and the actual game graphics are several notches down on the eyecandy scale. A game can be excused for having one of these three elements be of low quality, but when all three are lacking, you might wonder whether the development team was taking any pride in their work at all.
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