Review: Star Defense

Overview

Ngmoco has some great titles, and now they try to add their polish to tower defense. In Tower Defense (TD), your goal is to arrange attack towers to defend your base from varying waves of enemies. Star Defense is a fixed path TD, meaning the enemies travel along a pre-built path, and you place your towers in strategic locations along the path. There are multiple towers, all with different attacks, firepower, and range. Each enemy you destroy is worth credits/money that you use to buy new towers, and make upgrades to the towers you already have. In Star Defense you’re trying to protect each planet’s colonists who are located in an underground base from the S’rath invaders across the Star Defense Galaxy.

Features

The main feature of Star Defense is the 3D space theme. Instead of the typical 2D landscape you have to defend a planet that is a sphere or cube. Star Defense includes seven unlockable planets, providing seven unique areas to defend, each requiring a different strategy. Each of the planets has three difficulties (easy, medium, and hard) providing more to accomplish. There are five types of towers that are pretty typical for TD, but they’re given space themes like neo plasma blaster and phase coil. Each tower can be upgraded three times, each time increasing the range, firepower and frequency. There are also a ton of achievements that are called commendations that include simple things like having two waves active at the same time. There are also very time consuming ones like having 1000 tower upgrades, or beating 60 waves on all three difficulties of each planet. One unique feature is challenge mode where you try to complete as many waves as you can, and then post a challenge to anyone with twitter, facebook or e-mail. The controls are really intuitive with simple dragging of the planet to change the camera, plus a simple double tap or pinch to zoom in and out. You drag the tower from the right panel to the location you want, and the entire time you can see the 360 degree attack radius. Playing zoomed in is good to watch the wave being attacked and for precise tower placement. Zoomed out gives a better view to implement your defensive strategy, and see multiple waves.

The Good

There is a lot to like beginning with the absolutely amazing 3D graphics, especially for an iphone game. Each planet is extremely detailed, and so are the animations of firing bullets and the lightning attacks. When you kill an enemy it pops with green goo splattering out, or if they reach the end they explode on the door where your colonists are located. The sounds are perfect for this title with a different techno background song per planet, and a nice thumping at the start of each wave. The firing mechanisms are perfectly in tune, as well as the nice eek when the enemies’ explode. The space theme is wonderfully implemented, and adds a lot of intrigue to Tower Defense. Playing on a sphere or a cube rather than a rectangle is one of the main reasons to pick this game up. On a sphere you have to plan out your tower placement longer in advance, adding even more to the strategy element of TD. With such a unique visual style the controls need to be implemented well to maneuver the playfield nicely. The controls are well done, and completely intuitive. It's a simple, perfect pick up and play game. Another good aspect is that  you can tap next wave at any time, instead of having to wait for it. The map is great, giving you the feeling that you're continually moving and suppressing S'rath invaders. Also being able to unlock new planets, and achieve all of the commendations can add a lot of play time to this game.

The Bad

The visuals, sounds, and controls are top of the line for an iphone game, but the gameplay is pretty basic for a TD game. The gameplay is relatively boring, and not as engaging as some other TD titles in the App Store. On most levels you don’t really feel challenged until you’re at last half way through the total number of waves. It’s slow up until that point, and it’s tough to wait for it to get really challenging. The towers are placed sparsely, and there just doesn’t seem to be that much action. Another problem is that in challenge mode there is only one planet, rather than having a challenge mode for each of the planets. The ultimate problem is the price tag of $5.99 which may turn people off before even trying it, and the gameplay just isn’t worth that much.

The Verdict

Star Defense is another extremely polished game from ngmoco with some of the best visuals seen on the iPhone. The problem is that a game ultimately comes down to whether or not the gameplay is intriguing, and fun. At times Star Defense gameplay is good, but it just isn’t consistently fun. You tend to spend more time not paying attention as it plays itself out. The game is perfect to play in short bursts though, or when you can have it open, but not be actively playing. The price I think is the main problem, at around $3 this is a must have. For the $5.99 price tag the visuals and sounds almost make it worth it, but there are cheaper TD options in the App Store. It’s a good game and a should have, but check your other options before taking the plunge.

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