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.

[proxops-pete]

Yup... it's a great little game... Thanks for the review... on the Android phone side, there's a game similar to it called Robo Defense for those interested.

[Kamakazie]

Defense Grid is great! There's also a really good tower defense game on the Nintendo DS called Ninjatown that I highly recommend.

[vertices]

When you get into only beating the game without losing any cores, not using the laser, getting god medal, and going for the absolute highest possible score, you will then learn that while Gun Towers are totally awesome, you will need to use other towers as well.

It's a great game.

I think most players go through first using all the towers, then realizing how good gun towers are, then learning how to mix all the towers properly into their play to max their score out.

[Timman_24]

I beat all the levels and they get pretty damn tough toward the end especially when you have to start juggling major flying spawns and ground guys. The later levels do not give you such a well defined path either so you have to make huge diversions with towers. I know I used gun towers until the end but also cannons are incredible when fighting the bigger guys and they hit flying dudes as well. The flame towers are great in choke points with a slow tower.

Yeah, just be sure to get very familiar with all the towers because you will need them all during the last stages.

[monroeski]

I beat all the levels and they get pretty damn tough toward the end especially when you have to start juggling major flying spawns and ground guys. The later levels do not give you such a well defined path either so you have to make huge diversions with towers. I know I used gun towers until the end but also cannons are incredible when fighting the bigger guys and they hit flying dudes as well. The flame towers are great in choke points with a slow tower.

Yeah, just be sure to get very familiar with all the towers because you will need them all during the last stages.

That's when I first started to realize how good gun towers are, primarily because I started throwing down a billion of them in order to control the alien's route. They're so cheap you can really start a massive redirection very early in the levels. Then after I started doing that, I realized that the aliens were only making it about half as far as they were when I was mixing in other types of towers.

Haven't played in a while, though. I can't wait for the flying mobs to actually start posing a challenge; as it is now, I basically completely ignore them until they show up in the queue, then I throw up two missile towers and forget about all flying mobs for the rest of the level.