Tag: Tower Defense

Geekscape Games Geek Peek Review: ‘Orcs Must Die 2’

by Molotov Cupcake

Grab your favorite orc-slaying sword and a friend — you’ve got some hideous monsters to exterminate. Orcs Must Die 2 is the follow-up to Robot Entertainment’s 2011 tower defense hit that combined real-time combat elements with the best of strategic trap planning. This time, the focus is on co-op action, where you and a buddy must team up to eradicate the endless stream of orcs pouring in from specific spawn points. Thinking you’re going to guard one area while your buddy takes the other? Wrong! You may be able to fight through half the game with this tactic, barely hanging on by a thread, but when various types of orcs begin spawning (particularly earth golems and those damnable flying enemies) you’ll need a different game plan.

You’ll need traps, and a whole lot of them. Spike, steam, acid, and launchpad traps are all meant to slow down orcs that climb up from the depths. Killing off the expendable baddies nets you in-game currency that may be spent on additional traps or troops such as dwarves with bombs or archers. Place them about the battlefield in a bid to help thin the often overwhelming crowds.

Artifacts and relics may be purchased with skulls earned after each area to keep you on top of your game. Though the male player is given a close-range weapon and the female player has a long-range spellcasting ability with the secondary chance to charm enemies (a useful ability, if fluffy) you may upgrade to a crossbow, a lightning ring, or even some admittedly awesome greaves, all of which you can easily switch between on the fly in the heat of the moment.

But don’t expect a cakewalk. Orcs Must Die 2 is a difficult affair. It’s easy to get lost while you’re scrambling to keep scragglers from escaping and blindly slicing through the crowds. It’s also a bit on the repetitive side, especially if you’ve been playing for a few hours or so. But when you’re on crowd control, summoning thunderstorms, and stationing dwarves all around the play field in the hopes that even four or five orcs are obliterated before things get even more hairy, you know you’ve hit the sweet spot. Skip the single-player jazz and go straight to co-op, if you’ve got some friends around. This is a celebration of orcish bloodshed that’s best experienced with comrades.

Geekscape Games Reviews Toy Soldiers: Cold War DLC “Evil Empire” and “Napalm”

by MoreLikeAndy

With little fanfare, the folks over at Signal Studios released some DLC for one of the rare few tower defense style games I enjoy: Toy Soldiers: Cold War. Between fighting for Mother Russia in the Evil Empire DLC or saying “good morning” to Vietnam in the Napalm DLC, I am happy to have a reason to jump back in to Toy Soldiers: Cold War.

“Evil Empire” has you playing three new campaign missions that are probably the best out of the two DLC packs that Signal Studios released. I really had to use strategy more so than brute force in the missions. One of the new vehicle on the Russian side, The Hormone,  is a beast against light armor and infantry. I would mainly use the chopper for air-to-air combat and stick with the tanks and turrets for ground forces. The Orbital Laser barrage is pointless to air targets so use it when a land heavy attack wave is coming. I had to laugh at myself for thinking the game was broken when the Orbital Laser went through the bombers i was trying to wipe out. It’s a minor annoyance and easily looked past. On the bad side, the final boss was a little easy to take down. The tanks somehow do a great deal of damage to the Super Tank and simply chasing behind it while shooting at it is all I did. Having the vehicles recharge faster than normal also made the boss fight child’s play.

“Napalm” places you in Vietnam for another three missions yet I couldn’t tell you what the 1st two missions were like. They were over in a flash for me. Either I got really good from playing Evil Empire or these missions were, for the lack of a better term, for babies. All I remember is that I used fully upgraded artillery turrets, aimed them at where the waves were coming out and let the A.I. take over. This gave me some time to eat my lunch so I guess I can be thankful for that.

Napalm did, however, find time to make me hate the new laser tanks in the final mission. No matter what I threw at them, the laser tanks would just keep on coming and in the process, destroy all of my level 3 upgraded turrets. Even when you get a laser tank of your very own to use it seems to take more shots than it should to bring them down. I was so focused on those abominations that the final boss was the least of my concerns. I experienced nothing but frustration with this mission and it brings the whole DLC pack down a notch.

The mini-games added to the DLC packs are just like the rest of them to me, play them once then never again. The whack-a-mole variant mini-game for the Evil Empire map has you controlling an artillery cannon and you have to shoot pigs instead of moles. The Hang Time mini-game is nothing more than seeing how many soldiers you can rescue before time runs out or if your chopper is destroyed. I can’t see how anyone had more than a minute of fun with any of the mini-games. I could be missing the point with them since that is probably why they were put in Toy Soldiers: Cold War.

On the online multiplayer side, I couldn’t get a game going that wasn’t riddled with lag so I can’t say for sure if the new multiplayer maps are any good. The new survival modes are very good indeed though. Instead of throwing new survival maps in the DLC, Signal Studios went ahead and added two new modes instead.  For the Evil Empire DLC, you get Trauma mode. If you have no blatant disregard for your turrets and figure “I will just replace it if it dies. I have money to do so”, be prepared to lose.

In Trauma mode, every turret you place ticks health off your toy box. Since 20 is your health limit, you can see the importance of not only placing strategic turrets but also keeping them alive. I liked how Trauma mode made me think on my feet a lot more and second guess myself a lot. If you don’t want a “thinking man’s game”, Commando mode is here for you. Depending on what survival map you select, you have nothing but your commando barrage to take on the waves of enemies. This mode is so much fun. It never got old as I ran up to a wave of infantry and mowed them all down as my commando shouted cheesy one-liners. I had to adopt a stick-and-move strategy for the helicopters since their rockets do a lot of damage.

There are some hits and misses with each of the two DLC and really, if you want more Toy Soldiers: Cold War you should buy both, no question about it. For 400 Microsoft points each, that is pretty cheap for what you get in each DLC pack. If you must only get one of them, however, I feel Evil Empire has more of what the style of the Toy Soldiers’ series is about between the strategic campaign missions as well as Trauma mode.

Geekscape Games Reviews Anomaly: Warzone Earth

by MoreLikeAndy

Normally, tower defense games are boring to me. There never seems to be enough challenge other than trying to not get bored and screw up something that calls for your untimely loss. Many have tried to change up the genre as best they could, mostly to no avail. 11 Bit Studios, however, did so in a great way with Anomaly: Warzone Earth. What if you were the aggressor instead of the defender?

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With the game on pretty much every device out there, Anomaly: Warzone Earth makes a stop to Xbox Live Arcade this time. You still get the great voice acting of Jason Statham (not really him), controls that translate very well to a console controller and graphics that look better than they should for a small game such as this.

The story is paper thin but doesn’t need to be more than that. As the commander of the 14th Platoon in the near future, you and your squad are sent to investigate the crash sites of an alien spacecraft and end up finding trouble conveniently in the form of towers.

Since Anomaly: Warzone Earth is all about strategy, picking your units at the beginning of a mission is crucial. With some units only available in certain missions, I ended up sticking with tanks, shield generators and missile launchers. Being a tower defense game, you have limited funds to purchase units at the beginning and during the missions. More funds can be snagged up by destroying towers and finding ‘ore’ laid out in certain areas of the map. Also, if a unit is not working for you the way you thought it would, sell it off and use that money to get a different unit.

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Playing as the commander, you have free reign to go anywhere on the map. I use this to my advantage with the power-ups at your disposal. While the smoke screen, repair kit and decoy are used to protect your platoon as you follow them into battle, sneaking around ahead and using your bomb power-up on the annoying towers is sometimes a smart move. Controls between pulling up the map to set a path for your platoon to traverse, purchasing upgrades or new units then switching back to battle to use power-ups to support the platoon was very snappy. Sometimes, it was a little too snappy and I would end up using more power-ups than I intend to. To me, that is a testament to how responsive the controls can be.

Anomaly: Warzone Earth has a great difficulty curve as you get into the later missions. Towers that hit a unit and spreads that hit to everything it’s near, regenerating towers that use the energy from your power-ups to bring back towers you destroyed in the immediate area and my least favorite, the tower that shoots a blast that creates an small bubble that when the commander is inside it with a friendly unit, the friendly units turn on you and target you instead of the towers. Makes using power-ups on your platoon a gamble until that tower is dealt with.

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Bringing something new to the Xbox Live Arcade version of Anomaly: Warzone Earth, 11 Bit Studios added six “Tactical Trials” levels. Carried out in a virtual reality simulator, you have to find the most optimal way to complete the objectives. I really got the Metal Gear VR mission vibe upon first loading up the tactical trials. There will be some trial and error here so use that to figure out what units work in each trial. having the trials unlock only after you beat the game is a shame since I felt you could learn some strategies or at least get used to the different units to see which ones you find useful. At least it gives the player some replay value after the campaign is finished.

11 Bit Studios did what I thought was neigh impossible, to like a tower defense game. For those who already played Anomaly: Warzone Earth, the tactical trials is not enough to warrant another purchase to play them. If this is the first time you have even heard or seen of this game, be prepared to spend some quality time having  Jason Statham’s (again, not really him) voice carry you into a surprisingly fun twist on the tower defense genre.