2013 Game Review Haiku, #17 – Kingdom Rush

Stop waves from coming
Archers ready, for the king
Winsome RTS

–

These little haikus proved to be quite popular in 2012, so I’m gonna keep them going for another year. Or until I get bored with them. Whatever comes first. If you want to read more words about these games that I’m beating, just search around on Grinding Down. I’m sure I’ve talked about them here or there at some point. Anyways, enjoy my videogamey take on Japanese poetry.

A videogames rundown in honor of Barristan the Bold

Right now, I don’t have any particular thoughts on a particular game, so I figured I could use a post to sum up what’s going on with the games I’m playing currently. As usual, I am juggling several, which does not bode well for efficiency and completing many of ’em, but it does allow me to see a wee bit of each thing. Let me break this out into a little list:

• BioShock Infinite – I am really close to the end on this even though I only just posted my impressions about it recently. Its pacing is such that you keep playing, unaware of how much time has passed. A part of me wanted to just soldier through it last night, but it was getting late, and I suspect there’s an hour or two left to unfold. Regardless, I’ll finish it up tonight and then probably lock myself in a small room, crying over what brain-twisting revelations are revealed. Or spoiling myself via the Internet on all the stuff I missed.
• Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon – Just managed to beat the first mansion’s boss, a particularly crafty ghost-controlled spider, which has now opened up the multiplayer aspect, as well as the next mansion. Have not moved on to either of those yet, but I will soon. Seems you can also hop back into the mansion levels to track down hidden Boos. Where you at, Boos?
• Fire Emblem: Awakening – No one has died since my last post about losing Miriel. Granted, I haven’t played since then, but I’ll take my accomplishments with this brutal SRPG where I can.
• Phantasmaburbia – Haven’t touched it since my last post, but I do plan to get back to it, especially since I know I just need to do some light grinding to get the two boys strong enough to take down the progress-blocking boss.
• Kingdom Rush – I play this during my lunchbreak as I slowly sip down vegetable juice as part of my 10-day juicing fast. I got stuck on the first snowly level and had to drop the difficulty to easy to make it through with a pitiful two-star rating.
• Patchwork – Cannot figure out how to appease the fire spirit (wants something to eat), and since this game is so small and indie and unknown, any online guide or clues are nowhere to be found. Curses, as I really like its art style and music a lot.
• Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch – Stuck fighting Moltaan, the Lord of Lava, at the top of Old Smokey. Probably gotta grind more, especially since I evolved a few familiars, which drops them back down to level 1. Basically, my party is now a tad unbalanced. Oops.
• El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron – Umm, I don’t know. Stopped at Chapter Two. Ha.

Since my last musings on PlayStation Plus, I’ve gone and downloaded several more games I won’t ever have the time to eat up, like The Cave and Demon’s Souls. Unless I clear a few of the above off my plate. Which may or may not happen soon. But hey, with me, you never know, as something entirely new (or old) will grab my attention. Looking ahead, I can’t really see anything that looks enticing, but that’s the magic of the videogames industry; there are always a few well-kept secrets.

Kingdom Rush convinces me to like the tower defense genre

For those that don’t know, I’m not very much into tower defense games. I find the gameplay often stale, with too much setup and not enough involvement during the action. Of late, the only tower defense game I’ve really tried is Happy Wars, free for the Xbox 360 and more on the action side of things, but not very good. Unless Microsoft has fixed all the server connecting issues, which I’ve not gone back to check on.

Also for those that don’t know, I’m on a 10-day juicing fast. It’s for health and mentality reasons and mostly so I can fit into all my now-too-tight XL shirts for the spring and summer, and I’m going to be drawing some wee journal comics along the way, like so:

You can check out more comics by following my Tumblr or Facebook page.

Anyways, what does building towers and drinking vegetable juice have to do with one another? Not much, really. I just needed a game to play on my lunch hour to distract me from the hungry grumbling coming from my stomach. Enter Kingdom Rush. Which is, for all intents and purposes, a tower defense game, but one with enough style and cartoonish behaviors that I found myself enraptured in it, getting up to level 6 or 7 after an hour of clicking around. I’m playing the free browser-based version, by the way, which is available here.

In this one, you construct towers in specific locations to try to stop waves of enemies that move on a linear path from reaching the other end of the map. There are four types of towers–archery, magic, barracks, and boulder-tossing–and each tower itself can be upgraded multiple times in several different ways. This allows for quick customization and flexibility in how you want to slay the line of bandits and spiders heading your way. Coupled with that, you have two special abilities that come with cool-down timers: sending in reinforcements and summoning a meteor shower attack. These are vital for stalling enemy units or even wiping the map clean at the very last second.

Each map I’ve played so far in Kingdom Rush has had more waves of enemies and introduces newer enemy types and mechanics in a satisfyingly gradual way. I’ve never felt overwhelmed or even out of control, and of the seven levels, I only ended up letting a few guys past on two or three of them. If you gets three stars on a level, you can replay it to earn more stars, but only under specific restrictions, like no archery towers and so on. These kind of modifiers are great for replaying old levels in new ways.

I dunno. I’m digging it. Especially its look and sound, and any game that gives me a beastiary is on track to being amazing in my book. There are other aspects I’ve not yet gotten to experience, like proper boss battles and hiring heros and exploring the skill trees more, but there’s no rush. Well, there’s Kingdom Rush. But I’ll see it all in due time, especially if it keeps me from not eating bad food during this juice fast. Especially then.