If you like to play poker and have a mac it can be kinda frustrating when
Aah! Aliens are invading! Again. With aliens invading every app as the main adversary, Boom Brigade is another game that pits you and your troopers against, yup you guessed it, aliens. What does line-drawing + tower defense + shooters vs. aliens = ? Should Boom Brigade find a home on your handheld device? Let’s line up our troops, take down those
Ah, how I love a great Tower Defense game. There’s nothing quite like it. Some people think that it’s nerdy or geeky, but quite frankly I don’t care. It’s awesome. Sure you don’t get to actually shoot the missiles or technically be “in the battle”, and basically all your doing is placing your weapons on the screen to stop the enemy from getting to your base.
But what TD games give you is strategy; less bang and more brain. Navy Patrol: Coastal Defense by ICS Mobile is an interesting new take on a TD game, and one that hasn’t been done before. It’s a naval-base focused game with boats and cruisers and submarines. It’s risky because not everyone likes aquatic warfare, and some aspects is quite boring. And the competition for this genre is pretty fierce with “The Creeps”, “Fieldrunners”, and “Crystal Defenders” being the top dogs. Let’s test these waters and see what we got here.
Gameplay:
Strategy and game planning is the key to TD games. And It incorporates RTS and RPG elements into a water based environment. If you’ve never played a tower defense game the concept is pretty simple; the enemies come in waves and they have a path that they follow to your base. Your job is to obstruct that path and place turrets to shoot them down before they reach your base and destroy it. What’s interesting about CD is that when your choosing your location for your new tower, there is a yellow line that shows the path that the enemy is following to your base. And every time that you place a tower in the “Yellow” lined path, it automatically redirects a different path to circumvent your towers.
There is an enormous amount of depth that is jam-packed into this app. You only start off with a few towers at your arsenal but defeat more and more oncoming waves of enemy ships and you level up. Leveling up means that you can add a “Skill point” to one of the following categories: Defense, Offense, or Technology. Placing a skill point in a certain element gives opens up a whole new world of weaponry for the gamer. From powerups to lightning bolts and bombs, the Skill points become your greatest asset against your foe. For instance, a few skill points in Offense gets you the “Double Damage’ feature that enables any turret within radius (you choose which radius) does double the damage. And for each category there are 5 different powerups/abilities for you to choose from.
If that’s enough to halt the swarm of enemy ships headed your way, then tap your finger on your base and turn your home base into an air craft hanger and the jet fighters will drop missiles on enemy from above. It sure does cost a lot to get up to this feature but it sure is worth it as they do massive damage.
Another interesting aspect of the game is the ability to “capsize” your enemies which is basically tipping them over so they are easy kills as well as specializing each individual turret to target a certain enemy. You can choose the tower to focus on the weakest enemy ship, the fastest, or the strongest. Not sure how much you’ll truly use this feature but it’s great just to have as an option.
Controls:
As gamers know, control isn’t too big of an issue in Tower Defense games. It’s just about tapping, dragging, and in some rare occasions, using the accelerometer. However in this game, I some complaints.
Many times during the game I tried to “Pause” action in order to upgrade some turrets and well, you know, strategize. But the game kept thinking that I was tapping the Pause from the game entirely which brings up the “Resume Game, Options, Exit”. Also, at times I wanted to upgrade my turret and i would click the upgrade button numerous times but did not execute. This was a very frustrating issue to deal with as the difficulty of the app is pretty intense. Racking up my highest score and swarms of enemies breaching my defenses, the last thing I needed was a “control” malfunction.
What We Liked:
- RPG and RTS elements
- Tremendous depth
- Turret targeting system
- Global leaderboards / Facebook connect
- Dynamic AI pathfinding system
- Sea level, aerial, and undersea warfare
- Water fluidity
What We Disliked:
- Difficulty
- Control
- Hard to distinguish different types of enemies
- Buggy (crashes when trying to resume game, blue flicker at the right of the screen)
- Sub-par graphics
- Turrets show no indication when firing at the the enemy
Final Verdict:
There’s a lot to like about Coastal Defense and also a lot to dislike. It has enormous depth and great integration of RTS and RPG like-elements all warpped into a TD game. It’s a well thought out game with tons of abilities and powerups to keep things interesting for days to come. Some will overlook its shortcomings and fall instantly in love with the game and have no problems with it.
However, I have very high standards when it comes to Tower Defense games because of the apps that are out now, and Coastal Defense just falls short of being up in the elite category of The Creeps and Fieldrunners. It just has too many glitches and one too many issues that hurts it stock.
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I really wasn’t ready for the end of summer right now. Then I got a hold of Monster Kill from Itunes. This great Halloween themed game will have you ready for pumpkin carving and costume parties in no time. Find out in this review why this simple wall defense game does so well.
Gang Street Wars is a truly unique gaming experience. It attempts to deliver a real time strategy experience combined with tower defense. The application delivers an experience unlike any other I played.
A while ago when the first Sentinel game came out I really didn’t hear that much about it. In fact, it wasn’t until I read a review about it on this site that I decided to pick it up. From that point on I was very hooked to some of the unique elements that Sentinel: Mars Defense (now just Sentinel 1 in my book) had to offer to the very crowded Tower Defense genre.
Defender Chronicles is set in a fantasy medieval world. The capital city of men, Londrom has fallen to the Orc Hordes. As a warlord, you must defend the Empire from the invasion of the Orc Hordes and the rising Undead.
I am a fan of Tower Defense games and Dungeon Defense by InMotion Software does not disappoint. At first I was thinking this was a Dungeons and Dragons kind of game until I fired this baby up.
I am not a fan of role playing games so I was very happy to see that this was a Tower Defense game instead. I was also very pleased to find out that this is different from the flood of TD games on the iTunes store.
The overall goal of the game is to prevent enemies from reaching the end of the path and draining all the energy from the Dungeon King, however this is where most TD games and this game take a different path.
There is no back-story at all, just a dungeon and a pathway and “X” markers where you place your evil skeleton guys.
After loading Dungeon Defense up you are presented with four options, start, resume, credits, and help. I choose the help file and found it to be extremely adequate at explaining how the game operates by showing a video of what each icon stands for and how to build up your skeleton army. After watching the help video I was ready to jump in and defend my Dungeon King.
The game starts with a dungeon with a pathway to the King. You will have 25 rounds where you must protect the King. There are green “x” markers for you to place you skeleton army guys. At the beginning of the game you are given 200 in gold to spend on your army, unfortunately the 200 gold is only enough for two skeleton swordsmen.
There are three different types of skeleton army guys you can create, swordsmen, an archer, and an axe man. After creating your skeleton’s you can upgrade them once you have gathered up enough gold coin from killing enemies. There are no towers in this game, only green X’s on the ground where you place your skeleton army.
The place that the skeleton is placed becomes its spawn point, when your skeleton is killed it will lay on the ground until time expires and then regenerate on the green “x”. If your skeleton survives the round it will still return to its spawn point and regain some much needed health while waiting for the next round of enemies.
Upgrading your skeletons is easy as a touch that brings up a small menu where you can upgrade, revive, or sell. Each unit can be upgraded 2 times and the final upgrade grants a special ability. The swordsmen gain a double damage attack, the archers shoot fire arrows that do splash damage and the axe men appear to go into a rage but not sure what that “rage” does?
Unlike most TD games the skeleton army guys do not change in appearance when upgraded, this is something I would hope the publisher’s change because in the heat of the battle, you cannot tell which skeletons need upgrades.
After getting into the game and the enemies start coming out of the woodwork the goal is apparent that you need to protect your King! The King 
is stationary however he can shoot once he is attacked. The King’s attack is not powerful at all and one should not rely on the King saving his own rear end!
The King also has two special upgrades; you can slow down the enemies or choose haste and speed up your skeleton army. Once the King is destroyed it is GAME OVER so make sure that you surround the King with some highly upgraded skeletons once you have the gold coin to do so.
The graphics in this game are pretty good overall. This is a top-down view game meaning you are looking down into the dungeon. The game does allow for you to pinch the screen to zoom in. The characters are pretty good looking as well, they have fluid movement, and when a skeleton is killed it will fall into a small crumpled pile of bones.
Overall I would say the game is pretty fun, the fact that it is a different take on TD games makes it interesting to play and adds some different types of strategy. I think that there are some upgrades that need to be done and from the look of the game’s description on the iTunes store the upgrades are on the way. The publisher has listed that they have submitted two additional levels to Apple for approval and that they are planning on adding a scoring system.
The Good
Different take on tower defense games
Good graphics
Fun characters that are different from most tower defense gamesThe Bad
Only one level right now more planed for future upgrades.
No scoring, but that is coming in a future upgrade
Skeletons do not show that they are upgraded.
geoDefense is a recently released Tower Defense game with some great vector graphics and overall polish. Now there are quite a few TD games in the app store (24 to be exact), but geoDefense is one worth your time and money.
Everyone knows about the current reigning champ of the app store in the tower defense category Field Runners, it was one of the first TD games out the gate and that timing whisked it to stardom, but can the release of 7 Cities bring the champ down?
