By Alec Meer on May 7th, 2009 at 10:11 am.
Normally we save our excitement about temporarily cut-priced games for our weekly Saturday bargain bucket post, but this one’s a little bit special. Both Jim and I are devout admirers of sparkly indie tower defence game Defense Grid: The Awakening, but whenever we’ve written about it previously we’ve bemoaned its surprisingly high price. Get it under a tenner, we cried. Now there seems to have been some sort of glorious overcompensation…
This excellent and satisfyingly explosive game is currently a ludicrously cheap $5/£3.50. That’s basically nothing, so go get! It may not boast anywhere near as many turret types as Plants vs Zombies – and certainly nothing to inspire the love that macho Tall-Nut does – but it’s far more challenging and doesn’t make do with just 5 level layouts. Splendid narration/story, too.
07/05/2009 at 10:18 Uglycat says:
Twas last night’s guilty pleasure
07/05/2009 at 10:19 Ian says:
£3.50? I’d be a fool to refuse!
07/05/2009 at 10:37 Helm says:
I have this but I’m really surprised at “Splendid narration/story, too.” which is almost what made me stop playing. I did finish it, though. Good game. A bargain surely at this price.
07/05/2009 at 10:42 ArtyArt says:
Bought it for around 15,- € and really enjoyed it, even for that price. So hooray for everyone who didn’t buy it already!
(This is, by the way, a game where the oft-maligned achievement system definitely helps you to get more out of the game. Not just “complete the game” and *bing*, but various interesting challenges. Very nice!)
07/05/2009 at 10:43 Colthor says:
Woo! Thanks.
07/05/2009 at 10:54 abhishek says:
Yep bought it this morning. Played the demo when it came out and I liked it but never felt it was worth full asking price. I was waiting for it to go on sale. Together with Plants v/s Zombies, it’s tower defense madness for me this week ;)
07/05/2009 at 11:09 adg1034 says:
To add to the general bargaining madness, Men of War is available on Direct2Drive this week for $15/£12.50. I just tore myself away from it, so I’m glad I bit.
07/05/2009 at 11:18 SlappyBag says:
I’m on my way!!!
07/05/2009 at 11:23 Likethiss says:
Thank you RPS for letting me know of all these great deals and games :) I got totally addicted to MoW thanks to you guys!
07/05/2009 at 11:52 newt says:
My publisher hates this game. I hate deadlines.
07/05/2009 at 12:15 Howard says:
Wowser! Sold and sold.
BTW, is this a new feature with Steam that you have to log in each time you buy something now? Good idea I guess, just caught me by surprise. I only ever enter my Steam details when I install windows so I was buggered if I could remember them at first! =)
07/05/2009 at 12:29 MonkeyMonster says:
@Howard – gah I hope not cos its a right PITA.
Sold at that price – I too kinda enjoyed the demo but as a time waster – laptop friendly game for 3 squids and a spattering of jellyfish!
07/05/2009 at 12:41 MikeBiggs says:
Finally! I’ve been looking at getting this for months, but it didn’t quite seem worth as much as they were asking. I actually feel bad for only paying £3.50 though!
Would have payed £6 no problem!
07/05/2009 at 13:20 Tom says:
Sold!
07/05/2009 at 13:22 Andy says:
Yes needless to say this is an unbelievable deal and one I snapped up instantly. I seriously can’t resist steam weekend deals, about my last 6 game purchases have been them, it’s great :D. The thing is though I can’t bear to buy any other game on steam at full price because I’m sure as soon as I do it’ll be 75% off the next weekend.
I’ll add to the questions about the storyline though….I kind of enjoyed the old mans twittering and advice, but can’t say I really noticed any meaningful plot development….
07/05/2009 at 14:35 Colthor says:
“adg1034 says:
To add to the general bargaining madness, Men of War is available on Direct2Drive this week for $15/£12.50.”
A good deal (bar the currency conversion), but watch out anyone using a 64-bit OS because apparently the D2D version doesn’t work on them.
07/05/2009 at 14:36 MeestaNob! says:
This isn’t even the weekend deal mate, that will be in 24 hours time. :D
07/05/2009 at 14:38 Diziet Sma says:
Excellent, I enjoyed the demo but couldn’t swallow the price. Yay! :) Now I have the choice of Plants/Zombies and Beasts/Ballistics.
07/05/2009 at 15:05 Waste_Manager says:
Gonna bag me some of that action later on. Does it have a normal TD mode built in or just campaign type missions?
07/05/2009 at 15:45 PaulMorel says:
w00t. I wish all indie/casual games were $4.99
07/05/2009 at 15:46 noom says:
Anybody who doesn’t buy this game at that price is a gibbering fool, not fit to wander the streets unattended.
07/05/2009 at 16:08 Benjamin Ferrari says:
I read Jim’s and Alec’s stuff about Defense Grid, but I’m still not sure how this differs from other tower defence games, except that it is 3D. And I really do not care much about the 3D here.
4,75€ is only cheap if you cannot get something reasonably similar of the same quality for less (like the free desktop tower defense maybe ?).
07/05/2009 at 16:49 Jason Maskell says:
Maybe you could, you know, try the demo?
Awesome TD game really – I just wish the last mission wasn’t so damn hard.
And comparing it to Desktop Tower Defense is just laughable. :)
07/05/2009 at 16:54 Baris says:
@Benjamin Ferrari: Just try the demo already.
07/05/2009 at 17:02 Centy says:
For under 4 notes you really cant argue with this it has so much replay value for the obsessive compulsives among us and has stats and achievements galore. BUY IT DAMN YOU!
07/05/2009 at 18:14 Down Rodeo says:
Dammit RPS why do you make me spend moneys? Ngh…
07/05/2009 at 18:22 -Spooky- says:
Thx for Info
07/05/2009 at 18:27 Benjamin Ferrari says:
I tried the demo a while ago. But I admit I only played the first 3 (tutorial) missions. From that, it looks really like “Desktop Tower Defense in 3D” to me. Which is not a bad thing of course (DTD is fun), but I’ll easily skip the ‘Bargain’ this time.
07/05/2009 at 18:29 Tim says:
Ahh, I’d been considering this for a while but couldn’t justify the cost. I’ll almost certainly get it now.
07/05/2009 at 18:35 jsutcliffe says:
I picked it up when it was on a pre-release sale for $10 because the regular price seemed outrageous. Now I think I wouldn’t have felt bad paying $20 for it. Anyone who doesn’t snap this up for $5 is a fool and a cad.
07/05/2009 at 18:50 Erlam says:
“4,75€ is only cheap if you cannot get something reasonably similar of the same quality for less (like the free desktop tower defense maybe ?).”
GemCraft is a free game that has amused me more than most 40 dollar games I’ve purchased.
That said, DefenseGrid was fun, but even now.. I dunno..
07/05/2009 at 19:11 Vinraith says:
$5 US, yeah I can’t turn that down.
07/05/2009 at 20:32 FunkyLlama says:
Am… I the only one who initially interpreted ‘splendid narration/story’ as sarcasm?
07/05/2009 at 20:38 Wedge says:
Oh nice, thanks to whoever pointed out the D2D sale, which is just a bunch of Aspyr published stuff which also includes Cryostasis and a PC port of Stubbs the Zombie I did not know existed…
07/05/2009 at 22:23 Tomble says:
Couldn’t resist this game at the price, so I went to steam. click, type, click, purchase. Error? GAH! What could be wrong?
Oh.
Turns out I bought it when I first read about it here, and it’s been sitting, not quite finished downloading on my HDD for a long time.
07/05/2009 at 23:18 Mark Stephenson says:
I’m on the rock and roll at the mo and I bought it today at this price and it’s a no brainer.
Re-installed Steam and saw I’d also bought Audiosurf!
Sometimes life is good.
08/05/2009 at 02:23 Dave says:
Okay, this is fun and worth the $5. I foresee popping back and forth between this and PvZ a lot in the next several days…
08/05/2009 at 03:25 Chiablo says:
I actually hate Flash built tower defense games, but I’m really enjoying Plants vs. Zombies. I seem to remember liking Desktop Tower Defense before everyone on earth made a shitty clone of it.
Maybe I’ll pick it up… who knows. :p
08/05/2009 at 08:41 Ashurbanipal says:
As soon as I see what the weekend deal is tomorrow, I’m going to buy it. For some reason lately Steam doesn’t like recognising my VISA card. I’ve had to keep trying several times before the purchase goes through, so I’d rather minimise how many transactions I do.
Anyone else had this problem with Steam for the past month or so? It coincided with the renewal of my VISA ard, so it might be that, but I doubt it, as it works just fine for other sites.