Dungeon Defenders: First Wave Review
Price: $2.99
Version Reviewed: 1.0
Device Reviewed On: iPad
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The most infuriating kind of game is one that clearly has great ideas at its core, but falls flat because of its execution. Dungeon Defenders: First Wave is a novel idea, blending together tower defense gameplay in a hack 'n slash model, complete with 4-player online multiplayer. All these elements should come together like a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup, but in this game, the combination is more akin to peanut butter and poison.
Developer Trendy Entertainment has created a vibrant and colorful game. In a world where fantasy games consist largely of many shades of brown, Dungeon Defenders isn't afraid to use the entire color palette. The game runs on the Unreal Engine, and runs quite impressively - the game isn't quite as good-looking as Infinity Blade is, but this game does have a lot more going on, especially with all the action on-screen and all the graphical effects in play. The game also supports 4-player online co-op through Game Center, allowing you to quickly jump into any available games, or add your friends to try and conquer some dungeons.
Things ease up a bit with the online play, but the problem is that tower defense games are all about planning and strategy - having 4 strangers run around and put up defenses all willy-nilly defeats the purpose of strategy entirely. Also, continuing the theme of disconcerting busyness, the GUI is absolutely horrid. The game throws an overwhelming amount of information at you that takes up so much of the screen on the iPad that I can't even imagine playing this game on a smaller device. This isn't even factoring in the times when hints and tutorials pop up and take up half of the screen, making your viewable area that much smaller. The menus are horrible as well - healing yourself is 3 menus deep, and mind you, this is a hack 'n slash game at its heart. You just cannot be fiddling around with menus when all hell is breaking loose around you.
Dungeon Defenders just reeks of an idea that wasn't fully thought through. It is as if someone got the idea to make a hack 'n slash and tower defense hybrid, but never considered if it would actually work. If not for the fact that it was the second game released with the Unreal Engine on iOS, this game might not be notable at all. While the game's idea is certainly more inspired than many games, it takes a proper execution of those ideas, and that is what Dungeon Defenders lacks.