GeoDefense App Review
The app store is plagued with Tower Defense games at the moment, with most of them with a hefty price tag attached. So how can one stand out in this sea of repetitiveness and mediocrity? Simple – have core Tower Defense features with solid gameplay, variety and a gimmick of sorts. GeoDefense does this all, and even does it better than higher priced rivals such as Star Defense and Fieldrunners.
The first thing you notice is the polish Critical Thought Games have heaped upon GeoDefense – the menus are clear and easy to navigate. The tutorials explain everything you need to know. And, of course, the graphics and incredible. They have a retro, vector vibe to them and alone make this game more enjoyable to most. Gameplay before Graphics, I always say, but GeoDefense has become an exception.
Regardless, the gameplay is rock solid. You place towers as you would in a normal tower defense game but this time you have more depth than ever before. You can upgrade any tower to 7 levels, but the highest is not definitely the best, for example the upgrade of the standard, cheapest tower that normally has rapid fire to the max creates a sniping tower, which fires shots slowly but will normally severely dent the enemy’s health. When the game decides to up the tempo of the round these towers are not as effective as quick firing towers. A nice addition to the traditional rapid fire/laser/missile/slow down towers you can place is the black hole weapon. It absorbs the shockwaves left when you destroy a creep and if you connect it to another tower can make said tower have an extremely powerful shot.
For tower defense games this app has extreme amounts of longevity. With 30 levels – 10 on Easy, Medium and Hard it will last you a good few hours, but be warned – this game is very difficult. Luckily the difficulty curve is good – you learn the basics in the easy levels and then would be at least able to attempt the medium levels and so on. It can get frustrating, you may switch off your iPhone in anger but you’ll come back to it.
Even though, in my eyes this is the best value for money you can get on the app store it’s not without its faults. When you kill lots of enemies and they all release their beautiful multicoloured shockwaves at once, the game can get a bit laggy and hard to see the other, undefeated creeps. This is a minor problem on the easier levels as it clears away quickly, but when you have lots of enemies coming at an insanely fast pace it may be a burden. Also, fixed path tower defense is fine and all, but open-field is better, but we have the upcoming GeoDefense: Swarms for that.
GeoDefense is definitely one of the best Tower Defense games you can buy, and at $0.99/59p it is the best value for money on the app store. Extremely highly recommended.
