Preview: Defense Grid: The Awakening

Defense Grid: The Awakening takes place hundreds of years after an alien force invaded Earth. The people of Earth fought off this invasion and have been enjoying peace for a very long time now. This peace has caused Earth’s Defense Grid to deteriorate over time, as there was no reason to maintain the system. The aliens have returned once again and it’s up to the player to reestablish the planet’s Defense Grid.

My preview started off with a very simple level with only one path to get in and out of the level. The objective of all 20 levels is to prevent the aliens from stealing Power Cores located on the map. To do this, players will need to set up Towers along the path the aliens will use.

Only four of the ten Towers were available here, which were:

• The Machine Gun Tower
• The Inferno Tower: shoots out flames
• The Laser Tower: shoots lasers
• The Temporal Tower: slows down aliens

The Towers can only be placed on specific parts of the map and they all have two levels of upgrades that increase the Towers fire power and range. As aliens are killed, players will gain resources that are used to buy new Towers and to upgrade them. Towers can also be sold off for one-third of their original price (hey, that’s how much GameStop takes back your games for too!)

There will be 15 different types of aliens coming in all sorts of shapes and sizes, ranging from the super speedy to the super strong. Some aliens will more than likely grab your Power Cores, but that doesn’t mean they’re completely lost. The aliens will still have to back track to the exit and can get taken out by the Towers. The Towers are smart and will go for high priority targets before anything else. If an alien is killed with Power Cores, the Cores will slowly float back to the Power Core station. However, if an alien is making its way to the Power Core station and runs into a floating Power Core, it will grab the floating Core and make a break for the exit.

After seeing the first level, I was taken to a more advanced section. I could pretty much place Towers anywhere on the map, but it would be a lot harder to take out the aliens. Now, aliens can take any path for the Power Cores and exit through another area. Since the aliens were moving on spots where Towers could be setup, the player will be able to actually direct which way the aliens moved. I made it so the aliens never went to the right section of the map and always moved in between two rows of towers to double all the damage they would take. It would sound like you could block the exit completely doing this, but the aliens will cross in between towers if their way is completely blocked off.

This level also had a few new Towers available:

• Meteor Tower: Throws big boulders, like a catapult.
• Canon Tower: Shoots a powerful blast but in short bursts.
• Tesla Tower: Shoots out bolts of electricity.

Players can win each level so long as one of the 24 Power Cores is at least left. If you’re going for the games medals and 58 Achievements, you’ll want to try and keep as many Power Cores as possible. There will also be Leaderboards showing off how players beat levels and will no doubt result in players screaming out “How did he beat that map with just five towers?!”

The game will also have 60 Challenge modes that will require players to pass levels in certain ways such as beating a map with just ten towers, fighting enemies with double the health and so on.

Visually, the game looks great for a Tower Defense game. Players can zoom in and out on the battlefields and moving the mouse around moves the camera fluidly. In fact, all you need to play the game is the mouse (there are keyboard and 360 controller options as well).

Overall, the game is pretty fun. Like I said earlier, if you like Tower Defense games, then you’ll like Defense Grid.

Defense Grid: The Awakening is made by Hidden Path Entertainment and will be out for the PC through D2D and Steam on December 8 for $19.99. Defense Grid will also see an XBLA release early next year.