
It's a great tower defense game and nothing more, but it hooked me in a way that more ambitious games rarely do.MANHATTAN - A robust defense of our nation's power grid is as important as ever as cyber-data attacks become more sophisticated and common. With multiple difficulty levels, an easy-to-use cooperative mode, and a level editor, 14 hours could easily turn into 100.

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Before I knew it, an hour had passed and I was trying to crack wave 22.Īfter 14 hours with DG2, I still find better ways to snake the alien's path or prepare in the first waves.
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I'd figure out how to make the aliens' trip twice as long by blocking a tiny path, or how to get the most out of my flamethrowing inferno towers right where the aliens emerge. I'd tell myself I just wanted to see what the next level looked like, but then I'd start poking at it. And no matter what kind of challenge I was looking for, it was always fun to tinker with. It alternates between grids where tower placement directs the flow of aliens, and more rigid layouts, which made me realize how effective fully upgraded long range missile towers are on seemingly useless tiles.įlexible difficulty settings and high scores made Defense Grid 2 as difficult as I wanted it to be at any moment, so it never got frustrating or too easy. What's important is that they entertained me while I was butchering aliens, and gave the game a friendly personality I liked spending time with.Īnother way that Defense Grid 2 stays interesting is with well-designed level layouts. The lighthearted bickering between my dismissive British AI and malfunctioning AI-who speaks in word salads-is well voice-acted, and displays a kind of glee celebrating how silly the very notion of a tower defense game story is. It's more about the irreverent tone and my team of very personable AI modules that grows from planet to planet. I honestly wouldn't be able to tell you what the plot is, such as it is. That blandness stands out in contrast to the story, which is a lost-and-found box of silly ideas. The design for them is so plain, it inadvertently makes the game a little harder because I couldn't always tell them apart and prepare accordingly. They all look like some variation of a bipedal tadpole, and I mostly told them apart by size or color. It did bother me, however, that the aliens themselves are boring. Up close, Defense Grid 2 also looks a little jagged, and it doesn't offer anti-aliasing and other options in the graphics settings, but it didn't bother me since I played it entirely from a far away, bird's-eye perspective.
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However, on PC, it makes more sense to have a free floating cursor that I can move from tower to tower quickly, while keeping the camera stationary.

The camera, for instance, is tied to the cursor, which would makes a lot of sense if you we're playing with a controller, and you can if you want to. It's not a big problem, but Defense Grid 2 has a few of the limitations of a console game. It turns failures into opportunities to experiment with new strategies rather than opportunities to stop playing. Defense Grid 2 lets me go one wave back each time I press backspace. One of the biggest problems with any tower defense game is that you often don't know you've set up your towers the wrong way until it's too late, and since progress is made at the enemy's pace, it can take a long time to implement what you've learned.
