This is the essential Tower Defense game. It was first built in flash on March 2007, and just now too the jump to consoles(handheld at least). It was a really fun time-waster on the web, that’s for sure.

Now that it’s on the DS, does it still have the same appeal?

Read on. This will be really short. You’ll see why.

First things first. http://www.handdrawngames.com/DesktopTD/Game.asp . This is exactly what you get on the DS. Well, actually, it’s more like the 1.5 version on the website. If you don’t like those, don’t bother with the DS version. Heck, even if you do like them, the DS version offers nothing the free flash versions don’t. But read on anyways if you don’t want to bother trying them.

Looks and sounds
I really don’t feel the need to talk about these parts of the game. Why? Well because just look at the 1.5 version of Desktop Tower Defense, and you’ll see exactly what the DS version has to offer in looks and sounds. They’re all the same.

There is one big difference though: The ability to customize the looks of your towers and the creeps. You get a relatively small area to draw whatever you want your towers to look like. It doesn’t have to make sense either, the game accepts anything. But it’s not anything that will change the way the game plays.

The menus are also slightly modified, but other than that, the game looks and sounds like it always did.

Gameplay
The gameplay has not changed at all since version 1.5. What this is is really just a portable version of the game if you don’t have the internet available, and nothing more. It’s the exact same game.

The game modes are just like in 1.5. The challenges are the same, with none unlockable. The “fun modes” are also the same, and there are also no unlockables for that. So I won’t really bother explaining those, since you can get an explanation for DTD1.5 itself.

The main gameplay is relatively simple. Put up towers, they shoot at the creeps. Those towers, for an increasingly large price, can be upgraded to become exponentially stronger. Creeps come from entrances on either the left or top side of the screen, and go to the other end. They always pick the fastest route possible. So to beat them properly you have to build mazes, increasing the length of the route creeps must take and therefore making each upcoming wave easier to kill.

There’s a large variety of creeps. Normal creeps have low hp, fast creeps are fast, immune creeps have higher hp, dark creeps are hp powerhouses that can barely be hurt without upgraded towers, flying creeps go straight to the goal by going over your cannons, spawn creeps divide in 2 when killed and morph creeps change to different types of creeps as they go on through your maze.

To go with the different types of creeps, you have different types of towers. Normal towers with slow fire rate, stronger towers with quicker fire rate, slow towers that hit a wide area, towers that slow down creep, towers that hit either only air creeps or ground creeps, and towers that boost adjacent towers. Each of those can be upgraded 4 or 5 times. You can build just about any strategy you want with the different types of towers. Of course, long mazes and central areas with boosts for massive damage are the main strategy, but different types of towers can definitely help you out.

Each level has a different number of waves of enemies, and each wave is progressively stronger than the last, with every few waves having a boss enemy. It’s alone instead of being a wave, but it has a lot more HP than smaller creeps. You can get waves to come at you when you want, or you can wait for the timer to go down for the next wave to come. And each creep you kill gives you money for more towers and upgrades. If 20 creeps get to the exits, you lose.

Overall
The gameplay is simple and addictive. It’s quite fun to play and make up new strategies.

But, really, it’s only a good buy if you’re a hardcore fan of the flash game and want to have access to it wherever you are. Oh, I could mention that it has achievements, but they’re all horrible. Finishing Easy mode with 1 tower was the easiest thing ever.

So if you somehow don’t have access to the internet at all, then it’s a great Tower Defense game, but otherwise just stay with the free internet version. And with the Pro version out now, with slightly more features than the 1.5 version the DS game is based on, there’s little reason to go with the DS version instead. The DS doesn’t offer any super badass options that the internet versions don’t.

jobocan Uncategorized