If you’ve been reading my blog for more than a couple weeks you probably know that I love tower defense games.  With Defense Grid: The Awakening released on Xbox Live Arcade next week I was reading up on it on Hidden Path’s website when I found that they have a PC demo available. It is the exact same as the demo for the XBLA version that releases on Wednesday so I decided to get a jump on things and check it out. The first thing I noticed was that even on my crappy PC it looked really nice. I tried it with mouse and keyboard as well as the Xbox 360 controller.  I preferred it with the controller, but I do almost all my gaming on my Xbox 360 so I’m more use to that.  The mouse and keyboard worked perfectly fine but I’m just more comfortable with my controller in hand.

The demo has the first three levels of the game and then one from later in the first half of the game. The first couple missions are pretty short and serve to teach you the controls and tower types.  The other two missions are longer and have more options available.  The full game has 10 tower types that can each be upgraded twice.  In the demo there are only 4 towers available and they can only be upgraded once.  These 4 in the demo are the Gun, Flame, Laser, and Tesla. The Gun Tower is your standard tower that does a little damage but has a pretty good range, fires quickly, and is cheap.  The Flame Tower has a limited range but does more damage with its fire.  The Laser Tower does a lot of damage and has a large range, but it is twice as expensive as the Gun Tower.  It also does heat damage so enemies keep getting hurt even after they are out of range until they cool back down.  The Tesla Tower has a smaller range, but the longer it has to charge up the more damage it does.  I quickly found that putting a few Flame Towers on corners with Gun Towers around them pretty worked well.  Then, placing the Laser Towers where they would have the longest time to attack and Tesla Towers towards the end of the line to pick off any stragglers that made it through my primary defenses.

The camera has an overhead angle that show a pretty large portion of the map when it is zoomed out.  There are three levels of zoom with the closest putting you very close to the action.  While the widest view was what I used a lot of the time to see the most action getting in close to see all the details was really sweet. At all three levels the game looks great and I’m really looking forward to seeing in in full HD on my TV.

The towers all take a little time to build or upgrade during which time they are not firing so it is especially important to time upgrades so that enemies will not sneak past while the tower is upgrading. Also, towers require line of site to be able to fire on the enemies.  So, if you setup two rows of towers be sure the ones in back have the longer range of fire because they will not be able to shoot enemies while another tower is between them. In the later levels it seems like you will get to control the path the enemies take with the placement of your towers. This allows you to strategically setup a gauntlet where your towers can have the maximum attacking time. You have to be careful when you’re doing this though because some maps have multiple paths from start to finish.  You can block off all of the paths except one with your towers but if you are sloppy in doing this some of your towers may not then ever be used.

One thing I really liked about Defense Grid: The Awakening that I did not know before playing the demo is that you’re not just stopping enemies from crossing the map.  They are trying to make it to your base, steal your power cores and then escape from the level.  On some maps once they get a power core they will go back the same route the took to get to the base, but on others the entrance and exit are located in different areas.  Even if enemies do steal your power cores you have not lost, yet. As long you kill the enemy carrying the core before it gets off the map they will return to your base. However, some larger enemies carry two or even three cores.

The achievements look like there will be a lot of replayability to the game. The main story line is suppose to take between 8 and 10 hours plus there are 60 unlockable challenge modes. For the $10 price tag that is a lot of game.  The game looks great and is a lot of fun to play so there is not much else I can ask for.  I know for sure I’ll be getting Defense Grid: The Awakening when it releases on Wednesday, September 2nd on Xbox Live Arcade.