Defense Grid: The Awakening

Thanks to this title we can say that fans of real-time strategy are in luck, since it is an RTS (Real-time strategy) of a subgenre that has been spreading over the last few years: Tower Defense subgenre.

Although the first title was a 1990s arcade game called Rampart, the one that really made the Tower Defense subgenre popular was a game of the same name.

A Tower Defense game aims to build towers along a path through which a series of AI-controlled monsters circulate to destroy our base.

These towers shoot different elements such as fire to burn, ice to slow down, missiles for flying units, or bombs to damage large areas. The player will be rewarded with resources for each enemy killed in order to build more towers or to improve the rate of fire, power, and range of existing ones.

Under this premise, many game companies have tried to copy this formula with limited success.

The story in these games, as you can imagine, is nothing more than an excuse to defend a base and build defensive towers around it. But this time, we can enjoy an Artificial Intelligence with a particular kind of humor that offers a voice-over tutorial: how each tower works, how to improve them, what type of new enemies we are going to find, and other things that we will discover as we progress in the game.

As for the gameplay, in Defense Grid: “The Awakening” we will find two types of missions: the screens where the path is already set on the sides to build on, and the screens where you must direct the flow of your alien enemies. These last ones are probably, the most fun and difficult since the aliens always look for the shortest route and the large initial unbuilt space doesn’t do much in our favor. Of course, the pleasure of watching hordes of opponents die helplessly before the labyrinthine tangle you have built is priceless.

The point where we can observe the most innovation within this subgenre is in the objective of the adversaries. For once they do not wish to annihilate you or exterminate your race, but simply intend to steal the cores from your headquarters, a source of energy of incalculable value. It is not that kidnapping you, and leaving you without resources to survive is much more honest than destroying you, but at least this time you have the opportunity to give them what they deserve on the way out (when they go to look for the cores at your base) and on the way back (when they return with them to their planet).

What may seem a priori to make the game easier for the user (since you have two opportunities to exterminate the enemy) is actually a double-edged sword. When an alien is eliminated and drops the stolen core, two things can happen: the small ball of energy returns little by little to our base or it is intercepted by another rival. Remember they come in waves as would a rugby team trying to score a touchdown.

The main campaign has an ascending difficulty where if you quickly grasp the mechanics of the game and see which tower works well against which type of enemy, you will be able to beat the screens without having to repeat them more than once. The last few waves of each round can be challenging, but if you used your resources correctly you will find that you have completed 80% of the mission and you will get through the last two waves. Furthermore, if you are killed in the middle of the mission, you have the option of reloading “a checkpoint”, which the machine is in charge of saving automatically every time there is a complicated section or a new enemy that you have never faced before.

The graphic aspect is something that surprises at first glance for a game of this style. And no wonder, because it uses the Gamebryo engine, the same one used in Oblivion, Fallout 3 and Civilization IV. The towers and enemies will look detailed in the close view and you will be able to distinguish them perfectly in the distant view. The most observant will appreciate that the enemies, although moving along the same path and in droves, do not follow exactly the same pattern and if one of their alien companions is occupying a space, they will not cross it or collide with it or appear stiff when making 90º turns, something that usually hurts the eye in other games of the style.

In the sound section, we find that what is needed for this game: a characteristic and distinctive melody, which raises tensions knows when there is a battle or which relaxes during the breaks between waves. A detail that I think is important to highlight is that the developers have made the soundtrack available to everyone completely free of charge (as long as it is for their own and non-commercial use).

Defense Grid: The Awakening is a good Tower Defense, it provides a lot of new features, the graphic aspect is solid and it has several game modes that provide great replayability.

You can't miss it if you are a fan of Tower Defense or strategy in general, and if you are not, I think it is a good way to get started in the genre since few games you will find are so complete, varied and have a graphical aspect as careful as this.