Here at
Retro 101 we are long-time fans of just about everything that the Pixel Junk
team has produced. They just seems to have a way of taking a genre that has
been done to death and then adding something new to make it fresh and vibrant
again. Now Monsters is making its way onto the PC and we are absolutely
delighted to have it around for those lunch time sessions.
What we
have here is effectively the original game and the extra content added through
Monsters Encore and the PSP version. The game also has online multiplayer modes
and a lovely higher resolution graphical style. The island that lets you create
random levels by typing in words is also unlocked right from the start. So if
you’re a fan you can stop reading this review right here, log into Steam and
purchase it. For those that want a bit
more detail then read on.
For those
new to the series this is a tower defence style game where your little Tikiman
must run around the screen upgrading trees into different types of defensive
structures. And yes, you do still move the Tikiman around rather than just point
and click on trees with the mouse. Wave upon wave of monsters then pour into
the level from various points and head towards the village hut (normally
located in the middle of the stage).
Around the hut are a number of baby Tiki’s and once the monsters have
made off with all of them you lose.
It’s a
concept we’ve seen many times before but it’s hard to remember when it has been
accomplished with so much style and flair. You start off with three basic
towers which covers attacking land monsters, air monsters and one that does
both. The towers all have different damage outputs, speed of fire and targeting
radius. Once a monster enters the targeting radius the towers will fire on them
automatically. Killing monsters provides gold to upgrade more trees and gems
which are stored in the village hut and can be used to upgrade the strength of
towers or unlock new types to use.
The extra
towers do all sorts of weird and wonderful things. You can get ice towers to
slow monsters down, mortars to cause massive damage, lasers to knock flying
enemies down and electricity pylons to hit creatures with area effect attacks
and the list goes on. It’s with these towers that the game begins to come into
its own as you will need to know the strengths and weaknesses of them all in
order to succeed. You can’t just lay out your defences and hope for the best
here, you have to continually move around the field and change the type of
towers to win the day.
PixelJunk
Monsters can be a bone crushingly tough game, especially for newcomers to the
genre. It takes time to learn that you really should be selling certain towers
at certain times and changing from anti-air to ground and back again for
certain waves of attack. It’s the sort of game where you may be stuck on a stage
for ages but then have a breakthrough and clear three or four in one go. You
have to constantly think about what you’re doing and constantly keep an eye on
what the next wave of marauding nasty’s will be.
One
memorable level ended with a frantic scramble around the stage to clear all the
anti-air guns as the final boss stomped on and proceeded to be able to almost
walk straight to the babies without taking a hit. Stress like that is what
you’re going to have to deal with to come out on top and it’ll happen all the
time.
Away from
the main game there are a host of other options and things to do. You can play
Co-op in online modes and this allows two Tiki men to run around to defend the
village. There are also tons of challenge levels which require you to complete
stages under certain conditions. The criteria is always different and can range
from anything from only using a certain type of tower to making sure you don’t
let monsters cross certain parts of the level. As if the game wasn’t difficult
enough this will test even the best strategy fans out there.
We’ve
established the game is hard, but it always fair and the funny thing is it
doesn’t really seem to matter. The sense of achievement from completing a level
will always have you coming back for just one more go. You’ll find yourself
thinking about levels in your everyday life and coming up with strategies while
you should be doing other things. Then you’ll return and try it out and maybe
it’ll work and bring you onto the next challenge. It’s perfect for
formulating a strategy during the morning and then testing it out in a lunch
break.
Overall,
this is the definitive version of an already excellent game. The core mechanics
are strong and work wonderfully when added to the flair and charm of it all. There
is very little reason not to recommend it to fans of genre and gamers looking
for something a little different. The difficulty may be too much for some but
it’s a great version of a great game and it should really be in your
collection.
Overall
8/10
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