There are about 13,272 tower defense games out there. Do not try to play them all.
SEEN IT
Lots and lots more people need to play Immortal Defense.
What happened to Tom’s PS3? Did The SDF take it away after he trounced Killzone 2?
I believe he meant if the PS3 was the only console he had.
My PS3 is alive and well and currently inFamousing.
-TomI tried it but didn’t like the feeling of having to be frantically doing stuff with the mouse all the time… don’t you need to “spin” the cursor around the towers in order to make them work properly or something?
Good lord, it sounds like you’re accidentally playing the wrong game! Immortal Defense lets you use the cursor to shoot (it shoots and aims automatically) and later it can be used to direct fire and enhance certain defenses. But as far as I know, you never have to spin the cursor around a tower. That sounds dreadful.
BTW, the documentation in Immortal Defense is quite good. RTFM, dude! :)
-Tom
Hey, Immortal Defense! I played that game some time ago. I think i am going to search it and play it again.
Hm, Immortal Defense’s Web site says “Mac version coming soon!”.
Someone remind me of it when that happens.
Whilst musing over Tower Defense games, I thought of another game that is an FPS/RTS hybrid that has plenty of similarities of tower defense games, and that is Iron Grip: Warlord - I think it used to be a mod - but is now a standalone commercial product.
I wrote some thoughts on it HERE
To me, the TD needs to be SIMPLE…I play War in the Pacific and other monster wargames and I truly like the fact that there are simple TD’s to play with some form of strategy involved. I really enjoy PvZ but fired up a few of the more “complicated” TD’s and NO, I uninstalled…give me super simple to go with my super hard games…don’t add anything to those TD’s…please.
You wrote a column criticizing a genre you don’t like where you freely admit to not having played that genre’s Doom or Civilization? What was the point? If you don’t like a straight-up tower defense game because it’s a tower defense game and can’t make an informed comparison to the progenitor of the genre, what value does that have to anyone?
Because people like me also end up discovering Immortal Defense, the game you never thought such a tedious genre could churn out. It has imaginative art direction, turrets with personality and a beautiful mix of music and story. To me it was a revelation as to what could be done with Tower Defence.
So write a column about that. It just seemed very teenaged-amateur-blogpost to have a “roundup” that included two games he hadn’t played and a couple that were dismissed as being true to the genre.
It might have been more of a setup for Immortal Defense, but yeah it felt a little rushed. The column would have made more sense on Flash of Steel where it would have been in context, this was really an extension of the Three Moves Ahead discussions.
Meanwhile, I like and play a ton of TD games, and I tried Immortal Defense and didn’t like it at all. :)
You’re talking about Desktop Tower Defense? Is that relevant to a discussion of modern tower defense games, in terms of looking at the state of genre? Because I would argue that a column about the state of genre for shooters or strategy games wouldn’t really require that someone play Doom or Civilization. I’m sure it would get various cranks declaring it has no value to anyone, but I don’t think of face-time with Doom and Civilization as de rigeur in a discussion of shooters and strategy games these days.
Wait, wait, you didn’t think I was writing a comprehensive history and overview of tower defense games, did you?
-Tom
It’s definitely got its own vibe. Did you just not care for the aesthetic? Because it seems to me like it would pretty much automatically appeal to folks who dig TD games, unless they’re turned off by all the heavy abstraction.
-Tom
It just felt…arcadey to me. Like I was playing a protoype Jeff Minter game more than a tower defense game. And I felt like my minute to minute gameplay experience was being padded with a whole lot of atmosphere and story. Now, I’m pro-atmosphere and story, but I dunno, it felt like the presentation was sitting between me and something actually involving towers defending things from other things.