Tower defense games can prove to be a bit divisive; some find them an enjoyable strategic distraction from the high octane adrenaline fuelled world of first person shooters, whilst some view them as tedious drudgery barley scraping above being a marginally interactive screensaver. I however, fall into the first category. I find a good tower defence game to be something quite aesthetically pleasing; there is an idle joy to be had in watching strings of enemy units wind their way through a maze of laser beams and artillery fire, slowly dwindling down to being extinguished. As a fan then, when I saw the release of Defense Grid 2 on the Xbox One I felt that it might well be my sort of game.

As is kind of implied, Defense Grid 2 is the sequel to the extremely well received 2008 arrival of Defense Grid: The Awakening. Whilst the story is largely unimportant in games such as this, the timely commentary of your AI characters guides you through a plot taking in defending various inter planetary bases from the oncoming hordes. What is important however is that this game is gorgeous to look at. Everything is razor sharp, from the maps themselves to the distant backgrounds; even when zoomed right in the various towers look impressively rendered. Speaking of zoomed in, whilst unlikely to be an issue for the PC market I was playing the console version and it Defense Grid 2 has a slightly unusual camera control mechanism where zoom and rotation are not ‘free scrolling’, rather one flick moves it to predetermined rotational points and camera views. I found it a little bit fiddly to start with but it’s something that I quickly became accustomed to and found very easy to use.

You get a wide selection of towers to choose from, varying from ranged weapons to the up close and personal guns and flamethrowers that we’re all familiar with in the genre. Each has a nice animation to the firing of its respective rounds, in particular the missile launcher and laser towers look dramatic and satisfyingly batter the seemingly endless marching enemies. Add to that the ability to call in a special attack depending on which AI unit you have chosen to buddy up with; they vary from high impact laser strikes emanating from high above the map to boosting the power of selected towers for a short period of time. To be honest there isn’t a whole lot that is ‘new’ in Defense Grid 2, it’s just that it does it really really well. Everything feels really polished and well bolted together, with the various menu’s complementing the whole affair by being easy to navigate even with the Xbox’s gamepad.

It’s notable that Defense Grid 2 is an achievement hunter’s wet dream. I did the tutorial level (for the sake of review purposes of course – in all seriousness if you can’t work it out you need to turn the game off and rethink your life) and I got nine achievements. NINE! I thought that I’d broken it as I was listening to the introduction to the next level before they stopped flashing up on the screen. Having completed that level I’d managed a further seven, and another three on each of the subsequent five levels. I’m about halfway through the campaign and I still seem to get at least one per level, which if you like that sort of thing is quite a satisfying experience.

There are a couple of online multiplayer modes, although if I’m completely honest I haven’t tried them all as I haven’t been able to find many players yet. I have to say though the mode where you are competing against another player, and killing the enemies sends them to their map was pretty good fun and we had a few games going that were very finely balanced. I’m sure the other modes are going to be interesting as well, but it would be wrong of me to try and comment on them before I play them.

Overall, I really like Defense Grid 2. There are times when I’ve had a bad day at work and I need to shoot something, there are days when I have the urge to go racing, and there are days I need to go walking round a haunted house and scare myself witless. There are other days however, where what I need to do is relax for half an hour, and just chill for a bit watching my game play along with only minimal inputs from myself. If you like tower defense games then this is well worth a purchase.

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