Defense Grid 2: A Disappointing Sequel

[KingIsaacLinksr]

Posting this here because I'm assuming there's at least one more Tower Defense player around here. You can read my review of DG2 here: http://steamcommunity.com/id/KingIsaacLinksr/recommended/221540/, but I'll quote the entirety down below:

Full disclosure: I was one of the original backers on Kickstarter and gave $20 to help get this game published. I did this because Defense Grid 1 was one of my favorite tower defense games and the developers had a solid track record of games up to the Kickstarter. I disclose all of this because it may affect my opinion of this game and you should know this going in. So, let’s talk about Defense Grid 2.

I'm not happy with this game. Might as well say this up front because I have a lot to say why.

The main campaign story…..ergh….well, let’s talk about it. One: The humor is based on the AIs saying whacky things, but it gets tiresome as the campaign goes on. It’s not that well written, especially when you have the next problem. Two, its got way too many characters. Listening to so many AIs chatter on as you try to setup towers can multiply how tiresome the bad dialogue gets. Three: It’s trying to have a serious story undertone while all this “wackiness” is going on. Which causes the game to fail at pulling both tones off. Fourth and final: the voice acting is cringe-worthy. You’ll recognize at least a few of the voice-actors if you have watched certain sci-fi series in the past five years. Their performances range from barely adequate to cringe-worthy overacting, despite General Fletcher from the original game still bringing his a-game.

One of the biggest aggravations I had with this game the entire time is the optimization. It’s awful. It’ll drop to 50-55FPS with just a few aliens on the screen. Add in a lot of special effects from the towers and a whole horde of aliens and it will tank down to 20-30FPS. I thought I even noticed it go to 10FPS at some points. That is simply unacceptable for any game to have that poor a performance, even if we ignore how ludicrous it is for a tower defense game to lag this badly. The performance doesn't improve even if you set the game to its lowest quality. The game’s FPS drops just as hard regardless. I did contact the devs about the problem but they never got back to me. I’m not happy about that lack of communication. (At the time of this review, I have a quad-core CPU and a Nvidia 660ti. My computer should NOT be the problem here.)

The graphic settings menu is worse than the game’s optimization. All you will find is a quality slider, resolution options and V-Sync, that’s all it has. Not having tweakable settings really bothers me. Anti-Aliasing is completely missing and so is Anisotropic Filtering by the looks of it. Both of which would have really made the game look better. I have no idea how it could have shipped without even AA in the quality slider. At least the audio settings menu is very competent, with plenty of sliders to let you change the level of music, effects, and how often the AI will talk. (I would set the frequency to its lowest.) Even the keys can be rebound on keyboard and mouse and controllers. So, to see such a lacking graphics option menu is really bizarre because everything else you would need/want is here. There are a multitude of subtle bugs such as the Temporal Tower not slowing aliens or dots not affecting aliens but nothing game breaking as far as I encountered.

I’ll give the game some credit, it gives you a lot more information up front and in-game with line graphs and heat-mapping to show how and what you’re doing. The UI at least feels more functional in most cases, even if I dislike how the menus are handled.

But there is one thing that really gets me and that’s how indistinct all the towers and aliens are. The animations are incredibly simple, the towers are difficult to tell apart and the sound assets are really weak. Gone is the epic rain of fire(s) from your meteor towers, the loud report of the cannon towers blasting aliens away and the mini-explosions from concussion towers. Instead, all you can hear is bullets from gun towers, the occasional laser being spat out and that’s about it. All of which looks & sounds really unimpressive. Sure, you can hear the rest of the towers if you really strain your hearing, but that’s not the point. It lacks distinctness. All the towers just melt together to disappointing results. Then there’s the tower upgrades, I hate the new system which has you building towers on platforms and then selecting an anti-shield upgrade, a power upgrade or a score-increase upgrade. It feels overly complicated and unnecessary compared to how DG1 handled it with the command tower. The alien designs are much worse and have the same basic problems as the towers do. They have less character and feel indistinct as you slaughter 1,000s of them per level. You only notice the different speeds each one moves at. For a game on a new engine, this leaves a lot to be desired.

I’m not inspired by the level design at display here. Graphically, they are just ok. A few of the levels they showed off at PAX and other big public events were the best they had. Only one or two others were a bit different from the norm, Checks and Balances, which comes really late in the campaign, has a unique gauntlet run with six different lanes to stop. Another is Split Decision that has you defending two core stations, though the difficulty spike in this level is unreal. I was really hoping they would go all the way with this new feature they had announced a long while ago that has different parts of the level opening up as the level progressed. I had hoped this would require us to change tactics on the fly but it really doesn’t. Its relegated to a few levels and doesn’t really do much more than extend the maze you’ve built up. But here's my main issue. Each level feels aimed at having only one way of accomplishing it and you have to stick to that one goal, otherwise you'll fail.

The more I play Defense Grid 2, the more I loathe everything about it. Getting through the main campaign of around 10 hours was a chore unto itself. I got to the point that I set it to easy just so I could see the ending, which wasn’t worth it. I didn’t try multiplayer, I didn’t try the different modes for each level, I didn’t give Steam Workshop a go, I didn’t do anything besides the main campaign because by the time I finished the main campaign, I was so sick of it all that I had enough. I do not recommend DG2. As a long time player of Defense Grid, there is a sheer lack of enjoyment to be had in this sequel.

[orzelek]

I have the original and spent quite a bit time on it but was hesitant to get this one. Seems it turned out well.

Still waiting if GemCraft Chasing Shadows will actually make it's appearance on Steam.

[TheVampire100]

Defense Grid 2 plays exactly like Defense grid 1. There are no major differences whatsoever. Now you can say "Okay, the game was totally fine the way it was so this is a good sign" however a sequel should in my opinion feature new stuff that makes it worthy to call it "sequel" and not "reshape".  I know a lot of people think that DG is the King of all Tower Defense games, I disagree on this part, I know a LOT of TD games that I like more than DG 1 and 2. However I can admit that it is a great game on its own.
What made DG so great? The gameplay itself wasn't the case because, guess what, it was the most basic TD gameplay that you can found. You can found the exact gameplay in every other TD game. A small twist was the introduction of cores instead of a base health. this gave you a second chance to kill enemies that surpassed your defenses. But I'm pretty sure that everyone agrees that the major thing that differs DG from other TD games was the AMAZING voice acting of the AI. The narrator that explained how stuff worked, what goes currenlty on and adding stuff to the overall story was a good thing that made the game unique. I have to say that I have never seen another amazing voice acting like this in another TD game.

When you look at Dg 2 you will notice that the voce actor returns. This was of course the most logical decision of the developers. The Voice actor was the most rememberable part of the game, removing him would be the doom of the game. They added however some more voice actors to the game, maybe because they thought trippling the amount of voice actos would triple the amount of fun. It does not. I agree on 100% on you, Isaac, it's TOO MUCH. One narrator was fine, it was wonderful, it added to the atmosphere of the game. 3 narrators however are too much, you hear only how they bark on eachother, everyone commenting what's going on in it's own way and of course everyone knows it better.
In DG 1 you had a personal connection to the AI, just you two against the alien horde. In DG3 I have the feeling that I'm left out. You hear only the AIs chatter to ech other ignoring you all the way. Of course you cannot except that you will talk suddenly but it worked totally fine in DG1, why not in DG2? All this chattering and ignoring goes on the nerves. And that was in the first level already. Seriously, after the first level I STOPPED. I couldn't take it. After soem time I got back to the game but it goes still on. And even worse, when you finish the game you excpet that they stop talking. They don't, they go on when your victory screen shows up and the developers except that you sit there and listen to all the garbage they say until it's finished, not progressing to the next level. Of course you can skip it but that means that you loose bits of the story.

Overall I'm not disappointed of DG2. It's DG2 in a ne design, so that's okay. However I'm disappointed of the nerrator that had such a huge modification in comparision to DG1 that I just want to mute him. For fucks sake, there are aliens invading your base! Try to act like a professional!

[eRe4s3r]

Ugh... very interesting read... I had expected a bit more from such a much anticipated kickstarted sequel...

[KingIsaacLinksr]

They added however some more voice actors to the game, maybe because they thought trippling the amount of voice actos would triple the amount of fun. It does not.

3? haha, no. It's more like 9 by the time you get to the end. Or 7-8. I don't know, they all start to blend in together just as much as the towers and alien designs do. It's like Hidden Path went "hey, our game had one great AI, clearly if we multiply the number of AIs we have talking your ears off, you'll enjoy it that much more!" Wrong. It's just another irritant on top of all the other irritants this game has.

Yeah, I'm not a happy camper with this Kickstarter. I have two other games I've backed that are still in production to change my mood with KS: Distance, which is coming along superbly in BETA so I'm not concerned about its final release and Cosmic Star Heroine: Which I'm more concerned about this one but it's still in pre-alpha so its way too early to tell.

It should be noted that Defense Grid 2 very nearly didn't happen and it was only due to a last minute save by an investor that it was allowed to be born at all but if this is what Hidden Path wanted to do, I have to wonder why. If this was the plan going in with KS.....its a bit off.

[Alex Heartnet]

How Games Are Made: Defense Grid 2

Polygon published a rather exhaustive blog about the game's development from an outsider's perspective.