Game: Dungeon Defenders
Platform: Xbox 360; PS3; PC
Publisher: Reverb
Developer: Trendy Entertainment
ESRB: E
Genre: Tower Defense
Players: 1+
What's Hot: Addictive gameplay, colorful, fun graphics, character leveling and looting
What's Not: Addiction is not healthy
Review by: Jason McMaster
It’s not like tower defense games are hard to find these days. A new one comes out every week it seems, and they’re mostly the same – build towers, kill enemies, protect your power crystal or whatever. Dungeon Defenders does all that…and a bit more. There are four classes in the game (apprentice, squire, huntress and monk) all with different abilities and towers to choose from. Each character is associated with a difficulty setting, denoting the level of skill suggested for play.
The game takes place in several different stages, each with its own feel. Before the monsters come streaming, you have a bit of time to set up your defenses. As usual, you place structures along the path to stop monsters, but you can also take part in the battle as well, using your character’s attacks and abilities. One really cool feature is that you can play all of the characters in one round. There’s a setup area where you can store money you don’t need and switch characters. Of course, you can only play one of the characters when the round officially begins, but using their towers helps quite a bit. Any character can repair another’s fortifications, avoiding any issues with tower upkeep, so the game encourages you to branch out.
When I say Dungeon Defenders has four different characters—I mean it. These aren’t four slightly different re-skins with similar attacks. No, they’re very different. The apprentice uses almost all damaging towers and is the character suggested for newbies. The squire has a lot of hit points and decent attack but builds mostly defensive structures. The huntress sets traps that have a certain amount of uses and fires a crossbow. Finally, the monk creates area of effect auras that range from healing to slowing the enemies and doing damage over time. With the amount of variety on display, you can come up with some pretty fun tower arrangements.
Other than just being able to build towers, your characters also level up and obtain loot. The loot bonuses aren’t great on the surface, but you can pay to improve your weapons and items as well as use experience to improve your characters. When you do level up, there are several skills to select from that either affect your character or your character’s towers. You can also purchase a pet that acts as another inventory slot as well as being generally adorable.
Between missions you spend time in a gathering area where you can shop and meet up before taking on a new level. Other than just basic tower defense levels, the game also offers challenges that can get pretty hectic and entertaining. One such challenge requires you beat a level without building towers. That level is a bit intense.
Dungeon Defenders has a vibrant, cartoony look and feel while providing an addictive and solid tower defense gaming experience. Reinventing tower defense is a tough chore but Dungeon Defenders manages to pull it off.
Jason McMaster is a regular contributor to GameShark and also writes for Quarter to Three.com.
Questions or comments? We'd love to
hear from you
.
