Defense Grid: The Awakening

K. Fields
2023-07-16T16:46:45-04:00
Video Games

I had been playing Fallout 3 but put it on hold because of some motion sickness issues. I am definitely hit and miss with 3D first-person games. Fallout 3 supports an adjustable camera, which can show a third-person view. Unfortunately, that didn't completely eliminate the problem for me. Therefore, I decided to pick another game. I chose Defense Grid: The Awakening. After playing Anomaly: Warzone Earth and iBomber Defense, 2023 is turning into the year of tower defense games for me. Unlike the tower offense style of play found in Anomaly: Warzone Earth, Defense Grid is pure tower defense. You build towers with various weapons or other properties to defend against multiple waves of enemies. Your opponent is after your power cores. Lose all of your cores and the mission is over. With ten tower types, there is a nice variety to plan your strategies. The towers themselves cannot be damaged. I really liked that because it cut down on micro-managing repairs all over the map. Instead, you have to focus on path management. If you can create a maze of shooting corridors, you will likely be successful. It is very rewarding when you get it just right and it is like shooting fish in a barrel.

The included campaign is called The Awakening. I played it in story mode and finished all 20 missions. As expected, the early missions were mere warm-ups for the challenges of the later ones. I also played through the Borderlands DLC, which included another four missions. Defense Grid: The Awakening is highly regarded and I frequently saw it on lists for best tower defense games of all time. I would rank it ahead of iBomber Defense and very close to Anomaly: Warzone Earth as far as my personal enjoyment. It is definitely one of my favorite games played so far this year.

The Awakening - Mission 16 Containment