4cr Review – Defense Grid: The Awakening

Being a big fan of Tower Defense (TD) games, I had to try Hidden Path’s newest game. Defense Grid is a new 3D TD game for the PC. Now, I know that some of you will say that there are plenty of TD games out there for free. So, why should you buy this one?

Continue reading to find out.

Need a compelling reason to buy it? How about eight hours of gameplay spread out over twenty levels? How about battling over fifteen different enemy types using your choice of ten different towers (each with three upgrades)? Is that not enough? Each time you beat a level, you unlock a challenge mode and a practice mode for that level. The Challenge mode, like the name says, is a harder version of the level. The practice mode gives you a limited amount of cash. You need to beat the level with these limited resources.

During each level, you own a generator with 20 cores. Waves of enemies will come in from the level entrance and make their way to the generator. If they reach it, they will pick up at least one of those cores and make their way to the exit. What can you do to stop them? Build defense towers! Each level has a certain number of spots where you can build your towers, so you have to build carefully.

The towers that you build fit within four classes: Projectile, Fire, Energy, and Special. For example, the gun tower (Projectile) can attack air and ground units. However, there is some variation in each class. For instance, the missile tower can only attack air units. Towers in the Fire class, such as the flamethrower and meteor towers, do damage to more than one unit at once. The Energy class has a Tesla tower which does more damage if it has time to charge up between attacks. The Engergy class also has my favorite tower, the laser. The laser does some initial damage and then continues to deal damage as long as the target is in sight.

Since I’m used to playing these TD-type games, I found the first few levels pretty easy. I cleared them with 100% of my cores left. After a few of these easy levels, the game started getting harder and harder. Finishing with all of your cores intact becomes a real challenge, which is a plus. It definitely adds to the replayability of the game. Defense Grid also has an online leaderboard and a ton of achievements to unlock. Defence Grid also has the option to fast forward through a wave. Why is this important? Because when you know you have enough defense to take care of the upcoming wave, why wait the 5-10 minutes it would take to finish that wave off if you can finish it in 2-5 minutes. The option his what makes it or breaks it for me in a TD game, I’m used to having it and can’t live without it.

Defense Grid is worth it for Tower Defense fans out there, although the 20$ price point is a little steep for what you get.

Positives : 8 hours of gameplay, really nice graphics, lots of tower types to choose from, fast forward key.
Negatives : 20$ is pricey. You may want to wait for it to go on sale on Steam.