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| | Genre: Action | | | Min OS X: 10.4 |
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Requirements: Mac OS X: 10.5.8 | CPU: Intel Processor | RAM: 1 GB | Hard Drive 1.1 GB | Graphics: GeForce 7300, Radeon X1600 or newer, 128 MB VRAM (Low-end video cards (GeForce 7300 and Radeon X1600) support only low and medium quality settings)Review: It's been a long time since the first tower defense game was released by Atari, and the genre has kept expanding. With hundreds of flash-based tower defense games released every year, it has become extremely hard for a commercial version to differentiate itself from the pack. However, Defense Grid: The Awakening (DG) from Virtual Programming attempts to do just that. With story segments, achievements, an online leaderboard, instrumental music tracks, and plenty of particles, it even comes close to succeeding.On the gameplay side, there are plenty of the set pieces you'd usually find in a tower defense game. Enemies come from a set starting location, head towards a set ending location, and you build large groups of turrets in an attempt to force the onrushing hordes into a choke point where you can deal with them easier. The "mazing" that's common in most of these games isn't really all the way there, though. There are a few levels which allow you to adjust the running patterns of enemies somewhat, but the blocks and mazes are restricted to a few spaces on each level. On quite a few of them, the spaces are completely detached from the path and you're just placing them to deal as much damage as you can. Not that that's necessarily a bad thing in this case. It just refocuses the traditional mazes and traps to creating the ultimate doomsday apparatus, with slowdown, area of effect, invisibility sensors, and dozens of damage-dealers just waiting for the chance to unload. And unload they will, as there are many more unique levels than most of the tower defense games you'll find on flash sites. Each mission even has unlockable special challenge modes you can play after defeating it. Most of them are reminiscent of the sort of modes found in GemCraft, but they definitely add some replayability to maps that are relatively easy to defeat ordinarily. If you don't want to play those, you can just play the same mission again on hard. It changes your tactics considerably. In addition, the graphics are done in full 3D. This is both a good thing and a bad thing, though, as that means it isn't too friendly for older Macs. Even on a reasonably recent MacBook Pro, Defense Grid slowed down on the higher graphics settings. There are plenty of glow effects, explosions, firing splashes, death animations, enemy models, etc., and it just tends to bog down when you've got a full complement of turrets unloading all at once. At least you'll enjoy every one of those twenty frames per second you'll get out of it.
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