When I had originally picked up my PS3, I had a few plans for it – Blu-Ray Player, some games from the PSN, and a few games. Mainly, I sprung for the system in anticipation of the release of LittleBigPlanet, and knew there would be some other games that would come along and find their home on the console. Sadly, the few games that I would have been interested in, I already own on the 360 (Assassin’s Creed, Call of Duty 4). I’m considering Ratchet and Clank, and The Darkness, but I hadn’t heard enough about the game itself for me to jump on the game from the start.
From the time of my purchase, the PS3 had 194 games in its library. With the exceptions of cross-platform titles that I already owned, I wasn’t drooling at any games other than a few gems in the PSN’s store. (Echochrome, flOw, Everyday Shooter, Crash Bandicoot 1, and PixelJunk Monsters)
Overview
From Wikipedia
Gameplay in PixelJunk Monsters borrows similarities from various tower defense titles. The objective is to build defense towers along the enemies’ path to keep them from reaching a hut, or base. Several small creatures dwell at the base. For each enemy that survives the defense towers and reaches the hut, one creature is killed. If all creatures are wiped out, the level is failed.
Towers have distinct attributes, such as rapid fire, long range, air-focused, etc. Destroyed enemies usually drop coins and occasionally give gems, which then can be used to build and upgrade towers.
There are a total of 21 different levels (36 with the expansion pack) at 3 stages of difficulty. There are also 3 special stages that unlock unique abilities for the player character.
Overall Reaction
From Desktop Tower Defense, Gem Tower Defense (a custom map for Warcraft III), and a few others, I’ve always had a small place in my heart for tower defense games. They’re simple, fun, and easily can waste a good amount of time without much effort. Beating tougher levels from these games generally take a good amount of strategy, preparation, and trial and error before you can beat the final levels of the game.
So when I was browsing the PSN, looking to purchase some games that I could actually begin to make use of my PS3, I couldn’t resist the opportunity to try another tower defense game. While this game wasn’t the best tower defense I’ve ever played before, I do enjoy the re-playability of these games, and look forward to be able to eventually play through with someone who’s familiar to the genre.
Weaknesses (What I’d Change)
Earning your keep
This was the first TD game that I’ve played where you needed to actually earn your gold (used to upgrade/build more towers), by scrambling to pick it up. Not only did it have a timed-life before it disappeared, but it also could be lost if your character hit any of the incoming creatures. While this adds a bit of difficulty to the game, I don’t think its the type of difficulty that the game needs. The focus of the difficulty should be designing a defense that stops the onslaught of enemies, not avoiding them with your character. Other games have allowed placing towers with the mouse, or at least not having collision with your character be an issue.
Variable Money
Monsters drop both gold and (sometimes) jewels. Gold is used to build towers, where jewels are used to upgrade towers and unlock new towers past your three generic starting towers. However, there is no way to convert one into the other. That means if you really needed to unlock that special anti-air tower, and you are one jewel short but have mass amounts of gold, your only hope of winning the round are building a mass of lower grade towers, and hope for the best. The separation of these two elements add quite a bit of frustration to the pool, and I’m sure they really add to the strategy scenario that well.
Unlock this tower again and again and again…
After playing one level, you may have been able to save up and unlock for a specific tower, but you are back at square one again the next level. Even after you pass to the next level of play (medium, hard levels), you still only have your lame first three towers that you get to start off with, grinding again to get the towers you enjoy using unlocked again. I think at a very basic level, certain towers should be allowed to be unlocked as the difficulty of play increases (again, create difficulty with the actual point of the game, not the side-pieces that were added in for flavor), rather than having to start at square one every level. (Note: I think they did something to fix this complaint in the expansion pack, which I have yet to buy)
Useful towers?
Aside of the three main towers, I used the laser tower for anti-air, and the napalm tower for anti-ground. That’s all I really needed. There was one certain type of monster that was resistant to fire-based attacks, but they seemed to fall incredibly fast to just the regular arrow towers. So out of a total of something like 11 towers, I usually found myself using five of them, and a sixth when hard bosses came around (the mortar tower). If you’re going to offer a variety of towers, make them versatile enough to offer use to the players so that they can be included in the strategy. For instance, the ice tower should have either had a faster rate of fire, or been able to hit multiple enemies at once. (Normally you use the ice tower in TDs to slow down large amount of monsters while your other strong towers pound on them). After one frustrated game of unlocking the ice tower to only find out how pathetically useless it was, I never unlocked it again.
Sparse abilities (spoiler)
You get a total of three unlockable abilities throughout the game, one is running fast, one is remote mines, and one is a lightning tower. I don’t think I have had the chance to unlock the tower yet, but I have unlocked the other two. Using a remote mine costs a whooping 5 gems, which are better used in unlocking and upgrading towers, so I never once used it. The running fast was necessary, as the character originally moves MUCH too slow to be enjoyable, and I found myself holding the run button for the entire game after I had unlocked the ability. While this was a somewhat fresh idea to be able to unlock abilities, it seems the execution of what was unlockable, and what came out from it was ill-concieved. The running should have been inlcuded from the beginning, and if this were the way to unlock towers, I would be much more content – provided those towers stay unlocked at the start of a new game.
Underused “Special” Modes
There were a few modes where you had a ton of money, or you had all the towers unlocked, or you only fought one type of monster the entire game. These were gems, and probably some of my favorite levels, but these should have not been individualized levels, but “modes” that you could either select from, or unlock, so you could enjoy every level with these options.
Anti-Climatic Ending
First, the game let me “beat” it before I had beaten all the levels. I would understand if it allowed this before I had gotten rainbows (perfect games) on every level, but beating the “final” level was enough for the game to consider itself conquered. And after that? Absolutely nothing. No unlocks, no special modes, nothing. Boo.
I think this game has more to offer, and will prove to be a bit more fun with someone else playing along, and I look forward to the remote play once I get a PSP, but until then, I’ll play away with my gripes and deal with it. (Maybe the expansion will make some of these things slightly less annoying)
