Gaming Trend

Gaming Trend Review

by Mike Repella

The very first time I was exposed to a tower defense game was as a bonus unlockable level in Warcraft 3. The object of that level was to defend your base as the horde slowly advanced through a winding valley toward your castle . There was no base building or resource gathering in the level. Instead you were handed out  resources over time and you were expected to strategically place cannonball towers and archer towers on  the canyon tops in order to stop the onslaught. This level went on to become my favorite level in the entire game because it was fun and it offered a nice change of pace. Flash forward to 2009 and the Tower Defense style of game is actually a viable genre.

Savage Moon is a Playstation Network exclusive that has you defending mining stations from a relentless insectoid army. There is no getting around the obvious inspiration of Starship Troopers. So should gamers ready to take on the insect army sign up for this one?

This is a PS3 game and as such it has crisp HD quality graphics. Almost the entire game takes place on small portions of desolate planets.  The insects themselves are fairly well detailed and the various types of insects are easy to tell apart. As you shoot the bugs they will spray blood and puss and many games will turn into explosion filled light displays.

The tower defense genre isn’t exactly known for having games with cutting edge visuals. While Savage Moon is the best looking tower defense game on the market, that’s like saying that Ms. Pac-Man is the best looking Pac-Man game. There’s just not a lot of competition.

The sounds in Savage Moon are minimal. There really isn’t a music sound track apart from the menu music. The in game guns all make the noises that you would expect. The machine gun towers sound like machine guns and bombs are often loud and tend to drown out the other sounds altogether. The insects will also make screeching sounds as they attack you or are being attacked. There’s really not much to report on the sound front.

The controls are fairly simplified considering that tower defense games are essentially slimmed down RTS games. Players are free to zoom in and out and pan around the map using the right and left analog sticks. This can take some getting used to as the camera movement speed is a little bit quick, but by and large I never had a problem controlling the camera. The overall design of the camera allows you to quickly view the action on the map.

Most of the action comes in the form of placing towers and navigating the tower menus. This is a simple process, you use one button to open the menu and then you cycle through the menu to select which item you want  to use and hit another button to select it. That’s about it. It’s nothing fancy, but it works and it avoids the over complication that other console RTS games have been plagued with.

Anyone who has played a tower defense game before should know what kind of basic gameplay to expect. If you have never played one before then you need to know that you are given the task of defending a mining operation from wave after wave of insects. Most levels start with the insects spawning on one side of the map, with your base on the opposite side of the map. The insects then have to reach your base and blow it up. In Savage Moon anytime an insect simply touches the base they blow up and do damage to the base.

At the beginning  of each level players will start off with a basic machine gun tower at their disposal. From there they can purchase new tower types and can even purchase tech upgrades for existing towers. Savage Moon offers a bunch of different tower types all designed to damage the various insects in the game. There are anti-air towers, laser towers, mortar towers, mine throwing towers, shield towers for defense, damage amplifying towers, etc. There are a lot of different offensive options and players will have to experiment to find the best towers for any given level.

As the player advances in each level they will be given credits for each kill they make. Credits are then used to buy more towers or upgrade existing towers. One curve ball that the game throws at you is the ability to increase your towers offense, defense or credits earned. You can only select two increases at a time, so depending on the situation you will have to juggle the active power that is increased.

Where Savage Moon starts to fall apart is in its uneven difficulty level. Some levels are fairly easy with the use of a tried and true tower placement of one machine gun tower, one defense tower and one amp tower. With this combo some of the levels are a cake walk. However, other levels are damn near impossible to beat and will have you throwing your controller in frustration. I literally had to replay one level over 50 times to beat it, using every strategy I could think of before I barely managed to scratch out a victory.  To this day I haven’t beaten the final planet in the game and it is not from the lack of trying.  After viewing the gamefaqs discussion board for this game I found that I am not alone in the levels that I found to be controller throwing hard.

Savage Moon doesn’t offer any online or multiplayer options. But it does have an online leader board that you can use to compare your high scores. Trophy support is also included.

Savage Moon is available on the PSN for $9.99. If you are a fan of Tower Defense games then I would say that it’s a good deal. The trophy support and online rankings will give players something to come back for. However, the game can be beaten by experienced players in about 10 hours.  Still, 10 hours isn’t that bad for a downloadable game.

Fans of the Tower Defense genre will enjoy Savage Moon. However, players new to the genre will likely become frustrated with the uneven difficulty level and quit the game as soon as they come to one of the harder levels.  For those new gamers I would recommend starting with Pixel Junk Monsters on the PSN.

For anyone else who has watched Starship Troopers and dreamed of joining in on that fight, then Savage Moon is your game. Just don't cry to mommie when the bugs stomp you.

Gaming Trend Score

76

1. Graphics: 80
2. Audio: 70
3. Controls: 85
4. Gameplay: 70
5. Value/Replay: 80
6. OVERALL:76