Defense Grid: The Awakening

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.