Great little game
User Rating: 8.5 | Defense Grid: The Awakening PC
I got this game after playing the demo. At the current price, it has been one of the best games I've purchased in years. The concept is simple: place various towers on a grid and try to kill the aliens before they steal your cores. However, the game can be complex. You have to pick the right kinds of towers to kill certain kinds of aliens. You have to know where to place towers and when to upgrade. You can shape the path of aliens on some maps. You need to place air defenses and determine when to use the superweapon (and when to save it). The game is intense, but rarely frustrating. The checkpoint save system works pretty well, and the graphics and sound are fine for this kind of game. After you finish the campaign (20 maps), you can replay individual maps with different win conditions.
The only drawbacks to the game are it's fairly short and there is no map editor. If the game had a good editor, I would have given it an even higher score. Anyhow, it gets points for coming with no DRM and being very stable.
Note: Defense Grid Gold is available as an electronic download. It is a better value than the disk version, since it has 12 additional missions. However, it comes with DRM, which requires online activation each time you install it.
Pros:
+Solid tower defense game
+Intense gameplay
+Well-crafted missions
+Decent graphics and sound effects
-Some replay value
-No DRM in disk version
Cons:
-A bit short
-No map editor
