Defense Grid 2 Review (PC)

Defense Grid: The Awakening appeared way back in 2008 and offered the quintessential tower defense experience, with developer Hidden Path Entertainment delivering a simple yet polished game that had charm and plenty of features to promote replayability.

After launching different expansions, the independent studio organized a Kickstarter for Defense Grid 2, so that fans could crowdfund the development of the sequel. Unfortunately, not enough was raised, so Hidden Path just delivered another, bigger expansion for The Awakening.

Fate, however, had another plan and investor Dracogen approached the studio to help make the sequel a reality. The result has just been delivered to fans from around the world, in the form of Defense Grid 2.

The new tower defense title promises refined gameplay, a more nuanced story, and even more alternate modes to promote replayability, not to mention different cooperative modes and online leaderboards.

Does Defense Grid 2 deliver a fun experience or should Hidden Path go back to the drawing board? Let's find out.

Story

Defense Grid: The Awakening had a pretty basic story, but thanks to the charming British Artificial Intelligence that helped the player during his adventures, it managed to win over plenty of fans.

In Defense Grid 2, the roster of AIs has grown considerably, as now players will once again take on the role of the Commander, who's helped by an ensemble cast of new AI characters in addition to the original British General Fletcher from The Awakening. The story contains a major plot, which sees the player and his allies search for worlds that haven't been invaded by the aliens, as well as another one that's slightly more complex and is told via the loading screens before each level.

While the story may not resonate with all players, the AIs are quite loveable, and due to their constant chatter they certainly make the missions a bit more lighthearted and amusing.

Explore the story

Gameplay

Of course, a tower defense title lives or dies based on its gameplay, and Defense Grid 2 is no exception. The new title brings forth the same mechanics seen in the original but adds even more polish and depth to the whole experience.

Each level begins with your ship connecting to the local defense grid system, allowing you to construct towers on available slots on the map. Your tower selection is almost the same as in the original, but this isn't a bad thing, as it offers a varied selection of possible buildings, from regular machine gun ones to types equipped with flame throwers, lasers, tesla coils, and many more.

This time around, you have different upgrades that can be equipped onto your towers, such as bullets that deal more damage to groups of foes or slow effects that affect more aliens that hold your precious power cores. The towers, of course, can be upgraded during the actual mission, going from their basic green level through yellow and red.

One new tower type is the Block one, which adds a simple block on a tower slot, on top of which you can build a regular tower. Besides using these inexpensive buildings to block paths, they can also be upgraded separately from the main structure, providing extra damage, an ability to detect cloaked foes, or extra credit generation.

Besides this, there's also more variety when it comes to the special power, as besides the old orbital laser, the different AIs can bring new abilities, such as ones that slow a group of aliens or make some targets take priority over others.

The actual levels are quite well designed and alternate between ones where you can only set up towers on the edge of the main path and environments where you can dictate, thanks to tower placement, what path the aliens take towards the power core facility.

In case you're not satisfied with the regular levels, you can forge your own, as Hidden Path has bundled its DGArchitect tool with each copy of the game, allowing players to use the same tools as its own staff and build their dream levels easily yet with a full suite of mechanics.

Defense Grid 2 rewards strategy and quick decision-making skills. As always, a good start is crucial in ensuring that the invaders are repelled successfully, and in case you make mistakes, you can go back to the last checkpoint just by pressing the Backspace key. If your defenses are holding, then you can easily speed up the game by pressing F.

Enemies are pretty varied, but considering most players will use the furthest zoom out camera setting, it becomes a bit hard to differentiate between them during the actual waves. The game throws in a counter on top of the screen that shows icons for each incoming enemy type, but in the heat of things you might not notice it.

Like in The Awakening, Defense Grid 2's main story levels can be played regularly but also using a variety of modifiers that add certain requirements or advantages to both the player and the enemies. These include modes like the Grinder, which throws at the player 100 waves of aliens, as well as others that prevent red upgrades, for example.

Throw in the three different game types, which are regular, competitive (which prevents towers from being sold, as well as the use of upgrades and powers), and competitive unlimited sell (which allows selling but prevents everything else). To add even more variety, there are four different difficulty levels, and even on the Normal one you'll find that it becomes quite challenging once you reach the halfway mark in the campaign.

Multiplayer

Besides delivering a great experience that you can play on your own, Defense Grid 2 also has quite a few social and multiplayer aspects, starting from the customized leaderboards to the cooperative modes and the special competitive one.

First up, every level has different leaderboards depending on what game type and modifier was chosen by the player, further fueling the competitive nature of players to show that they're the most efficient when it comes to stopping the aliens.

For players who want to work with their friends, there are two different cooperative modes. The first one is called Co-Op Doubles and allows players to work together by placing towers freely on the map and sharing their own pool of resources. The second one, called Coordinated Defense, sees the map be divided into orange and blue tower locations. One player can place towers in a color, while the other manages the other positions. Each player has his own resource pool, and while cooperation is still needed, it does have an element of competition.

Last but not least, there's the true competitive mode in which players start off with the same map and resources. However, once an enemy is killed by the towers of one player, it will spawn in the same location for the other one, with more health, leading to an escalation of the threat and some pretty intense moments. While the competitive mode is certainly quite intriguing, it takes some getting used to.

Visuals and Audio

Defense Grid 2 doesn't innovate all that much in terms of visuals, but considering you'll often be as zoomed out as possible to have a big picture of the battlefield, that isn't a big problem. Environments are much more colorful this time around, and the different upgrades, tower abilities, and visual effects paint a pretty picture in action.

The soundtrack is pretty good but not that memorable, although the stellar voice acting from the different AIs elevates the whole experience and puts it on equal footing with the likes of radio plays, especially thanks to the dialog that makes the AIs feel lifelike.

The Good

The Bad

Conclusion

Defense Grid 2 is a stellar tower defense game that manages to bring back the great recipe of its predecessor, while adding plenty of elements to make it more complex. The co-op and competitive modes are pretty fun but take some time getting used to, while the story campaign is as feature-filled as ever. Bear in mind that the difficulty increases dramatically towards the mid-point of the campaign, so constant improvement is necessary.

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