Defense Grid

[monroeski]

For some reason I lost some interest in Minecraft and started hitting up some stuff in my backlog. Defense Grid seemed like something I could pick up and play in short bursts (between homework assignments and such), and I had heard some great things about it, so I loaded it up.

Game was pretty great overall. I liked the overall feel of it (having not played much tower defense style games before, admittedly), so I was just making towers and killing aliens.

Then came "Focal Point."

That level was CRUSHING me. There was one level, two levels before it I think, where I actually had to restart because I failed, but other than that, I beat everything in one try. Focal Point, however, whipped me 4 or 5 times in a row. I ended up going online for some strategy, which ended up being the basic strategy I had come up with but extended to the umpteenth degree (which I think I still would have figured out if I had remembered to look up a map online to plot on), but the main thing I came away with was this - (strategy spoiler that could change the entire way you play) -

Spoiler

gun towers are freaking AWESOME. They're cheap as hell in their base form, cheap to upgrade, and deal grievous amounts of harm to anything when you place them in packs. I hoped for a specific entry in TVTropes for this type of weapon, but couldn't find it. Basically, it's the kind of thing that is the lightsaber in Jedi Outcast, the disc in Tron 2.0, or the Predator in Shadowrun (Genesis) - a weapon you get early on that is basically the best thing you can get in the entire game. Now that I know how awesome gun towers are, I've gone from simply wanting to beat levels to only wanting to finish levels without a SINGLE core taken, and it hasn't been too much trouble between spamming gun towers, placing one or two temporals, and a couple of meteors. And maybe some missile towers for airborn enemies, MAYBE.

In conclusion, really, really awesome game. If anybody doesn't have it yet, it's practically guaranteed to be in the Steam Holiday Sales for super cheap. When it comes up, BUY IT.