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"Shoryuken!"
Moderator
on 28/10/2009 at 11:31:31AM
Edited: 28/10/09 21:57 Total Posts: 10339 |
I love Tower Defence games, the thrill of outwitting the enemy by building towers to thwart their progress is great. But the most important thing is that any Tower Defence game has to have character to set it apart from all the others.
Towering Above
Step up PixelJunk Monsters Deluxe, a new PSP game based on the original PixelJunk Monsters on the PS3. It’s full of character, from your Tikimask player to the babies he has to protect and the different monsters that aim to steal those same babies away from you.
The Two Towers
The aim of the game is pretty simple; build towers in the trees with different defences to kill the monsters before they reach your hut. For every tree on the map you can place a tower. Each tower costs a certain amount of money so you start off by placing just the ones you really need.
The monsters range from fast ground based spiders and slower dumpy monsters to flying creatures like bats and big fat humpty-dumpty look-alikes. Each has their own nuances and will require a different tower or strategy to defeat.
When killed, Monsters drop coins and sometimes jewels. The coins can be used to build new towers and the jewels are collected to unlock new tower types or can be used to upgrade towers.
Tower Power!
Upgrading is essential to protect your babies. It means some towers gain a greater range of attack and others just upgrade their firepower or rate. There are two ways to upgrade, the fastest being using dropped Jewels. The problem with this is that using these will prevent you from buying new towers unless you collect more jewels.
The other way to upgrade your towers is to stand in front of them and dance (yes, I said dance!), just positioning your tiki in the middle of the building will make a small bar increase until the tower is upgraded. It takes longer as your towers build in strength so there is an element of strategy in either standing in one spot for a while or going to build new towers and pick up more coins and jewels before they disappear.
Rainbow Island
Rainbows are gained when you complete a level without losing any babies. This is harder than it sounds. The problem is that this is the only way to unlock the next set of levels on a map or unlock the different islands. This does mean that you’ll be playing levels over and over to get those much needed rainbows. It can be annoying but often going back to complete a map after trying a more difficult one will give you new strategies to try on the older maps and make it a little easier. It’s still no walk in the park though and presents a good challenge.
Watch Tower
Graphically the game has always been quite basic, but it’s a pastel style world full of colour and character. On the PSP this works far better than it does on the HD PS3 and suits the handheld perfectly. The maps are not all that different from each other, bar the odd bridge, river etc, but that’s ok too, they all serve their purpose.
Fawlty Towers
So what’s not so good about PJMD? Well, there are some annoying zoom-ins when the monsters first reach your base, which often means your tiki is outside the map when you most need him. It’s also damn hard on some maps, meaning that you may get to see the same map too many times for comfort before being able to move forward.
Tower Deluxe?
Overall, though, PixelJunk Monsters Deluxe overcomes the few issues it has to make a very playable Tower Defence games and at £9.99 it’s well worth a purchase, especially with all the new maps that have been added for this release.
9/10
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pb
"Shoryuken!"
Moderator
on 28/10/2009 at 11:31:31AM
Edited: 28/10/09 21:57 Total Posts: 10339
|
|
I love Tower Defence games, the thrill of outwitting the enemy by building towers to thwart their progress is great. But the most important thing is that any Tower Defence game has to have character to set it apart from all the others.
Towering Above
Step up PixelJunk Monsters Deluxe, a new PSP game based on the original PixelJunk Monsters on the PS3. It’s full of character, from your Tikimask player to the babies he has to protect and the different monsters that aim to steal those same babies away from you.
The Two Towers
The aim of the game is pretty simple; build towers in the trees with different defences to kill the monsters before they reach your hut. For every tree on the map you can place a tower. Each tower costs a certain amount of money so you start off by placing just the ones you really need.
The monsters range from fast ground based spiders and slower dumpy monsters to flying creatures like bats and big fat humpty-dumpty look-alikes. Each has their own nuances and will require a different tower or strategy to defeat.
When killed, Monsters drop coins and sometimes jewels. The coins can be used to build new towers and the jewels are collected to unlock new tower types or can be used to upgrade towers.
Tower Power!
Upgrading is essential to protect your babies. It means some towers gain a greater range of attack and others just upgrade their firepower or rate. There are two ways to upgrade, the fastest being using dropped Jewels. The problem with this is that using these will prevent you from buying new towers unless you collect more jewels.
The other way to upgrade your towers is to stand in front of them and dance (yes, I said dance!), just positioning your tiki in the middle of the building will make a small bar increase until the tower is upgraded. It takes longer as your towers build in strength so there is an element of strategy in either standing in one spot for a while or going to build new towers and pick up more coins and jewels before they disappear.
Rainbow Island
Rainbows are gained when you complete a level without losing any babies. This is harder than it sounds. The problem is that this is the only way to unlock the next set of levels on a map or unlock the different islands. This does mean that you’ll be playing levels over and over to get those much needed rainbows. It can be annoying but often going back to complete a map after trying a more difficult one will give you new strategies to try on the older maps and make it a little easier. It’s still no walk in the park though and presents a good challenge.
Watch Tower
Graphically the game has always been quite basic, but it’s a pastel style world full of colour and character. On the PSP this works far better than it does on the HD PS3 and suits the handheld perfectly. The maps are not all that different from each other, bar the odd bridge, river etc, but that’s ok too, they all serve their purpose.
Fawlty Towers
So what’s not so good about PJMD? Well, there are some annoying zoom-ins when the monsters first reach your base, which often means your tiki is outside the map when you most need him. It’s also damn hard on some maps, meaning that you may get to see the same map too many times for comfort before being able to move forward.
Tower Deluxe?
Overall, though, PixelJunk Monsters Deluxe overcomes the few issues it has to make a very playable Tower Defence games and at £9.99 it’s well worth a purchase, especially with all the new maps that have been added for this release.
9/10
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