Comments on: Defence Grid Demo On Steam

By: Hypocee

Hypocee — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 15:32:09 +0000

I sort of like this, better than most tower defence games. The central thing that hooks me is that most of the towers are, if you’ll pardon my French, DAKKA instead of Pew Pew as in most tower defencers. It gives good feedback on where and when everything’s shooting. Unfortunately, in being better than any other TD I think it’s finally pinned down my central objections to them. It’s nearly fundamental to the genre that there are enemies with immunities and vulnerabilities to this or that tower. That’s great, but
A. I’m going to have to deal with a mix anyway, so who cares.
B. I have to work this out by watching a specific enemy’s health bar while a rapidly-changing set of dozens of guns may or may not be targeting it – and that’s if I can click the thing in the first place; on the last level in this demo, the enemies are mostly walking on tower doors, so NO I DON’T ZARKING WANT TO BUILD THERE is the usual result of trying to click around.
C. Even before any vulnerability tweaking, the guns’ little graphs are completely incomparable to each other because they’re given in damage per shot rather than damage per second of fire.
That last one would be an easy fix, but I don’t know how feedback could be done naturally. Maybe happy faces or sad faces above firing towers, or the hated floating numbers – but I think that’s my barrier to entry.

By: Heliocentric

Heliocentric — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 13:33:43 +0000

D2D uk prices are hella stupid, and worryingly similar to steam.

I went to the us site and was saddened to see they are treated much better than us. :(

Supreme Commander Gold
£35.05 i mean…. seriously?

regardless, £17.50 is too much for gridle: the brunch.

By: c-Row

c-Row — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 22:32:13 +0000

Played the demo, read some comments and bought the full game on D2D. Good to see that you can just activate the key in Steam for achievements support.

By: Capital-T-Tim

Capital-T-Tim — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 20:37:17 +0000

I bought this a few weeks ago, and spent a bit of time with it, but I feel like I’m missing something. What does Defense Grid do differently/better than the scads of Flash tower defense games that came before it do?

Perhaps I just haven’t played enough to get familiar with its nuances, but it seems like a very straightforward retread of familiar territory. Since it’s gotten a lot of love on RPS, I feel like I’m probably missing something.

By: hoohoo

hoohoo — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 19:42:21 +0000

@A Delicate Balance
the last 3 levels are hard until you figure out the buy sell buy ping pong technique. i won the last map after just 12 waves. i had 1 orb left, and trapped it on the lower level path, where no aliens could get it by buying and selling guns to block and open paths. pretty boring. i’m not really a fan of that type of tower defense strategy, but its basically the only way to win on those types of multi path maps. also the large size of that last map is rather annoying, i kept trying to zoom out more like supreme commander.

By: Torsten

Torsten — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 16:46:01 +0000

I just tried it out and I liked it (having been addicted to my share of tower defense games), but 19€ is a bit much for it, I think — especially when the US price is $19.

By: A Delicate Balance

A Delicate Balance — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 04:05:47 +0000

I have completed the full game but it’s still good fun to come back and do the grinder missions and kill some time.

The last level is insanely hard, but then it feels great to finally crack it!

By: JC

JC — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 03:39:57 +0000

Direct2Drive.com is selling Defense Grid for $15US this week only (for the EU people, D2D doesn’t charge in Euro’s but in USD). The D2D game still ends up using Steam for achievements though.

By: Jochen Scheisse

Jochen Scheisse — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 20:24:43 +0000

I would, if it wasn’t on Steam.

By: Hmm.Hmm

Hmm.Hmm — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 17:45:15 +0000

I’m startin’ to feel old. My reluctance to get into Steam exactly because of the exclusive demos like this may be causing that.

Curse you Steam! Curse you! *waves cane feebly*

By: Tei

Tei — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 14:34:37 +0000

I love this one, and I am looking forward for Demigod, that has been described to me to have “denfense”-ish gameplay (maybe not towers..)

By: paol

paol — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 13:25:00 +0000

@Dan Lawrence
That’s the theory, but on this level it hasn’t been enough. My assumption on large levels like this one is that meteors/cannons are better due to range… I’ll try your suggestion of sticking to guns.

@Gurra
Yeah, 20€ is a bit too much for the amount of content offered. I got it when it was 15€ on steam.