Tower Defense® Review

By , on May 30, 2011


Tower Defense®
Download on the AppStore
4 out of 5

PROS

  • Solid TD gameplay; familiar tropes make it easy to pick up.
  • Polished 2D graphics; great style and no slow-downs.
  • Unlockable challenge modes to compete for high scores online.

CONS

  • Story feels tacked on; too generic, mostly unnecessary.
  • No major innovations; if you've played a TD you've played Lost Earth.

VERDICT

If you haven't yet made the dive in to the world of TDs, 'Tower Defense®: Lost Earth' will give you the basic grounding needed to explore the genres more niche titles.


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It's hard not to be impressed by the courage displayed by Com2US with regards to their latest video game release. After sitting on the trademark of 'Tower Defense' for almost three years, the company has finally released what they claim to be 'THE TOWER DEFENSE'. This sets the mark pretty high for 'Tower Defense®: Lost Earth' considering the amount of great TDs already on offer and the only burning question that needs to be answered is, 'Does it live up to these expectations?'.

In short Lost Earth utilizes many of the gameplay tropes already common to the genre, producing a sort of catch-all TD that should appeal to fans without really adding anything new to the mix. Levels are broken up in to ever-more-complex challenges where a mix of towers need to be placed alongside a fixed path in order to stop the incoming enemies. Various towers (cannon, explosive, slow, laser, etc.) can be upgraded to increase their firepower, speed and area of damage, though if you're seriously overwhelmed you can deploy a super weapon to even the odds (though this is a one-time deal).

Several game modes are presented during the main campaign, with the usual defense gameplay being backed up with survival, resource gathering and 'attack' modes. However it's the separate challenge mode that provides the real major side-steps with some levels requiring you to take on enemies in a free-form mazing mode (ala 'Fieldrunners').

What you get in 'Tower Defense®: Lost Earth' is perhaps the broadest definition of the TD, but executed in a polished way that's hard to fault. Although it lacks the innovation seen in some of the greats of the genre, Lost Earth provides a solid challenge to fans after something familiar that also looks great.

Screenshots

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