By Kyle Krueger

I’ve been a tower defense buff for many years. Before [blippr]Defense Grid: The Awakening[/blippr], tower defense games were all free, and restricted to being either online flash games or user-created maps for popular RTS games such as Warcraft III. When I noticed Defense Grid on Steam, I was instantly skeptical. Any commercial tower defense grid game would either be a shameless money grab with no inspiration, or ridiculously unintelligent. While it is by no means perfect, this game is not the horrid mess I was expecting.

For the uninitiated, a tower defense grid places the player overlooking an empty map in which they can create a network of “towers,” or buildings that automatically fire on nearby enemies. Once the player has built their towers, wave after wave of enemy monsters attempt to make their way through the tower maze to reach some objective, usually an exit portal or a critical structure. In Defense Grid, you command a series of towers meant to protect a collection of power cores from being stolen by the enemy alien hordes. If an enemy grabs a core, he then makes for the exit, but he can still be killed while he’s carrying the core, and the core slowly drifts back to its storage location.

The game comes with a fairly decent number of towers to choose from, ranging from the standard machine gun and high-caliber cannon towers to the more exotic time-slowing temporal tower and the explosive concussion tower. There are ten types total to choose from, leaving a little to be desired; the best tower defense games have many more options to choose from. However, each tower fills a specific role and has its own strengths and weaknesses, and none really feel unbalanced. The low number of towers means the player quickly falls into a specific pattern and strategy that allows little variation, and as the game goes on, it slowly runs out of steam. The game is also very easy to complete fully, especially for a seasoned tower defense veteran like myself.

Graphically, the game is quite attractive – each tower is well-designed with multiple moving parts and great lighting effects. There are beautiful backdrops to each level and the scenery is all fairly good looking for a tower defense. The sound is a bit lacking, however. Explosions and gunshots overpower almost everything and make the weak music hard to hear. A narrator walks you through what little story there is when he’s not giving vague descriptions of new towers or offering a depressing look into the history of the world, which is flat, bland, and impossible to get in to. The narrative adds nothing to the game.

The gameplay itself, however, is solid, even with the low number of towers. The towers all have their uses and each map is different, forcing the player to develop a new maze on the fly. It’s obvious the developers had some experience with tower defense games because they included a welcome pair of features. The first is a fast forward button that allows you to bypass the duller times, and the second is an option that lets you fall back to the most recent save, which is helpful, as the game autosaves very regularly. The types of enemies keep you on your toes and you have to be able to adapt quickly or die trying. There are a good number of levels and the challenge and casual modes let you play around even after beating the game.

I picked Defense Grid up on a weekend deal for five dollars, which it was well worth, but it isn’t worth the MSRP 19.99. Hold off until it goes on sale again if you can, but definitely give it a look, especially if you enjoy a good tower defense.

7/10