The International House of Mojo

What? No Booty Island?

A never ending Mardi Gras, a sexy governor and cruise ship captain, a cool Swiss Family Robinsonesque tree house, and who could forget, spitting contests on the town green!

There's no option for "I haven't played ALL of them". I've played and completed Stacking, but I haven't played the others, so I chose the last option.

Don't have an Xbox but was at one point able to borrow a PS3; the result is that I've played Costume Quest and Stacking and I guess won't be able to play Trenched or Sesame Street. Liked both games a lot, but Costume Quest wins.

I haven't played any of them, but I'm not ashamed.
I am however disappointed in the limited platforms they were released on :(

There's no option in this poll for "Stacking really disappointed me," so I have to choose Costume Quest, based entirely on playing the demo.

My issue with Tower Defence games is that I never know what to expect. I liked Desktop Tower Defence because I could plan in advance, thanks to that ticker-tape list of enemy waves, but so often I download a Tower Defence game from PSN plus or something, and it's very pretty and not much fun. I suspect some people like the challenge, and others (like myself) panic and end up getting whipped.

Also, thinking about it, I should clarify. I'm not really railing on your review (well, maybe I am a little bit with the dismissal of co-op, but still). After all, you don't need to know much about the game design possibilities/challenges of Tower Defense in order to know whether you liked Trenched or not. It's just... you seemed in points to be blaming the genre itself for some of the game's percieved failings, and that seemed to me a little... curious.

As for your actual opinion, of course, I'm not trying to tell you you shouldn't have it. I suspect my mileage will be different based on what I've seen (and I've seen enough about the game to know that I frankly disagree about the visuals, but that's by the by), but you make your case, and that's cool.

Er, well, I don't really mind what word you choose to use, or how good you might be at a particular Tower Defense game. I was more asking what you could possibly actually mean by saying that you don't think there's much to get about tower defense games. It just seems like a weird things to say, and very ill informed for anyone who knows even a little bit about game design.

I'm also worried that you seem convinced that there's nothing much to learn from playing multiplayer, when I've heard MULTIPLE reports from all sorts of sources that the co-op gameplay is one of the things that really makes the game. Makes me a bit worried that your experience is essentially incomplete.

I'd focus less on "get" and more on "repetitive" and "dull visuals" etc.

For the record, I bought, played, and am top of Game Center leader board among my friends in TowerMadness so you probably did read a bit too much into that.

I haven't played Trenched, and I don't know how much I will like it, so I'm not doing some fanboyish attempt to defend it, but really this statement concerned me:

"I don't really "get", or think there is much to get, as far as those "tower defense" games go." - so not only don't you like the genre, you don't think that the genre is even something you WANT to like and so you wanted to do this review... why?

I for one think there are all sorts of interesting possibilities from a game design perspective for tower defence style games. There are good and bad reasons that there are so many of them around. The bad reasons are that it's pretty easy compared to other genres to make a basic tower defence game, so lots of mediocre ones get made. But the good reasons are that it's a great way to experiment with or even learn about game design. It's a very scalable genre in terms of complexity, from the simple to the bewilderingly in-depth (though most tend towards the former), and it provides a great framework with which to think about and play with game design. I think that's plenty to 'get.'

Let's be charitable and assume you were being a bit naive or perhaps even playful when you said there was nothing to 'get' about tower defence games. Even then... well I don't get sports games, for example, but I'm certain from the way some people talk about them that there's something to get. But even then I'm not going to go ANYWHERE near a review for a sports game until I've made pretty damned certain I DO get it.

Harumph, harumph, Etc.