Defense Grid: The Awakening

The sixth installment in my quest to 'win' NaBloPoMo has me talking about a particular game, and wondering more about its genre.

Tonight provided the opportunity, after putting all three kids to bed, to load and try Defense Grid: The Awakening, yet another one of my budget buys during the massive Steam sale that ended this past weekend. Considering that my only other tower defense gaming experience to this point is Plants vs. Zombies (PvZ), I was interested to see if a more traditional tower defense game would interest me.

I'm happy to say that the initial returns are positive. Only having time to squeeze in the first 3-4 missions, before being summoned for baby cuddling duty, it was an interesting experience, especially in comparison of the two. In PvZ, the resource is sunlight, generated by units built by the player, with a small amount randomly appearing in daylight stages, thus giving the player a direct influence over the factor limiting the amount of units you can create. The resource in Defense grid, cleverly called "Resources," is generated by destroying enemies, so there is a bit less control by the player over the amount of resource available in a single mission. The friendly and enemy units are both occupying the same path in PvZ, whereas the towers and aliens in Defense Grid do not actually come in contact. In PvZ, the enemy can destroy friendly units, while the towers in Defense Grid are invincible. In PvZ, the enemies march in a straight line, from the right side of the screen to the left, while the paths the aliens take are more winding. These differences allow for two distinctly different strategies and mindsets the player must have to succeed.

The enjoyment I've had playing these two games makes me wonder what other games I've been missing in the tower defense genre. If you're reading this and you have any suggestions as to games I should try, please let me know, as I'm interested in seeing what else is out there. One game that comes to mind is Pixeljunk Monsters, which is the big tower defense game on PSN. Another one I've heard decent things about is the South Park downloadable game on XBLA. Please, if you know of others, I'm all ears.

On another note, I did use some Christmas fun money to buy an XBox 360 wired controller for my PC. This should allow me to play Braid in a less clumsy manner, and I've also been saving a copy of Assassin's Creed until I had a game pad to play. There are just some games that play better with an analog stick.

That's all for now. Hopefully I'll have a meatier post for you tomorrow.