Defense Grid: The Awakening

[Tessian]

I talked about it briefly in the other thread-- but want to reiterate to GET THIS GAME. It's $5 on Steam for the next few days and I already wasted most of my weekend on it.

If you like tower defense games at all I'd recommend it. Plenty of variety, actually has some semblance of a story, and has a lot of replayability. I got Shrin hooked on it, who's next?

[Shrinweck]

This game is fucking amazing. Even if you miss this thread before the sale ends, I'd still say spend the $20. Unless you treasure sleep.

[Mental]

Hey! So this is where the Final Fantasy 2D clone of this title that I bought for one or another of my systems actually stole the idea from.

[Anarky]

I bought the game

[Tessian]

Rarely have I ever stopped playing a game MID CAMPAIGN just to go back and replay previous levels just because I wanted to do better....

Oh.. and because Shrin had beaten one of my scores so I HAD to show him up The Leaderboard tab next to every level is pretty cool, shows your friends' scores.

Also, I tried their "horde mode" .. 99 waves of aliens. I made it to level 45 before losing

[Shellie]

Its pretty fun, I bought it.

[Shrinweck]

Oh.. and because Shrin had beaten one of my scores so I HAD to show him up The Leaderboard tab next to every level is pretty cool, shows your friends' scores.

It's cool, dude. I just beat the score you were proudest about on turnabout.

[SineSwiper]

1. The game is made for a controller. The stupid mouse cursor move on the menus finally got me to break out the XBox controller. Works great now.

2. Upgrades, upgrades, upgrades. On the stage where you first learn to do red towers, I beat the shit out of the aliens with only 6 red towers. In earlier levels, I was upgrading to yellow towers, and it was really effective.

3. The 10k challenge is pretty damn cool.

[Shellie]

Yeah I figured upgrades were a big deal. I have a habit of spending my resources as soon as I get them and just build more towers rather than wait and upgrade existing. I DO upgrade but not as much as I probably should.

[Shrinweck]

I find the controls pretty easy with the mouse. The click after choosing placement/tower and the auto-move to the menu is the most difficult part but it's just moving the mouse up and down. If it actually gave you a mouse cursor it would potentially waste a lot of time.

Tess and I were talking about quantity versus quality last night. On the earlier levels it can be up for interpretation but once you get into the levels where you really need to build mazes for the aliens to go through then you have to fiercely focus on quantity at first. You wouldn't think it from the first levels but gun towers are amazing. Once you get aliens with shields you downright have to have gun towers. Cannons are nice but you have to have some gun towers somewhere.

Tess and I successfully went through grinder on the containment level yesterday. He did better than me but in large part to my somewhat late discovery of how useful concussion towers are in grinder (although I never used them in any of the story map modes). The beginning is just establishing your maze of gun towers, only later can you focus on anything else and upgrades.

I was rarely using laser towers by the end of the game. They're useless on shields. I did end up getting four level 3 laser towers on waste disposal since the level is so long it lets you really diversify what end up becoming the 'kill zones' of your maze. Teslas are fiercely useful for use near your cores and exits (if they aren't next to the entry points) as they get the precious time to charge. Lasers are useful if you can place them near your power cores because the burn DoT damage can help a lot in the downtime where they aren't getting hit by anything.

[Tessian]

Yeah I totally underestimated how useful gun turrets are throughout the entire game... Gun turrets are key to building a good maze, then you add in a strategically placed temporal turret, and maybe a command tower... throw some cannons and mortars in the background and you've got an unbeatable gauntlet.

And yeah Sine I noticed it's built for a controller, but I didn't find that offputting with mouse/keyboard... just took some getting used to

[SineSwiper]

Yeah, tried that 99 round walker match. Hate trying to figure out exactly what I need to build. I'm thinking of going crazy on the guns, next time. I tried a bunch of cannons, which worked well for a while, but eventually, they punch through.

[Shrinweck]

Guns are important for mazes but the bulk of your damage is going to be done by concussion towers for grinders. You really need towers that can hit more than one alien at once. Infernos come to mind but the concussion tower does the most because it can hit everything around it.

I didn't realize the importance of concussion towers until I hit the 60ish wave and came real close to being overwhelmed.

[SineSwiper]

Must be something I haven't gotten yet. I guess the cannon, or meteor is the closest thing. I'm still trying to figure out if the meteor is a useful tower. Teslas seem to be an awesome tower in mazes, but still trying to figure out the best way to use them effectively.

[Tessian]

Must be something I haven't gotten yet. I guess the cannon, or meteor is the closest thing. I'm still trying to figure out if the meteor is a useful tower. Teslas seem to be an awesome tower in mazes, but still trying to figure out the best way to use them effectively.

Meteors are awesome on every map.

Concussion towers are the 2nd to last tower you get, right before command towers (I think, or it's the other way around). So depending on which map you attempt you may not have it available.

[SineSwiper]

Yeah, I got them now. The challenges are much harder than the story mode itself. The other 10K challenge with the maze level seemed like it would be easy, but even when using all of the resources, I still can't get a pattern that works right (and gets those damned speed runner bosses.

In fact, I need several fully upgraded lasers to get rid of those bosses.

[SineSwiper]

I love grinders now! Got 450+K score and around rank 250 on two of the earlier ones.

[Tessian]

the last level keeps kicking my ass... they throw EVERYTHING at you. Last few waves they have in groups together: Cloak boss, shield boss, and turtle boss... who has a bunch of shield guys inside him. I think if it weren't for the one round of 100 planes that I had to throw up a bunch of missiles for I'd have a better shot...

[SineSwiper]

It's better to upgrade the missiles than build new ones. Same goes for meteors and other long-range goodies.

[Tessian]

It's better to upgrade the missiles than build new ones. Same goes for meteors and other long-range goodies.

Actually... not really for missiles. If you look at the damage you gain for level 2 missiles it's NOT double the damage of a level 1... it's more like 30% and yes there's better reload but not by much. So for damage with missiles it IS better to build more if you have the space, but I'd still go with at least 1 level 2 missile. For everything else, though, I agree. Almost every other building does double damage or more level 2 vs level 1 (let alone level3).

[SineSwiper]

Well, level 3 is pretty major for most upgrades. Also, remember that the Temporal upgrades only cost 300 each, so that should be the first things you have upgraded to red.

[Shrinweck]

I tend to get either two level ones or one level 2 and the level 3 guns that I have shitloads of take care of the rest. This isn't an option in last stand, though. Your guns are going to be super busy by the end. I had two level 3 missiles and it wasn't enough, I had to backspace and build up another level 2 if memory serves. I think the last wave of air units is grids of 9 of the toughest air units.

[SineSwiper]

Guns do surprising well (if you have enough of them) against air units, and they are multi-functional. I used 6 red ones, and only a lv1 missile when I was done with the area where you get the concussion.

[Tessian]

Command towers also only cost 300 for each upgrade... each one gives better radius and more salvage bonus, but yeah, temporal upgrade is always first... sometimes I build them in places that won't be useful until they're level 2.

Still gotta work on the last level... I start at the cores and build towers diagonally to block off the left bridge, then funnel everyone down on the next platform, then left, then up, then left, then up... the stealths and fast ones just annihilate me regardless. I'm using a combination of guns, temps, and cannons... just isn't enough.

[Tessian]

Finally beat the last level... I had some help though. Found a youtube video that I used to get the basic setup for the maze... good god it's long, I wouldn't have been able to design it on my own.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yyaRGRe3TBo

[Shellie]

I hate those fast boss effers. ESPECIALLY when they happen to pick up a core from another alien. I get frustrated too easily and stop playing heh

[SineSwiper]

Those guys usually need top-level lasers, which I generally don't have much of. Most of the time I end up nuking them from orbit, but I only have so many charges of that thing.

[Shrinweck]

If you have enough level 3 guns and temporals you can usually get them on their way back. Well placed concussions are good, too. I rarely even build lasers any more. There's too much of a chance that something else will get prioritized by the laser and waste it. That said, I've gotten two gold medals so far where I've had to use the orbital laser at least once on either a racer or a rumbler (the fast boss).

[SineSwiper]

Finally beat the last level... I had some help though. Found a youtube video that I used to get the basic setup for the maze... good god it's long, I wouldn't have been able to design it on my own.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yyaRGRe3TBo

Argh! Fuck this game! The last level is so damn hard!

[SineSwiper]

Finally looked at that video. Different strategy then what I found. That was actually what I was trying to do at first, but I guess not in the right order (cores on out, not beginning to cores). Like the cover of Everlong, too.

Another guy did it by funneling all of the enemies to one square (left of the cores) and using all of the resources to beef the shit out of the square with concussions, cannons, a laser, etc.

[Tessian]

It's been a while-- but I happened to catch an update on this game. Specifics pasted below... nothing special but worth noting

Updates


The game pauses on a new level until you place the first tower (or right click the mouse) to allow you to look over it and plan your strategy

Added alien health bars with an option to turn them on and off in Settings menu

Adjusted the difficulty for levels Last Stand and Waste Disposal

Changed the entrance and exit arrow colors for the Last Stand level to show which exit corresponds with aliens from which entrance

Updated various text strings for better accuracy and clearer understanding

Added an extra digit space in the resource counter to accommodate high resource count

Left Hand mouse control is now supported

Added a version number in the How to Play section


Issues Addressed

Turtles now spawn aliens even after a save when they are in a level.

The interest accrued at the end of the mission is now always included in the associated leaderboard posting.

Link to and update to the latest version of DirectX in order to address audio issues for some users

The Game tip sound no longer plays when the user turns off the game tip visual cue in the settings.

The Orbital laser is now not affected by saving or loading.

The 15 Tower challenge mode description was incorrect, it has been updated.

The meteor trails now look better at slower framerates.

The UI no longer cycles quickly while fast-forwarding.

Changed silver medal core criteria for Assessing the Threat to be consistent with other mission criteria.

Changed requirements for Siege Breaker achievement so it is now awarded.

[SineSwiper]

The game pauses on a new level until you place the first tower (or right click the mouse) to allow you to look over it and plan your strategy

Yeah, that was annoying. I remember that I would keep hitting back over and over again just to get an idea of what to do.

I miss that game, but I've pretty much played it through. Same goes for World of Goo.