By Ned Jordan


You
can't review mobile games for any respectable amount of time without playing
more than your share of tower defense games. Kingdom Rush is the latest one to
find its way onto my iPhone or iPad and in spite of the fact that I've played
more tower defense games than I can remember, I had a blast playing it. Why
that's the case is a little hard to put my finger on, probably because it's more
the sum of a number of little things than it is one single factor. After all,
the game certainly doesn't attempt to reinvent the genre. You have your path
that winds across the screen, the enemies that try to make it to the end of that
path, and the towers you place along the route to stop them. Killing enemies
earns you coins which can then be spent to build new towers or upgrade existing
towers. Survive all of the attack waves without letting too many enemies through
and you win. No surprises there, right?
So what makes Kingdom Rush more fun to play than other tower defense games?
Part of the it is probably due to the presentation and art style. Bright
cartoon-like graphics and a sense of humor certainly add to the fun.
There's also the tremendous variety of enemies, some who have pretty dirty
tricks up their sleeves such as the necromancers who have an annoying habit of
spawning skeletal warriors that spring from the ground around them. This
diversified attack force combined with your abilities to call militia men into
action anywhere along the path and to rain fireballs from the sky makes the game
a very active experience. The levels in many tower defense games reach a point
at which you've built all the towers that you can and your role is reduced to
that of a bystander, watching as each wave winds past your towers and your fully
automated defenses. This never happens in Kingdom Rush ' in fact, the opposite
is true. The levels' excitement and the need for your active participation
actually increase as each level plays out.
The game allows you to progressively upgrade the four tower types, but also
lets you to select a specialization for the towers once you reach the top tier
of upgrades. For example, the archer tower can be made into a musketeer tower
with the ability to snipe at long range or a ranger tower with a high rate of
fire. You can then decide to arm the rangers with poisoned or barbed arrows, or,
in other words, to give them a damage over time attack versus one with higher
damage effects. Your choice of specialization needs to factor in the tower's
location, the layout of the attackers' path, which other towers are nearby, and
other attributes of your defensive strategy. And these choices really do matter
in Kingdom Rush because the game is decidedly challenging. Even on the easy
setting you'll find the going getting tough by the time you hit the mid-game
levels.
In addition to the tower upgrades, the game allows you to cash in the stars
you've earned through your victories for permanent upgrades to your towers,
fireball spells, and militia. It's important to choose the upgrades that fit
with your strategies, but luckily if you make a mistake you can reset your
upgrades at any time and get a full refund of the stars that you've spent. The
game gives you extra opportunities to earn stars by replaying the levels that
you've already beaten in challenge modes that require you to beat the level
again without letting a single enemy through, with limited tower types, reduced
upgrades, and similar restrictions. These levels will indeed give you a
challenge, but they are exciting and there is certainly a feeling of
satisfaction once you've beat them.
You can also spend stars to unlock powerful hero units that will roam the
battlefield under your control, but I found that the high cost of unlocking the
heroes (fifteen stars), the number of other upgrades that you must forgo to
unlock the heroes, and their limited effectiveness when deployed made them
unworthy of the cost and effort to deploy them.
Overall, Kingdom Rush is a very enjoyable game. The gaming challenge and
hours of play you will get from it make it one of the best gaming bargains
you'll find.
Final Rating: 94%

