(AKA, the game that'd make Yahtzee put forks in his eyes)
Hey folks. I wrote this small review for The Angry Pixel, but decided to put it up here as well. Any comments or criticism on how to improve my writing would be much appreciated (yes, I know its sucks a fair bit, but I'm learning!
).
The original article can be found here [http://theangrypixel.com/blog/2008/01/25/an-impossibly-immortal-defense-aka-why-we-were-wrong/#more-634], but because that version has mostly HTML formatting, I'll just put the proper text here. If you want to see the full article with the links & pics, hit the link above.
Thanks in advance!
***
Back in 2007, Penny Arcade released their "We're Right" Awards, stating the best writing, soundtrack and new game mechanic awards. Predictably, the winner for all of them was Portal - something that we and many other gamers agreed on back then.
However despite this, it is in my opinion that at the very least, I have made a grave error. Portal's story, despite being an amazing adventure with a compelling story and some of the best characters around (not to mention being responsible for spawning quite a few internet memes) was NOT the best story of 2007. It was NOT the best writing of the year, surprisingly.
So you may ask, what pray tell was the best story of 2007? What game could be better than GLaDOS or those incredibly cute turrets that let out the innocent "Whyyyyy?" whenever you toppled them over? Was it Bioshock? Andrew Ryan and Rapture were awesome after all. Was it maybe C&C 3? If those were your guesses then I'm afraid your dead wrong. Hit the jump to find out just which game managed to trump GLaDOS and was an even bigger lie than the cake.
The game I've been talking about is Immortal Defense, a seemingly innocuous Indy game that has (surprisingly) passed under the radar of almost every website out there. The only reason I even heard of this game was thanks to the some of the folks at TAP that had played the demo, and immediately picked it up and try it when Game Give Away of the Day gave the full game away earlier this month for free.
Then I realized why nobody seemed to have noticed this game. Immortal Defense is at its core a Top-down Tower Defense game. The premise is simple: to defend the planet Dukis from a hostile race call the Bhavak, one person was chosen by the Government to ascend into heaven and defend the paths leading to the planet. This person gave up his body and soul for Dukis, and became what was known as a Path Defender.
Now, if you ask how "just another Tower Defense game" could beat portal, then all I can say is wash your bloody brain with soap. Games don't need three-dee graphix to be awesome. Indeed, if graphix are all that you go on, what the hell are you doing reading this?
Before I go into exactly why this is better than Portal though, let's get the gameplay bits out of the way.
Right from the menu and the little ditty song that comes up, one can easily see that Immortal Defense isn't just your ordinary Tower Defense game either - don't let the interface deceive you. This is, in fact, probably the next level in this tiny sub-genre. But at the same time, this game is not applicable only to this niche audience - this is a game that transcends that mere limitation and is enjoyable by any gamer that's willing to give it even a few minutes of time to play. The visuals that come in the missions are simple, yet full of color and incredibly vibrant. The effects can be turned up or down depending on just how powerful your machine is or your liking. There is no 3D rendering here - it's just you, the blackness of path space, the path itself, the enemies and the points. The sound is also simple, while the music is almost always fitting the near-desperate mood that is prevalent throughout the game itself.
The paths that form the center of the game twist and turn in specific ways, looping back amongst themselves and forming areas for exploitation where your defenses can hit the maximum number of enemies. The defenses here range from 11 types of 'Points' (essentially the game's version of Towers), each with its own ability and personality. The game even has a description for them; each point represents a part of the player's will, mind and emotions in path space - as can be discerned from the names themselves. Fear, Courage, Love, etc, etc.
You can then upgrade these points and watch and see as they become veritable death machines. Each point can be upgraded 7 times, with a staggering amount of cost for each - but upgrading them is well worth it as a single highly upgraded tower at a good choke point can be worth several smaller ones scattered throughout the path.
But this is still surprisingly balanced. There is no one point that is too overpowered, while each one serves unique roles that may make or break your defense. Granted, there are one or two that are a fair bit weak (like the circuit point and the pride point) but on the whole each point is incredibly well balanced and useful. There is a resource system to placing these points however, one that is called "cache". Each point costs cache, while upgrading them costs some more. Thankfully, it's quite easy to get cache from the enemies you kill.
However, it is far harder to actually get the points themselves - in each of the 100 levels in the game, you get only a limited number of points to use and in some levels, you only have your cursor and some support points as weapons! And there are a huge number of opponents here - 26, all in all. Each one is unique and has its own advantages. Some are tanks; capable of taking an immense beating. Others focus on speed, while others defense, yet others will regenerate damage rapidly while yet others will focus on disabling your points. At the end of each campaign is a boss fight. Each boss is different and unique, demanding a separate strategy to fight and defeat them.
The game asks you to use your cursor and strategy in placement of your points especially in the later stages, which means just being lazy and putting your points and letting them do all the work for you isn't possible. This is the surprising bit though - your cursor IS also a weapon in the game. It fires a constant stream of projectiles at the nearest target, and has 6 special charge-up attacks which can be used by pressing and holding the right mouse button. Each attack is gained after completing the campaigns, and each attack can be linked and used to direct the point's attacks to overwhelm the tougher opponent's defenses.
This linking is not just limited to the cursor either. Certain points link between other points, boosting their range, firepower and rate of fire while yet other points direct the fire of all nearby points to the target your cursor is shooting at. Yet other points simply act as flak, attacking multiple enemies at once - the number of connections and combinations one can use according to their style of play is impressive and interesting. Trust me though - as you go through the levels, you'll find yourself needing those combinations and connections more and more - which by itself if you consider it, is a slight spoiler on the nature of the story, and the secret endings that come in the final, Hellspace campaign.
This brings me to where the game truly shines, where it is (in my opinion at least) better than Portal. The story is told in the form of a few simple passages of text the start of each level, introducing various characters to the player as well as detailing events. The text is succinct and brief - but each one holds a huge amount of meaning behind them. You are introduced to your 'mentor' - a path Defender that believes he is God and obsessed with being worshiped. You will meet others through your journey - your wife, your daughter and even the Bhavak you fought. There will be treachery, there will be betrayal - but the twists to these betrayals are so horrible to contemplate, it's gut-wrenching.
It is hard to say this without spoilers, but I'll do my best: This is a game that will force you stop. It will force you think about the world around you, your very mortality and the price you would pay to become immortal. It will LIE to you on a level that Portal never would have dared to go. And you know what the worst part is? You will KNOW it's lying to you. You will know it is all a lie but you will not want to believe it. Even as it becomes clearer and clearer - even as the inevitable comes right into your sight and starts to strangle your very mind, you will refuse to believe it.
And when it does come...oh good God, when it does come it will still hit you like a ton of bricks travelling at Mach 2. Immortal Defense has an ending so viciously sublime that it would make Yahtzee put forks into his eyes just as he promised in his Portal review should he be forced to use those words ever again.
The story is what sells this game in its entirety. It's not the gameplay, the graphics or even the strangely fitting music to the entire thing. No; it's the sheer story that will keep you playing from morning all the way to night. There is a meaning behind the story as well - a moral that you can get during the sixth campaign and after you read the interview with the Author. But I'll cease harping on that for now.
The only downside to this game is really not related to the game itself but rather it's supposed value. Some people may have an issue of the price: the full version costs $23 - a remarkable amount for an Indy game and arguably something that may question its worth. To answer this, let me tell you this much: knowing what I know now, after having played the entire thing, the experience was worth FAR more than that price.
Perhaps it is best to describe it this way: if all your going to give a shit about is how bloody shiny your game looks like and going to act as a graphics whore, then by all means go pay $59 on Halo 3, Bioshock or some of the other pretty games out there. If you however, value gameplay, depth and a damn fine story that Valve can at most equal but not top, then $23 is easily far more worth it, especially since your easily getting 7-14 hours of play for the entire thing - something that's double of what Halo 3 had, easily.
In Summary: Immortal Defense is, in my opinion the second best and most morbidly saddening story I've had the utter pleasure and privilege to play since 1995. While TAP's record of best Story for 2007 may still stand, mine has been struck down and replaced with this game that is most deserving of that title.
It may be a bit expensive, but had I been given a choice between this and Bioshock knowing what I do now, I wouldn't hesitate even a moment to skimp on Rapture for this. If you're still undecided on the entire thing, I highly recommend at least trying the demo, available here. [http://immortaldefense.s3.amazonaws.com/ImmortalDefenseDemoSetup-v1.0.exe]
Until next time, this is Singh, signing off.
P.S.: Gabe and Tycho are awesome, along with Zero Punctuation. Not sucking up to them here. No Siree Bob. <_<
Hey folks. I wrote this small review for The Angry Pixel, but decided to put it up here as well. Any comments or criticism on how to improve my writing would be much appreciated (yes, I know its sucks a fair bit, but I'm learning!
).The original article can be found here [http://theangrypixel.com/blog/2008/01/25/an-impossibly-immortal-defense-aka-why-we-were-wrong/#more-634], but because that version has mostly HTML formatting, I'll just put the proper text here. If you want to see the full article with the links & pics, hit the link above.
Thanks in advance!
***
Back in 2007, Penny Arcade released their "We're Right" Awards, stating the best writing, soundtrack and new game mechanic awards. Predictably, the winner for all of them was Portal - something that we and many other gamers agreed on back then.
However despite this, it is in my opinion that at the very least, I have made a grave error. Portal's story, despite being an amazing adventure with a compelling story and some of the best characters around (not to mention being responsible for spawning quite a few internet memes) was NOT the best story of 2007. It was NOT the best writing of the year, surprisingly.
So you may ask, what pray tell was the best story of 2007? What game could be better than GLaDOS or those incredibly cute turrets that let out the innocent "Whyyyyy?" whenever you toppled them over? Was it Bioshock? Andrew Ryan and Rapture were awesome after all. Was it maybe C&C 3? If those were your guesses then I'm afraid your dead wrong. Hit the jump to find out just which game managed to trump GLaDOS and was an even bigger lie than the cake.
The game I've been talking about is Immortal Defense, a seemingly innocuous Indy game that has (surprisingly) passed under the radar of almost every website out there. The only reason I even heard of this game was thanks to the some of the folks at TAP that had played the demo, and immediately picked it up and try it when Game Give Away of the Day gave the full game away earlier this month for free.
Then I realized why nobody seemed to have noticed this game. Immortal Defense is at its core a Top-down Tower Defense game. The premise is simple: to defend the planet Dukis from a hostile race call the Bhavak, one person was chosen by the Government to ascend into heaven and defend the paths leading to the planet. This person gave up his body and soul for Dukis, and became what was known as a Path Defender.
Now, if you ask how "just another Tower Defense game" could beat portal, then all I can say is wash your bloody brain with soap. Games don't need three-dee graphix to be awesome. Indeed, if graphix are all that you go on, what the hell are you doing reading this?
Before I go into exactly why this is better than Portal though, let's get the gameplay bits out of the way.
Right from the menu and the little ditty song that comes up, one can easily see that Immortal Defense isn't just your ordinary Tower Defense game either - don't let the interface deceive you. This is, in fact, probably the next level in this tiny sub-genre. But at the same time, this game is not applicable only to this niche audience - this is a game that transcends that mere limitation and is enjoyable by any gamer that's willing to give it even a few minutes of time to play. The visuals that come in the missions are simple, yet full of color and incredibly vibrant. The effects can be turned up or down depending on just how powerful your machine is or your liking. There is no 3D rendering here - it's just you, the blackness of path space, the path itself, the enemies and the points. The sound is also simple, while the music is almost always fitting the near-desperate mood that is prevalent throughout the game itself.
The paths that form the center of the game twist and turn in specific ways, looping back amongst themselves and forming areas for exploitation where your defenses can hit the maximum number of enemies. The defenses here range from 11 types of 'Points' (essentially the game's version of Towers), each with its own ability and personality. The game even has a description for them; each point represents a part of the player's will, mind and emotions in path space - as can be discerned from the names themselves. Fear, Courage, Love, etc, etc.
You can then upgrade these points and watch and see as they become veritable death machines. Each point can be upgraded 7 times, with a staggering amount of cost for each - but upgrading them is well worth it as a single highly upgraded tower at a good choke point can be worth several smaller ones scattered throughout the path.
But this is still surprisingly balanced. There is no one point that is too overpowered, while each one serves unique roles that may make or break your defense. Granted, there are one or two that are a fair bit weak (like the circuit point and the pride point) but on the whole each point is incredibly well balanced and useful. There is a resource system to placing these points however, one that is called "cache". Each point costs cache, while upgrading them costs some more. Thankfully, it's quite easy to get cache from the enemies you kill.
However, it is far harder to actually get the points themselves - in each of the 100 levels in the game, you get only a limited number of points to use and in some levels, you only have your cursor and some support points as weapons! And there are a huge number of opponents here - 26, all in all. Each one is unique and has its own advantages. Some are tanks; capable of taking an immense beating. Others focus on speed, while others defense, yet others will regenerate damage rapidly while yet others will focus on disabling your points. At the end of each campaign is a boss fight. Each boss is different and unique, demanding a separate strategy to fight and defeat them.
The game asks you to use your cursor and strategy in placement of your points especially in the later stages, which means just being lazy and putting your points and letting them do all the work for you isn't possible. This is the surprising bit though - your cursor IS also a weapon in the game. It fires a constant stream of projectiles at the nearest target, and has 6 special charge-up attacks which can be used by pressing and holding the right mouse button. Each attack is gained after completing the campaigns, and each attack can be linked and used to direct the point's attacks to overwhelm the tougher opponent's defenses.
This linking is not just limited to the cursor either. Certain points link between other points, boosting their range, firepower and rate of fire while yet other points direct the fire of all nearby points to the target your cursor is shooting at. Yet other points simply act as flak, attacking multiple enemies at once - the number of connections and combinations one can use according to their style of play is impressive and interesting. Trust me though - as you go through the levels, you'll find yourself needing those combinations and connections more and more - which by itself if you consider it, is a slight spoiler on the nature of the story, and the secret endings that come in the final, Hellspace campaign.
This brings me to where the game truly shines, where it is (in my opinion at least) better than Portal. The story is told in the form of a few simple passages of text the start of each level, introducing various characters to the player as well as detailing events. The text is succinct and brief - but each one holds a huge amount of meaning behind them. You are introduced to your 'mentor' - a path Defender that believes he is God and obsessed with being worshiped. You will meet others through your journey - your wife, your daughter and even the Bhavak you fought. There will be treachery, there will be betrayal - but the twists to these betrayals are so horrible to contemplate, it's gut-wrenching.
It is hard to say this without spoilers, but I'll do my best: This is a game that will force you stop. It will force you think about the world around you, your very mortality and the price you would pay to become immortal. It will LIE to you on a level that Portal never would have dared to go. And you know what the worst part is? You will KNOW it's lying to you. You will know it is all a lie but you will not want to believe it. Even as it becomes clearer and clearer - even as the inevitable comes right into your sight and starts to strangle your very mind, you will refuse to believe it.
And when it does come...oh good God, when it does come it will still hit you like a ton of bricks travelling at Mach 2. Immortal Defense has an ending so viciously sublime that it would make Yahtzee put forks into his eyes just as he promised in his Portal review should he be forced to use those words ever again.
The story is what sells this game in its entirety. It's not the gameplay, the graphics or even the strangely fitting music to the entire thing. No; it's the sheer story that will keep you playing from morning all the way to night. There is a meaning behind the story as well - a moral that you can get during the sixth campaign and after you read the interview with the Author. But I'll cease harping on that for now.
The only downside to this game is really not related to the game itself but rather it's supposed value. Some people may have an issue of the price: the full version costs $23 - a remarkable amount for an Indy game and arguably something that may question its worth. To answer this, let me tell you this much: knowing what I know now, after having played the entire thing, the experience was worth FAR more than that price.
Perhaps it is best to describe it this way: if all your going to give a shit about is how bloody shiny your game looks like and going to act as a graphics whore, then by all means go pay $59 on Halo 3, Bioshock or some of the other pretty games out there. If you however, value gameplay, depth and a damn fine story that Valve can at most equal but not top, then $23 is easily far more worth it, especially since your easily getting 7-14 hours of play for the entire thing - something that's double of what Halo 3 had, easily.
In Summary: Immortal Defense is, in my opinion the second best and most morbidly saddening story I've had the utter pleasure and privilege to play since 1995. While TAP's record of best Story for 2007 may still stand, mine has been struck down and replaced with this game that is most deserving of that title.
It may be a bit expensive, but had I been given a choice between this and Bioshock knowing what I do now, I wouldn't hesitate even a moment to skimp on Rapture for this. If you're still undecided on the entire thing, I highly recommend at least trying the demo, available here. [http://immortaldefense.s3.amazonaws.com/ImmortalDefenseDemoSetup-v1.0.exe]
Until next time, this is Singh, signing off.
P.S.: Gabe and Tycho are awesome, along with Zero Punctuation. Not sucking up to them here. No Siree Bob. <_<