Defense Grid: The Awakening Review

Defense Grid: The Awakening Review
Innovation: 5/10
Mastery: 9/10
Greatness: 7/10

Tower Defense is a simple game system that is casual-friendly and can be quite advanced when you get down to it. I've been playing Tower Defense games since the Warcraft III days, and they are one of the best time-wasters I know of. Widely available on websites such as Kongregate and Newgrounds, there are literally hundreds of different Tower Defense games out there, which for the most part have their own special game elements to them. Plants vs. Zombies, PopCap's newest game, is an interesting take on the genre. However, if you are looking for the "best of breed" Tower Defense game, look no further than Hidden Path Entertainment's Defense Grid: The Awakening.

I purchased Defense Grid last weekend on Steam for a paltry sum of $5 (It's still on sale for $5, this week only) after its graphics piqued my interest, I read a few reviews, and played through the game's demo on Steam.

Like many other Tower Defense games, in Defense Grid you are given the task of deploying towers along a path to protect an area from an unending assault of mindless mobs. While most TD games allow you to either place towers in predetermined areas out of the mob's path or allow you to create your own path for the mobs within a certain area, Tower Defense features both types of gameplay. You have a variety of towers (10, with three levels each to be precise) with which to inflict punishment on the baddies, and each has its own strategic purpose. Most enemies (particularly as the game goes on) have resistances, immunities, or special aspects that make them resistant to certain damage types.

Defense Grid starts out pretty easy, but ramps up the difficulty significantly by the end of the game. In addition, since you can receive bronze, silver, and gold medals based on your performance in each level, there is a fair amount of replay value for most levels. In addition, you can increase the speed of the game at any time by holding down the F key, which is great for figuring out a level quickly or fast-forwarding through the time between waves. Lastly, the game saves your progress for you in the middle of levels, allowing you to load previously saved progress. This is something that is pretty unique for the genre and definitely a welcome addition if you don't have the time to play through some of the later levels several times over.

Although the balance of the various towers and the monster variety make this game stand out, it is also Defense Grid's cores system that makes this game the best Tower Defense game out there. In most TD games out there, monsters begin on one side of the screen and make their way to the other side. In Defense Grid however, monsters begin at point A, move to the power generator where the cores are stored, pick up cores and either return to point A or advance to another point B. If you kill them while they are returning cores, the cores will slowly waft their way back over to the generator. However, if all of the cores are gone from the generator, mobs will be able to pick up the cores which are making their way back, which significantly increases the pace of the game at some points, and acts as another factor in your building decisions, since it is no longer always best to build at the points along the path that mobs will pass the most en route to their final destination. While this sounds pretty elementary, in the later levels of the game this delivers a true challenge to the game, and significantly increases the intensity and exhilaration that the game provides, while somewhat helping with the game's immersion factor (something lacking in nearly all TD games).

Defense Grid isn't terribly innovative, but completely master's the Tower Defense mini-genre, and is worth the purchase for any fan of Tower Defense games out there. In short, if you are looking for the current definitive Tower Defense experience, look no further than Defense Grid: The Awakening.

-Jon