Dungeon Defenders Review

Dungeon Defenders, developed by Trendy Entertainment dropped onto the Playstation and XBOX Live networks this week. Surprising no one it's yet another, Tower Defence game. But does it do enough to set itself apart from the rest? In short, yes! Read on to find out why.

Dungeon Defenders starts up with a story we've all heard before. 4 Heroes, some crystals. Something about defending them. The stories thin on the ground, and loosely strings together the games stages. You start off having to create a character of your own, one of the four hero's, Mage, Squire, Huntress and Monk. These are essentially 'classes', they each have different roles on the battlefield, the mage and squire are your basic tower defence characters. They place down towers and blockades to kill the oncoming orcs. They each have unique towers and abilities of course but they're a pretty standard affair. The huntress and the monk are a little more interesting, the monk is a supportive class using his auras to slow and damage enemies over time, as well as healing allies, whilst the huntress is able to place devastating traps.

Once you've chosen your character you're thrown into the first level. Depending on whether you selected local or online you'll be with up to 3 other online, or local players (split screen). Together you must defend the crystal, and slay the oncoming orcs, elves, and other evil things that come out of the purple doors. Sounds familiar I suppose? but their are several elements that set Dungeon Defender apart.

For one, instead of just placing towers. You as your character, can go around wailing on enemies. On many tower defence games you're stuck watching your towers decimate enemies. The 'build' phase is the only significant phase and the combat phase is just a matter of watching your tower building strategy play out. Not on Dungeon Defenders however, this game is fast paced and forces you to get stuck in yourself. Towers are effective but your character can also decimate enemies on the battlefield. Depending on the character you picked you have a range of close quarters and long range attacks and special abilities. In higher waves, when there's over 100 enemies on screen at a time. It can get really intense. The combat itself is pretty mindless. I mean there's no block button, no real technicality to it - but it's fun to slay 10s of enemies at a time, and watch the chaos play out on screen.

The tower placement itself is a pretty standard affair. You have a limited number of defence units, and collect mana from killed enemies to both upgrade and create new, towers. The towers have limited range and AOE's that you must efficiently place across the battlefields chokepoints in an effort to defend the crystal. It isn't easy, and identifying the primary locations to defend and distributing your defences appropriately is as challenging as any other tower defence game.

Another differentiating factor is the character progression. As you play Dungeon Defenders the character you chose will level up. You can then distribute stat points and create a character build. If you want more damage from your towers, want more health yourself, want more damage for your hero, want more impacting special abilities, want towers with a faster rate of fire, and so forth, you can do all that - and the manner in which you distribute your stat points will have you playing in a very different way.

My monk for instance, low health, with a focus on DPS from his auras, has to play in an extremely supportive manner. Dies quickly in close quarter combat (but I engage anyway), and focuses on assisting teammates with their defences. Slowing enemies down as they travel through crossbow turrets, for instance. It's satisfying to create a character build to fit your own playstyle.

Beyond leveling up, you also have equipment. Enemies drop it, you can pick it up and equip it. There's also a tavern (hub) where you can sell and buy equipment and pets. As well as upgrade them and test out your character on one of the DPS dummies. The only downfall to these mechanics is that perhaps, at times the game can feel a little bit of a grind. For instance I started on normal, and I simply had no means of winning with the character level that I was, at stage 2... so it's important to move the difficult around (there's 4 difficulties for each map as well as variants like 'survival' and challenge modes like 'no towers') in order to have a less frustrating experience. Unlike other tower defence games it's not entirely strategy that comes into play. If you're character sucks, you might have a hard time on the normal and higher difficulty stages.

Speaking of stages, there's around 10 of them. Each featuring unique 3D worlds, and usually introducing new enemies. Orcs, Skeletons, Mages, Dragons, Demons, Elves and so on are common to see coming from the purple doors. Each require different strategies. Mages for instance need to be dealt with first, as they can heal their allies a great deal if you leave them be. Trolls on the other hand act as tanks, and Orcs, grunt enemies. Skeletons seem to come back to life if they have a mage in proximity. The enemy variety helps keep things enjoyable and adapting to different enemies should keep you on your toes. Having solid defences then seeing a dragon come and fly right over them can really throw you off.

As for sound and visuals. For a PSN game, both are top notch. It doesn't have the highest polycount, or texture resolution but it looks smooth, as it should, and sound is pretty much as you'd expect. Sword slashes, mages fireballs, and so on, sound like you'd imagine they would.

There's not really much more to say, for a tower defence game Dungeon Defenders gets almost everything right, and introduces elements (character progression and combat) that keep the game fresh, and fun. It's fun to play, it's satisfyingly difficult, and it keeps you coming back with the various modes, options, classes, enemies and character progression.


Loved 

• Character progression - it's fun and adds lifespan to the game
• Diverse classes with different playstyles
• Visuals, it's cartoony, but it looks great
• Gameplay, tower defence and mindless hack and slash combine into something glorious
• 4 Player online co-op / 4 player split screen. (drop in/out)

Needs Improving

• The menus were clearly built for PC. You can change the 'interface scale' in the options screen but it's still a little clunky at times. Fortunately the games not that technical in what you need to use the menus for that this gets frustrating. 

Verdict

Like tower defence? like action-rpgs? buy this game. You won't regret it. Especially if you have friends either locally or online to play with. (8.9)

Mega Man 10 - Review

Alright, right off the bat before I start. I have never played a Mega Man game in my life... well, aside Mega Man Man Battlenetwork on the Gameboy advance, way back. So this games really new to me, I've tried the Megaman 9 demo and I felt like it kinda throws you in the deepend, but since Mega Man 10 was on sale; I decided to see what all the fuss was all about. This review probably isn't for those that are already fans of the Megaman games... since I can't review it relative to the others, and I'm sure as Megaman fans you'll probably be getting the game anyway.

Mega Man 10 is presented like a classic SNES title. It's 8 bit presentation will be endearing to fans of retro in general. There's some very lose introduction... a bad guys done something bad, and Megaman as the good guy is tasked to put a stop to it. Where the thick of Megaman lies though is in the gameplay.

It follows pretty typical platforming mechanics, you can jump, and you can shoot. Kind of similar to the Metal Slug titles aside you can only shoot either directly left, or directly right. This presents a challenge at times as you're tasked to get in line with enemies in order to  be able to defeat them so you'll still be very reliant on your platforming ability to dodge around enemies and hazards, whilst trying to get in line for shots. It can be pretty challenging at times, but it's pretty fun. There's also a good amount of variety, with lots of different enemies, with different attack patterns and relative strategies to beat them, and lots of unique enviroment objects such as Ice which  makes you slide, and sand which makes you sink.

The game is structured so that you can go to any of the 8 stages from the start, each stage has a different boss, and powerup reward. Using this knowledge if you're having difficulty with one stage you can switch to another, and hopefully the stage you switch to will give you a powerup that'll help you with the other stage you were stuck on. It's part trial and error, but at the same time all of the stages can be beaten without any of the powerups so you don't need to go out of your way to seek for the best strategy, if you don't wish to.

It's quite hard to fault the game, to be honest. Yes it is pretty hard, even verging on frustration at times, but at the same time there's really nothing that feels unfair, and if you are having trouble something introduced with Megaman 10 is 'easy mode' which makes the game a lot more easier, and generally accessible for new players. I gave this mode and it did a good job of things easier, with extra platforms to jump on, less enemies, and allowing you to take more damage. So if normal is too hard for you, there's really no shame just switching down the difficulty... okay, well... there's a little shame - but if you're not that good at platformers you'll still be able to enjoy the game on this difficulty.

Verdict
Overall, I'm very glad I gave Megaman 10 a chance. By the looks of things this is a title that should be able to please all fans of the genre, so long as the ones struggling can bear turning down the difficulty. If not some with shorter attention spans may go away from the title frustrated rather quickly. However if you're a fan of 8 bit retro, or Megaman himself this is definitely one to pick up.