Review

The long awaited sequel to Defense Grid has finally been released on the PC, Xbox One and PS4. I for one have not been able to contain my excitement for this release. A few of my friends can confirm that, with the amount of times they’ve told me to shut up about it recently!

First off, I really love the original Defense Grid that came out on the PC and Xbox 360, and played it a lot. Getting the gold medals for every mission and then going for the highest score on certain levels against my brother and future father-in-law (I let him win, it’s only fair)

Now on to DG2. The aim of the game is to build your tower defences up against wave after wave of attacking aliens. Fairly simple right? Well not so much. The aliens have different shield strengths against your different towers. Some can be hurt by flame more than bullets for example. There are 9 towers to choose from which range from guns, flame throwers, missiles and cannons to a tower that just slows the aliens down. All the same type of towers from the first game although there is now a Boost tower, which will add 1 of 3 extra abilities to your tower: either to get a higher score; do more damage or un-stealth enemies.

There are now lots of AI that can help throughout the game, each bringing their own power up to the maps. The banter between the AI during gameplay is something that shouldn’t be missed, and don’t worry, Fletcher still has an obsession with raspberries.

This game is a lot more colourful than the first which is a good thing as looking back and comparing, the first Defense Grid now looks a little dull. It has some visually beautiful backgrounds to the game although your main focus is on killing those alien bastards so you don’t really look around that much.

There are a lot of modes to choose from to stop you getting bored. You have a difficulty range from easy to elite, a style range of open to competitive and a map challenge from story mode to grinder to not being able to use bullets and many more modes on top of that.

If you’re not very good at tower defence games so don’t want to try it because you think think it might be hard to get the achievements then don’t worry. As on easy it’s hard NOT to get a gold medal. No matter how bad you might be. So now there is no excuse not to play this game.

Defense Grid 2 also has a multiplayer mode where you can either work cooperatively with the other person to help rid the alien scum or compete against them for the highest score on the same maps.

Given the vast size of this game through all of its game and challenge modes it’s going to keep me interested for a long time to come.

About the Review

Platform

Microsoft Xbox One

Developer

Hidden Path Entertainment

Publisher

505 Games

Released

24th September 2014