Defense Grid: The Awakening

Game: Defense Grid: The Awakening
Platform: PC
Release Year: 2008
Stephen's Rank: 7/10 

Defense Grid is a top down 3D rendered tower defence game.

Basic Plot

The story revolves around the invasion of a planet by an alience race. The planet has a dormant defense grid which the player, along with the help of an AI, re-activates to defend the planet.

The story is set in a futuristic setting on a planet which is ruined and broken.

Gameplay

Defense Grid is a traditional tower defence game within a 3D game engine.

The goal on any level is to defend power cores which are small glowing orbs stored in one or more locations. The aliens enter the map from one or more entrances and try to steal the power cores and take them off the map. Your goal is to build a defensive grid using towers and turrets to kill the aliens before they can escape with the power cores.

The power core mechanic is interesting because if an alien picks up a power core and is killed somewhere else in the map, any alien who is nearby can pick that same core up and continue taking it to the exit (the cores slowly return to their original position rather than teleporting back).

Levels were often open ended and contained many different locations the players could choose to build towers. This was designed so that the player could "maze" using their towers, forcing the aliens to take a longer path to reach the power cores, or a path which brought them into contact with the player's towers for longer. This implies, of course, the aliens cannot pass through the player's towers unless there is no other way to proceed or if the alien is a "flying" alien (in which case they fly above all towers and cannot be "mazed").

The player had a wide variety of towers to choose from which were unlocked slowly through the single player campaign. Each tower started off as a "green" tower but could be upgraded to a "yellow" tower, and finally a  "red" version of the tower. Upgrading provided large increases in the damage, range, and frequency that the tower fired. The towers included:

• Gun Tower: Rapid firing but low damage tower. Good at taking down enemy shields and useful from the beginning of the game right to the end.
• Inferno Tower: Short ranged tower which shoots a stream of fire at enemies. Can damage multiple enemies at once. Can be powerful when combined with mazing and Temporal Towers.
• Meteor Tower: Slow firing but very powerful tower with extremely long range. Also does splash damage, but very expensive to build.
• Cannon Tower: Slow firing and long range tower, good at penetrating enemy shields and armour. My personal favourite.
• Concussion Tower: Low damage but rapid firing tower which excels at area of affect damage. Best at taking out large groups of lightly armoured enemies.
• Missile Tower: Required on any level where there are flying aliens.
• Tesla Tower: My least favourite tower. The tower builds up power over time when it is not being used, and unleashes it on the next enemy who gets close.
• Temporal Tower: Slows enemies in a medium radius (upgrading the tower increases the radius significantly).
• Command Tower: Reveals cloaked enemies and provides extra income to any alien killed within its radius.

Another mechanic was that the player earned "interest" on the balance of money they had. This encouraged the player not to spend all of their money on turrets but instead to save it up until the interest earned began to offset the lack of towers in the beginning.

There were several modes of gameplay including campaign mode, and several "survival" modes which were played out on the campaign maps after completing the original level.

Downloadable content has been released for the game including a cameo by GLaDOS from Valve's Portal and Portal 2 games.

Positives

Well balanced and challenging gameplay. It was refreshing to have the slower pace of the game after playing high stress and paced games such as Starcraft 2.

There was a *hint* of an amazing story in this game which never really fulfilled its potential. This has been an inspiration for me personally, and something I've added into my own game development projects.

Negatives

Sometimes I felt like the campaign levels were a bit short. Just I was getting really powerful, I'd complete the level.

I'm disappointed in the story. It had the potential to be quite amazing.

Memorable Momements

I've stayed up for hours playing the survival game mode of the game where you wade through 100 waves of aliens... I always felt a bit abused after I did that.