|
Disclosure: We may earn a commission from links on this page
|
Developer: Trendy Entertainment | Publisher: Reverb Publishing |
| Release Date: October 18, 2011 | Available On: PC, PS3 and Xbox 360 |
Available on the iPhone and Android since December of last year, Dungeon Defenders follows a recent trend in the gaming industry, making the jump from phone game to console. Big hits like Angry Birds and Plants vs. Zombies have already made their way onto PSN and Xbox Live after debuting in the App Store and then the Android Market. It is now Dungeon Defender’s turn to make a splash. Does Dungeon Defenders have what it takes to keep the console players interested or is it just another casual game making the rounds?
The story of Dungeon Defenders surrounds four young misfits defending a castle against an ancient evil that was accidentally unleashed during a bout of roughhousing. That is in essence the entire story of Dungeon Defenders. You and up to three friends or strangers take on wave after wave of trolls, orcs, dragons, and other fantasy creatures. Your only task is to defend the Eternia Crystals which contain The Old Ones imprisoned within. Your enemies attack in ever increasing waves with moments of rest and planning in-between each assault. The story of Dungeon Defenders is presented through stylized 2D cut-scenes that, save for the introductory scene, are rather bland.
Dungeon Defenders is a tower defense game with several simple mechanics that amount to one very entertaining package. It is a combination of RPG elements mixed with action and strategy. The RPG elements consist of leveling up your character and distributing points to improve their attributes or the attributes of their particular defense assemblage. Each dungeon has unique layout and enemy spawn locations. Strategy involves finding the best positions for your defensive units for maximum effect against the attacking hoards. In addition, your particular character has offensive abilities.
There are four classes of characters to choose from as you embark in defending the various dungeons. In order from easiest to hardest, the classes are Apprentice, Squire, Huntress, and Monk. There is some amount of variability when creating your character but that is limited mostly to their name and selecting a combination of colors for their appearance. The Apprentice, Squire, and Monk are male, while the Huntress is the only female option. You cannot select a gender for your class. You can have up to four characters at your disposal and you are free to switch between them before each dungeon starts.
The Apprentice uses magical towers that fire magic projectiles, fireballs, electrical bolts and also a magical barricade that prevents enemies from moving forward. The Apprentice uses a staff to shoot magical bolts and can shoot them in rapid succession. He can also summon a wide shock wave that both damages and blasts enemies back. At level 20, the Apprentice can summon Mana Bomb, a massive explosion that damages everything nearby. The Apprentice can also boost his summoning speed.
The Squire uses spiked blockades or blockades with spinning blades as well as turrets that fire harpoons or bowling balls as defense units. As violent as these may sound, Dungeon Defenders does not depict gore. The Squire uses a bladed weapon to hack and slash enemies. He is the only character that can block attacks. He starts out able to sustain a great amount of damage but is rather slow. He can employ a devastating circular attack with his sword, damaging all surrounding foes. His special ability, Blood Rage, is acquired at level 20 and doubles speed, damage, and resistance temporarily.
The Huntress uses proximity traps that have a limited number of uses. These traps can explode and cause severe damage, stun, immolate, or confuse all enemies within a radius. Her attack is strong and she is fast moving from the start. The Huntress relies on crossbows and firearms for attack but is defenseless during reloading. She can become invisible to enemies at level 15 and at level 20 she can fire a piercing arrow that will pass though enemies, damaging all it passes through.
The Monk class mostly uses passive defenses. These come in the form of auras that have an effect radius and that can reduce enemy speed, drain the enemy’s life, heal team members, reduce the enemy’s damage output, or make enemies turn on each other. Offensively, the Monk uses a pole with a large blunt end or lance to deal melee damage. He can an also fire projectiles in rapid succession. At level 15 he can increase the effectiveness of nearby defense towers and repair them. At level 20 he can regenerate the health of nearby enemies and pets as well as increase the potency of their attacks.
All of the classes share the ability to heal themselves, repair defenses, upgrade defenses, sell defenses for mana, and detonate nearby traps. At each level up you are awarded points which you can assign to increase your hero’s attributes, increase the potency of their special abilities, improve the effectiveness of their defenses, or increase a hero’s resistance to damage and vulnerability to fire, lightning, and poison.
There are thirteen dungeons to play through with more expected as DLC. Each dungeon is unique, varying in size and complexity. The meat of the game comes from finding the most effective positions for your defenses. There are four difficulty levels to play through, the hardest being the Insane difficulty for those of you who are crazy enough.
Every dungeon has two phases, a build phase and enemy wave. These repeat until you have cleared all of the enemy waves. Upon setting up a dungeon, you can elect for unlimited build time but this option is only available in the easy and medium difficulty settings. Upon completing a dungeon you can elect to play them in survival mode or pure strategy mode which removes the action and RPG elements of the game. There are also challenge levels which give you unique conditions in addition to the standard game such as ban on towers, defending certain units, or a moving Eternia Crystal.
Visually, Dungeon Defenders is no slouch. It runs on the Unreal Engine and seems to hum along quite smoothly despite the oftentimes chaotic action on-screen and large number of enemies. Its levels are creatively designed and offer many minute visual details. The levels are generally geometric in nature and more symmetrical than not. The overall aesthetic is playful, with some use of cell shading that makes the game appear a bit cartoony. The character models are all a bit on the generic and blocky side unfortunately and their animations can come off as mechanical. I suppose that is something to be expected when a game can push a hundred characters on-screen and not slow down.
There is a tavern where you can sort your items, shop weapons, armor and pets to aid your hero. You can also buy augmentations here including an XP Bonus, the ability to reassign all of your level points, and the ability to rename your hero. Unfortunately, only the first two augmentations seem to be of any use and the pets can be very pricey. In the tavern you can also swap out your hero for another and set up the next dungeon. While I appreciate added personality that the tavern provides to Dungeon Defenders, it seems to break the fluidity of the game. Besides shopping, everything else can be done at any other time during the game, so having to go to the tavern to shop feels like it adds unnecessary loading time.
I did not have many issues with Dungeon Defenders save for two. The controls seem all right, though aiming at the desired target is a crap shoot. The auto-targeting is really poor and shows when you are using a melee character. There is no way to select targets or lock onto targets with the controller. Perhaps it is easier using the PlayStation Move, but the controller experience is less than optimal. The controls cannot be customized beyond the provided control schemes, the option to swap the actions of the shoulder buttons and triggers, and inverting the camera pitch. Also, the Triangle button is contextual only; it has no action mapped to it otherwise while the Square, X, and Circle buttons do double time.
My second issue was with the overall menu design. It feels pulled straight from the smartphone scene and slapped onto the console version. It seems that every button on the controller is mapped to some action in any of the menus. The user interface elements are also gigantic on the screen. Bringing up the character information boxes covers up almost the entire screen. While the large elements are useful for Move users to target, they obscure the view far too much. You can shrink the user interface elements down to take up less space but this affects the heads-up display as well. Doing so will bring the HUD items in closer to the center of the screen rather than keeping them at their respective locations, defeating the usefulness of shrinking down the UI. In retrospect, the largeness of the user interface may be so to accommodate the split-screen nature of multiplayer. That only leaves the issue of overscan, where UI elements may be clipped by your television.
Dungeon Defenders has a fairly steep difficulty curve. While it moves you along from dungeon to dungeon at the normal difficulty level that does not mean that your hero will be ready for the challenge. If you intend on playing alone, you will have to return to previous dungeons to accumulate XP and prepare your hero. Of course, Dungeon Defenders was not intended to be a solo endeavor. From the get go the game puts multiplayer in your face. There are slots for three players to join you locally offline. It will also allow other profiles on your console to join your game. Unfortunately, Trophies will only be awarded to the active profile.
Additionally, Dungeon Defenders can be played online. Joining a game is very quick and easy. Creating a game or finding a game is a simple task. There appears to be a sizable number of players enjoying Dungeon Defenders so there should be plenty of games to choose from at this time. There is also a PVP area for the more committed and competitive among us. PVP is available to both offline and online play. PVP in Dungeon Defenders is more dynamic in that not only will you be fighting other players but you will have spawning monsters to consider. PVP features higher level monsters only. Low level heroes will have no chance at the Hall of Heroes PVP. Multiplayer can also be combined between online and offline, so friends can take a seat right next to you and join you in an online game.
Dungeon Defenders is a refreshing mix of RPG, action, and tower defense. It is one of few modern games that allow us to make use of those extra controllers. The combination of genres is among the best I have ever experienced. Dungeon Defenders can be somewhat addictive. Even when you fail, you will want to go back in to attempt a different strategy or place your defenses in a different configuration. I find its difficulty curve rather pleasant. It is also no slouch graphically, although it does have a few issues. None of them are deal breakers by any means. For $15 bucks you can certainly do worse in the gaming scene but you will be hard pressed to do better with other current offerings at that price point. I hope that more great portable games like this will be brought to the consoles.
There are a couple of things to note about this particular version of Dungeon Defenders. If you have a 3D capable television, then you can enjoy Dungeon Defenders in stereoscopic 3D on the PlayStation 3. Also, while there is Move support on the PS3 version, there is no Kinect support on the Xbox version. These two bits may help you decide which console version to get should you have that luxury. Dungeon Defenders is available on the iPhone, Android, PSN, Xbox Live, PC and soon also on the PlayStation Vita. The PC version boasts a development kit allowing all the creative types to create content. There is also cross-platform play between all of the platforms where Dungeon Defenders is available. This explains why there are so many players online. Color me impressed!
| Graphics: | 9 |
| Sound: | 7.5 |
| Gameplay: | 8.5 |
| Creativity: | 8.5 |
| Replay Value/Game Length: | 8.5 |
| Final: | 8.4 out of 10 |
| Written by Angel Cortes | Write a User Review |
