Tower Defense is a genre that has, these days, seemingly been relegated to browser games or smart phone apps. You don’t often see a serious go at making an entry into this genre competitive or deep. That’s not to say that there aren’t good Tower Defense games (I fricken love Kingdom Rush), but Defense Grid 2 takes the whole idea to another level.
With around 20 maps and 9 playable modes, Defense Grid 2 isn’t messing around. Included are cooperative and competitive multiplayer modes. 2 different means of ranked ladder play, and a myriad of single player options. A few of the standouts are a frantic manual mode where players must hover their cursor over a tower before it will shoot, giving the game an almost RTS feel. Another mode of note is a competitive mode where enemies defeated will appear on your opponent’s board in the same spot where they fell (which I can only imagine leading to some really interesting strategic gameplay).
As far as the actual towers, Defense Grid 2 seems pretty familiar. Single target… Group target… Slowing enemy movement speed… All stuff that Tower Defense players will be familiar with. One cool feature in regards to towers are Masteries, where individual towers can be upgrades in unique ways. Something that may be less familiar to Tower Defense veterans is once enemies make it past your slew of towers, they will steal cores from your base and then attempt a return trip. If that enemy is defeated, the core will slowly return to its original position, but can be picked up by further enemies.
Defense Grid 2 is looking to be a huge game. We’ve been told it’s in the realm of 10x more content than Defense Grid 1. Hidden Path has really thrown in everything (including the kitchen sink, as they say) to ensure that Defense Grid 2 is the premier Tower Defense game on the market.
