Global Defense Network Review

It is a little hard to describe why Global Defense Network is so great. I will still try to do it because this Indy title really deserves some recognition. Let’s start by describing how the game works. In front of you is a room, square and 3D. You’ve got a weapon that you move with your mouse. Your objective is to shoot things appearing in the room by clicking them.

So, why is this awesome? The first reason is really simple. It has not been done before. Well, maybe it has, but not often enough for me to already know it. The fact that the room really is 3D and that you notice it when shooting things sets the game apart from other click-to-shoot games.

This is not the only reason, though. The second reason is the graphics. They are not unbelievably complex or realistic. Instead they are very abstract and simply look perfect. Everything that is round looks round. The things you have to shoot are easy to recognize because they are colorful like candy. Still, the overall thing looks very nice.

The third reason why this game is great is its variety. The things you have to shoot are just that: abstract things you cannot really give names. There are leaves, balls and lots of other shapes. They do not only look different, they also behave different which is important for gameplay. You have to learn how the different things behave in order to shoot them quickly. The fourth reason is the “story”. There is not really a strict story as such. Still there are lots of messages you get in the game’s communication system which form a picture of the world GDN plays in.

The game mode you start with is only a training mode. From time to time, an alert suddenly pops up. Click it and you are sent to the war room. Now your actual mission takes place. You have to navigate from city to city on a map of a part of the world and find the meteorite that is spreading a virus and destroy it. Every city that is infected is like a level in training mode, only with a different room and different enemies. You have to destroy them to find the meteorite as fast as possible. The problem is that you have no idea where the thing is. You can only guess where the infection started spreading. If you find the meteorite before the time runs out (be careful, even looking at the map and traveling between cities takes time) you have to fight it in another one of those rooms.

The fact that you are under time pressure makes this mode very thrilling. Then there is the fact that you cannot save and reload an old game. If you mess up, you have messed up, no way changing that. If you succeed at a mission, you are awarded credits which you can spend on your weapon. You are always afraid to mess up because you hear of other guys that unfortunately had to be replaced. Credits are also earned with good training successes and can be spent buying secondary weapons, an alternative weapon or upgrading your weapon. I found the standard weapon to be my favorite but maybe you prefer one of the other four offerings? It might also depend on the level which one of them is the weapon of choice.

I have already given a lot of reasons why this game should be checked out. Still, I have not even mentioned the biggest thing yet: the music. It is simply awesome. Each level in training mode is actually a song and they are composed by some of the greatest Mod artists on the internet. Mod like Midi is a special music format where a song is made of samples. The songs are not just background music. The objects in the game appear in the rhythm of the song. It’s also best to shoot them in the rhythm. Wild clicking leads to nothing since your weapon has a reloading time fitting to the beat. You really have to feel the beat to be good at this game.

Global Defense Network is a game you have to check out. It has innovative gameplay, great music and a professional presentation. What is even more important, it creates a perfect illusion of another world. The menus and messages are simply part of that world and there is no saving/loading to get into the way of this illusion. It feels like you are sitting in front of a computer some years in the future training for your next fight against the virus infection.