In a heated round, this fiddly approach to tower placement wastes precious/vital seconds, but you can at least pause the action if necessary. The size of the tower you have in mind determines whether you can find an actual match from there. In Defenze Zone 3 Ultra HD, you have to drag your tower from the menu bar, and then you see grids that indicate the portions of the map where towers can potentially be placed. In some games within the genre, there are obvious nodes or some other indicator that makes it apparent what your options are. Placing towers is also a bit of a hassle at times. To be fair, there are only eight towers, so you'll eventually get a good sense of how most or all of them work, but the process comes with a definite learning curve that shouldn't have been necessary given the ultimately simple nature of the game.
You just have to place it and hope things work out for the best.
The different towers that you can place are represented by icons along the bottom of the screen, but no tips pop up if you hover over an option. Sadly, the game isn't particularly good at letting you know what does what. This isn't my first rodeo, as the saying goes, and I don't mind jumping in with both feet. Normally, I would be delighted by the lack of a tutorial. There are some tips on the load screens, if you pay attention and read quickly, but that's as much setup as you get. You just select a map from a menu screen and get to work without preamble or even a tutorial. At the very least, you control special characters, or the game takes place in a vibrant fantasy world, or even inside a human body (in the case of one game I recently played). But in most tower defense games, there's a premise to explain why your effort is so vital. "That's how nearly every tower defense game works."Īnd you're right, of course. You must survive anywhere from 15 to 40 waves of adversaries, without too many of the invaders making it safely to an exit point. Taking out those adversaries nets you cash that you can then spend on defensive towers and upgrades. This feat you accomplish by slaying any foes who are foolish enough to march, drive, fly or. You're simply defending your off-screen base from an approaching onslaught of generic military enemies (think tanks, infantrymen, Jeeps and jets). well, there actually isn't any real idea behind it. The premise in Defense Zone 3 Ultra HD is that. Somehow, though, the end result manages to be addictive without actually feeling particularly noteworthy. It doesn't do anything that I would say is definitely wrong, and it checks off virtually every box on my list. Defense Zone 3 Ultra HD, unfortunately, falls into the latter category. With that said, it's clear that some developers know exactly what they're doing and other efforts slightly miss the mark. So far, I haven't come across a title within the genre that I didn't enjoy.
I like tower defense games well enough that when someone emailed to ask if I would review Defense Zone 3 Ultra HD, I decided to give the game a shot. "A generic but generally effective tower defense title that should challenge even genre enthusiasts."