Review: Defense Grid-The Awakening (XBLA)
I’m such a newcomer to the tower defense genre that I wasn’t even aware that tower defense was a genre. But allow me to go ahead and proclaim Defense Grid: The Awakening (available on both Xbox Live Arcade and Games For Windows) as one of the best.
Of the 10 titles that were recently discounted during the Microsoft XBLA sale, Defense Grid: The Awakening was the clear standout. In fact this might be the first time I’ve played a trial version of an XBLA game that when the demo ended I immediately bought the full version just so I could keep playing it.
Rook to king's knight pew pew pew.
If you’re as clueless about these kinds of games as I was, here’s a quick and dirty explanation: Enemies want to get from Point A to Point B and probably want something of yours to take along with them. Your job is to build, maintain and/or upgrade towered weapons along their path to prevent this from happening. Enemies generally have different weaknesses, and your weapons usually have various limitations and effectiveness.
Defense Grid has nicely-sized levels with multiple waves of enemies in each. There are no quick solutions and quite a bit of trial and error, but if you want to go back to the previous checkpoint and try a different strategy just hit the back button. No load times, no delay… you’re whisked immediately back to the last auto-save. And there’s even a bit of story along the way, as the AI character who assists you with new tower designs and words of encouragement reveals hints of his and your past.
For $10 (or 800 Microsoft spacebucks) you get a fair amount of content. I’ve put over half a dozen hours into it so far and there’s still plenty of challenge levels left to complete. And while there’s no downloadable content for the game just yet, an option for it exists in the menus so I’m hopeful. When it does I’ll be all over it.
Defense Grid is both challenging and fun, and is easily accessible to newcomers to the tower defense genre like myself. I highly recommend giving it a shot. At the very least try the demo. I think you’ll get hooked too.
