Defense Grid: The Awakening

Defense Grid: The Awakening falls into the niche of casual gaming which seems quite ironic due to the amount of time it consumes from you. The game itself is based on the tower defence style of gaming which has been around since a mod for Warcraft III and Starcraft appeared many years ago. Since then there have been very few titles on the market, until the explosion of flash based games, then a myriad of bedroom coded attempts of the genre appeared on various flash game websites.

The concept of the game is very simple, you have a nice 3D map showing you a path which the aliens will traverse, flashing arrows will indicate the entry and exit points, and square blocks will show where you may construct your towers. All you have to do is construct your defence towers in such a fashion to prevent the aliens reaching your 24 power cores held at a certain point on the map, however, if the aliens somehow manage to run off with your cores then its game over man, game over.

The story starts out with your home planet being overrun with aliens forcing you to take shelter in some abandoned control centre and you accidentally awaken the dormant defense grid from a slumber which has lasted for over a millennium. The voice acting for the AI comes across with a strong 'Queens English' British accent, picture if you will a stereotypical R.A.F wing commander from some World War 2 film, complete with waxed handlebar moustache, smoking jacket and pipe in hand ready to hit the Gerries for six, fly his damaged kite back to Blighty and still be home in time for tea and scones in the officers mess. In all honesty they should have named the computer "Tarquin Barnstormer-Smythe III" and have been done with it.

Everything is mouse driven, from turret placement to map scrolling, though keyboard shortcuts are available for those who so wish to use them. Turret placement couldn't be simpler: click the square you want the turret to build on; then select which turret out of the possible ten to choose from; then watch it build itself before it then starts repelling your alien invaders. Each tower has two possible upgrades which increase its radius, damage and rate of fire for a set amount of resources - obviously the various towers differ in resource costs too.

Additionally some towers are more adept than others in certain situations, for example a laser tower is no good at facing a swarm of small aliens due to its single target nature, whereas a meteor tower with its massive area damage is much more suitable for that task.
You will encounter 16 different aliens in your battle to save your home world, each with varying speed, armour and shield values, some drop after a short burst from a tower while others are built to take a heavy beating, the most fearful of which could be the 'Juggernaut' alien with its heavy armour and heavy shielding.

Not all aliens are set to walking the pathways of your map, as you will encounter airborne foes with their own flight path to the cores. If one of these aliens picks up a core then it is lost for the remainder of the level, even if you do destroy the enemy after pickup. To view the flight path and set up AA defenses accordingly, simply press the T key (default setting) - this will also display the attack radii of your towers presently in play.

Once you've completed the 20 levels held within single player you may, if you feel sadistic enough to sink more time into this title, re-do the entire 20 levels facing harder enemies or just select individual levels and test yourself with the in-game challenges. These challenges consist of various things like a 10k resource challenge, giving you 10,000 points to use without any refunds or further gathering available, or limiting you to 10 towers in play at any one time.

Now personally, I would have liked an adjustable camera view allowing me to pan the level around and view the action as I saw fit, however instead we have a fixed camera position with three zoom levels. Whilst a pleasant gaming experience is still maintained, I felt that at some points in the game it was a little restrictive. Nevertheless this didn't really distract from the gameplay itself, which is what this title does best. It gives you a game that's bloody enjoyable if somewhat addictive, no doubt you'll acquire that dreaded "just one more map" mindset and before you know it, it's 5AM with the sounds of the milkman outside your window delivering his daily portion of bottled cow produce.

Overall Defense Grid: The Awakening is well worth the £13.99 price tag on Steam, just be prepared to say goodbye to your loved ones as this will keep you hooked for hours on end.