PC.Defense isn’t a new tower defense game. Anyone who has clicked through TDs looking for one to play has come across it at one point or another. I had initially played it a couple of years ago while on a tower defense binge, and decided to come back to it recently to refresh my memory. I almost wish I hadn’t.
There isn’t anything inherently wrong with PC.Defense. The visuals are clear and the game is easy to pick up, but it hasn’t aged well. I could see players today getting frustrated or bored with it more quickly than those who tried it around the time it came out. The tower defense genre might be casual city, but there are just some overall complexity and quality of life improvements that players look for today that PC.D is lacking.
The tower defense games of yore were simple. You had two or three tracks, a few towers, and big waves of enemies. That was about it, and that’s what we have here when looking at PC.Defense. The game offers six towers, each of which named after popular anti-virus software (AVG, Norton, Kapersky, etc.). The enemies are — can you guess? C’mon, guess — viruses! (TA-DA!) And you, o-wise computer-user need to use these anti-virus towers to keep your 64-bit processor safe. 64 is your life, by the way.
The theme is cute and works well for the game. It’s actually the reason I remembered it at all. Unfortunately, there is a severe lack of tower upgrades (three straightforward upgrades each) and the enemies don’t vary much either.
The are six types of enemies, each with their own traits. As the game progresses they change color to denote that they’re getting stronger, but honestly they’re not all that interesting. They come out in lines and don’t move all that quickly. You can’t send out more than one wave at a time to make things more difficult. It’s like they’re on a treadmill. A medium-paced treadmill that will give you a break every couple of minutes if you don’t force it to keep going. You feel no sense of urgency through the waves the game throws at you, and the maximum speed is sadly not that speedy, meaning it’s very likely you’ll just get bored.
PC.Defense offers three tracks, humbly named after their difficulties (Easy, Medium, and Hard — like eggs). This is one of the biggest detractors from the game, as most tower defense games today have at least 10 tracks to deal with. PC.D’s measly three leaves you wondering why you’re even bothering in the first place. Each is more difficult than the last, but they use the same palette and are unremarkable as a whole. It’s a little depressing considering the game’s interesting theme.
For such a simple genre, tower defense games have changed a lot over the years. Players look for a more interactive experience in their TDs today, as opposed to a simple time waster just to prove that you can clear the game. PC.Defense is very much the latter of the two. It’s not to say that it’s a bad game, but considering it wasn’t cutting edge around the time it came out, it’s nowhere near impressive.
Published: Nov 7, 2012 04:17 pm