Gameplay Sound    Graphics Value Genre: Strategy & War Min OS X: 10.4

Creeper World 2: Redemption September 19, 2011 | Franklin Pride

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Thankfully, Knuckle Cracker's Creeper World 2: Redemption (CW2) is not one of them. It focuses around the control of a fluid created by emitters placed strategically around the map. Using your ability to create generators, lasers, rocket launchers, mine the ground, and eventually destroy those emitters, you simply have to retake planet after planet in the quest to save the universe from the creeper (fluid). There are a few additional threats to face along the way, naturally, but the tools you'll use to defeat them won't switch much as you progress.

As you go from level to level, you'll continually get new tools to use until a certain point when you're essentially maxed out on technology. From that point on, the levels start to take some extremely creative directions and require you to think very carefully about how you'll approach them. For example, in one level you start surrounded by pockets of the creeper and not enough resources to have a hope to destroy it all when it breaks through the crumbling rocks surrounding it. In addition, homing missiles of creeper are counting down their launch towards your floating fortress. What do you do? You break through the ground, fly into a cavern pocket, build up a hasty network of generators, create a wall of lasers, manufacture the defense against flying creeper, and rush like crazy to clear everything out before your objective is destroyed.

That's one of the later levels, of course. Near the beginning of the game, things are extremely simple to handle and rarely require you to retry a level. It basically consists of making generators, dropping lasers and rockets near the creeper, and pushing back the fluid's spread until you can destroy the emitters. Nothing that hard, really. It just comes down to whether or not you've got the patience to keep going through the easy levels and grind your way to the more entertaining ones.

Sadly, the graphics don't really help you get through the wait. Everything is a simple sprite. There are only a few frames of animation, and nothing ever rotates. In addition, there doesn't seem to be a way to play full screen, which is a little archaic. It just doesn't look that good, really. Still, the graphics for the movement and density of the creeper are perfect for communicating what's going on during the various levels, and that really is the most important piece of the interface. It would be nice to see a bit more eye candy for the rest of the game, but it's tolerable.

The sounds and music are a bit better. The laser sounds, klaxons, warp hums, explosions, etc., are all reasonably good at portraying the action, although they can get very repetitive by the last level. The music does tend to drone on after a while due to its limited music tracks, but you can always turn the music off. There aren't many complaints on the audio side, as it does its job, just nothing more.

So, should you buy this indie tower defense experience? That really does depend on how much you enjoy the genre. The building choices are limited, the research options are easy to max on every level, and there are few enemy varieties. So, if you're used to the dozens of enemy skins, towers, and upgrades found in normal tower defense, this isn't the game for you. CW2's strength is its solid level design and your ability to attack each level's threats in your own way. It won't exactly keep your attention for very long after the first playthrough, but it's quite entertaining during that period.

	Creeper World 2: Redemption
	Developer: Knuckle Cracker
	Buy Creeper World 2: Redemption now at MacGameStore.com

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