With my recent PlayStation 3 purchase, I decided to venture into the limited pool of demos for the system and decided to give the demo of the much-hyped Pixel Junk Monsters a whirl. While it has a few neat spins on the web-based classic, it suffers from the same problem as Patapon for the PSP: there just isn't much gameplay there.

In the game you control a creature that resembles a turtle with an African mask that has to defend his village from waves of monsters. You can convert trees in the forest to various guns and are faced with a bit of a problem--do you build a lot of different towers that are weak or a few that are strong? Different enemies are weak against ground or air attacks and move through an obvious path towards your village. The game spikes in difficulty after the tutorial level, but my main issue with it is that enemies move at a pokey pace--maybe there is a "speed up" button I am missing.

A Mario-inspired twist to the formula is that your creature can walk up and collect coins and eggs enemies leave behind to upgrade or build additional towers. Graphics are nice and cute in a Miyamoto fashion and the music adds a laid-back pace to the proceedings, but the game seems a bit simple in the demo--I realize there are more towers available in the full game. It's a fun demo, but there's not enough there to make me spring for the full title.

The demo for Pixel Junk Monsters is worth downloading, but it's definitely a love it or hate it title--I just wished I loved it enough to try the full version out.