I didn’t mean to, but I lied yesterday.
I ended up buying two WiiWare games. Jason Cipriano pointed me towards a trailer for ‘Defend Your Castle” and reminded me it was only $5 — I was sold.
But I wouldn’t blame you for feeling as though you were cheated out of that $5. “Defend Your Castle” isn’t very fun in the early going. It’s downright boring, actually.
But stick with it, at least until round 15 after about 30 minutes of play, before passing final judgment. That’s when the game finally decides to kick into gear.
The trailer depicts this massive assault of stick figure creatures rampaging against your castle, but that doesn’t happen in the first 30 minutes of the game. Sure, there are some stick figure creatures making a run at your defenses, but you’d have to be playing with two eyes shut (and put the Wiimote down) to encounter any problems then.
It’s at that point, around 10 rounds in, I started to wonder whether my impulse purchase was wrong. Throwing away $5 is no big deal, but money wasn’t the issue. I felt cheated. The game was nothing like the trailer had promised.
I purchased all of the castle upgrades with many extra points to spare. Not that it mattered — what was the point of castle defenses when there’s nothing to defend?
Then, round 15 started. “Defend Your Castle” introduced lumbering giants fitted with something akin to old school Pepsi caps and waves upon waves of fast-paced drones. The archers I’d been slowly accumulating were picking off stick figure after stick figure, while laborious engineers fixed my castle’s damaged walls.
“Defend Your Castle” finally decided to step up its game, and I was satisfied. Round 17 brought the first round where an enemy had actually done any substantial damage to my castle, and required me to exchange points for new defenses.
But I wouldn’t blame anyone for feeling deceived before that. I know I was, but stick with it for a little while; soon enough, you’ll get your $5 worth.
May 13th, 2008 at 4:08 pm
Perhaps the game should have came with a “choose your level of play” option akin to “Tetris.” Of course, in order to not overwhelm players, a generous amount of points would be allocated to beef up defenses prior to taking on the horde.
May 13th, 2008 at 4:12 pm
Really glad I could help you spend more money. “Defend Your Castle” is a whole lot better than I expected it to be, even after I sent you that trailer. I made it to level 30 last night with out a whole lot of difficulty, but consistantly fun gameplay. It reminded me a bit of Lumines in terms of the way my eyes felt at the end of each level. However, in terms of the initial game speed, it feels a whole lot like the first 60 - 90 seconds of Geometry Wars. Geometry Wars obviously speeds up quicker, but it also ends faster as well. One way or another “Defend Your Castle” may be the best $5 I’ve spent on a game in a long time.
May 13th, 2008 at 4:24 pm
Played up to level 16 and put the controller down and watched the game end. I have to say I really would like a reason to play Defend Your Castle again, but I can’t imagine I’ll give it another go. I was playing co-op and we lost one player around level 5, replaced another and got down to two of us on the final level where we both quit. My arm hurt for the next hour. Not a good use of 500 points for me :(.
Pop on the other hand has been a fun surprise that I strongly recommend for anyone looking for a quick accessible fun with a mix of competitve and co-operative gameplay. I don’t think there is a lot of long life in it, and it is really a multiplayer only game, but it has a GREAT balance of rules, easy pick-up and play, achievements, global rankings and a bunch of addictive music. That one is WELL worth the $7 if you are looking for a non-obvious game to pick up.
I haven’t had enough time to evaluate Final Fantasy, and I initially am enthralled with Lost Winds, which rounds out all the games I’ve played from this initial offering.
May 14th, 2008 at 2:14 pm
There is a “Heroic” Difficulty mode that starts out about as hard as level 15-20. So if you are 1337 just start on Heroic.