Archive for February, 2009

Its pretty clear by now that in the future, we’ll have used up all of Earth’s resources at some point and if science fiction has taught us anything, it’s that space has a plethroa of awesome reserves that we can exploit for fun and profit. Of course, along with the limitless caches found in the outer reaches comes the biggest threat to humanity: ALIENS!

In Savage Moon, those aliens take the form of arachnid styled bugs called Insectocytes. These guys just don’t want you touching their stuff and will attack any mining operation that goes up. So, its up to you to build up a defense system that’ll fend off these foes from taking down your factories. How do you do that? By building towers to shoot them of course.

Savage Moon is a Tower Defense game through and through. You have to take your limited resources and plan the best way to defend your base from the rushing horde of squishy bugs by building up towers. Aside from placement, there are two things you’ll need to take into account though when building, and those are money and drop-pods. Basically, you can only build as many towers as your pod allotment, no matter how much cash you’ve got. This may seem like it’s a problem, but it only remains one in the earlier levels. Typically, you’ll run out of money before you run out of pods.

There’s not much here that TD fans haven’t seen before. You’ve got your basic machine guns, anti-air, mortar, lasers, and support towers, all upgradable up to 5 times. Upgrades are shown by the actual tower taking different forms, so you’ll need to memorize those to keep track of which ones have been upgraded how much. This can be a bit frustrating as the changes can be very minor so you end up being better off selecting the tower to see what level it’s at. One handy addition though are the ‘Command Skills’. Utilizing these will give your towers a boost in one of three categories: Damage, Defense, or Credits Gained. These are a great addition as I can’t tell how many times I’ve said “I wish they would do just a bit more damage!” or “I need some more cash.” Additionally, you can pick two at a time lowering the advantage of each, but giving your picks a hair of oomph.

To complicate matters, you’ll only be able to build your towers on certain surfaces. Place them on overlooking cliffs, and you’re pretty safe against most bugs. Place them on the flat plains however and they’ll be susceptible to attacks from the ground forces. In the later levels however, no tower is completely safe as certain larger foes will shoot projectiles to take down your defenses… and herein lies one big issue with the game.

Savage Moon does an OK job introducing you to how to play through the first three levels via a bunch of onscreen text (a narrator would have been nice), but then lets you fend for yourself figuring out what each tower does, which towers have been added to your arsenel, where they are in the build order, and what the different enemies can do as they’re coming at you. Once you figure all that out on your own, you’ll still need to determine how you’re going to lay your towers out. This truly leads to a lot of trial-and-error gameplay.

Maps are laid out in a multitude of different ways and while there’s isn’t a set path for the bugs to attack in, they usually head down the shortest, most unobstructed route. The ground based bugs will come out of cave type structures while winged beasts will fly in through beehive looking capsules. The game sports plenty of different maps for a $10 title (12 in all), but the environments are nothing spectacular.

When all’s said and done, Savage Moon does what it sets out to do. Provide a challenging tower defense game on alien terrain, allowing you to blow up tons of insects by various means. While I fear that it’s difficulty curve will throw off some TD novices, those willing to put in the time will certainly get their money’s worth. With 12 maps, trophy support, and a challenge mode that pits you against a never ending flood of creatures, there’s plenty to do in this downloadable title making it worthy of purchase for anyone looking to scratch the TD itch.

Score: 3.5 out of 5

The Good
TD Vets will get quite a challenge
Great looking tower designs that upgrade beautifully
You certainly get your money’s worth with the content

The Bad
Maps are pretty bland and presentation is mediocre
Steep learning curve will put off many people
Could have used another round of tower balancing

The Ugly
Sometimes overly frustrating trial-and-error gameplay can sour your experience

Its hard not to get a bit nostalgic when playing Magic Ball. The basic gameplay harkens back to Breakout for the Atari, then Arkanoid in the arcades (and on Nintendo). It is effectively the next iteration in that formula. You take control of a paddle at the bottom of the screen and bounce a ball at wall full of stuff to destroy. If you miss the ball on its way down with your paddle, you lose a life. Lose them all and its game over. The primary addition here though is that instead of just busting down an inanimate set of bricks, you lay siege to a three dimensional scene that moves, falls, and crumbles as you decimate it with your magic soccer ball.

Certain destructibles on each level will produce power ups, extra lives, and even death skulls to make things more entertaining than just bouncy, bouncy. There are temporary upgrades for your paddle in the form of machine gun, laser or cannon to help bust up the scenery with quickness. Additionally, you can grab environmental effecting items that produce a series of lightning strikes, wind gusts, earthquake or even a meteor storm. Grab that death skull though, and you’re out a life. In total there are 24 different items.

On the multiplayer side of things, you can tackle the game’s levels with a friend in co-op mode, or challenge someone to see who can break apart the level first.

Graphically, Magic Ball delivers some vibrant and colorful visuals in native 1080p. There’s plenty of chaos and taking down some of the taller structures is really quite a treat to see. The musical backing is downright garbage, but the rest of the sound effects are well done and varied.

The biggest issue I have with Magic Ball is that its really short. You can bust through all of the 48 levels in about three hours, less if you don’t lose that much. There are two environments to play in but it looks like there’s more on the way thanks to a ‘coming soon’ message, most likely part of some DLC. There’s a dozen trophies to earn to keep you coming back as well, but some unlockables would have helped too.

Additionally, its a very easy game and very forgiving. While you do indeed have a set number of lives, if you lose them all, you can just start the level you are on at the beginning. The only thing the lives alllow you to do is continue your path of destruction on a level. Your overall score does not get affected by loss of life or restarting a level.

I enjoyed what I played of Magic Ball but would have prefered a longer experience and more of a challenge. It really is a nice looking game and there’s nothing like hitting a few environmental power-ups in a row to really get the destruction rolling.

Score: 3.5 out of 5

The Good:
Vibrant, attractive destructable environments
A nice evolution in the brick-breaking formula
Fun and action packed

The Bad:
Three hours and you’re done
Too easy and forgiving
Not enough visual variety in the two themes

The Ugly:
The Crazy Ball powerup