GoblinGun Review

One of the App Store's 'problems' is that game concepts tend evolve very quickly due to their smaller natures. What was once creative and unique even back in 2009 may be rote and uninteresting in 2011. Such is the dilemma of GoblinGun, a tower defense game that you almost have to assume has some kind of unique and clever twist to it because of the fact that the genre was overexposed a long time ago. However, this is a by-the-numbers tower defense game through and through; enemies come forth through the entrance, travel along the path to your base, and you must put up towers of various types to defeat them. There are enemies that will only be affected by certain types of towers, so you can't just put up all bomber towers, lest the flying enemies wreak havoc on your base. There's a campaign mode, where you must survive 60 waves of enemies per level to advance, and a Survival mode that lets you play the 8 campaign maps endlessly until you beat them.

GoblinGun gets the basics of the genre correct, and it does a good job at curving the progression of units - you only have 3 towers to worry about at the beginning, then new ones get steadily added. The mechanics are basic, but they work, and fans of classic tower defense games will be at home here. However, the problem is that the game does little to nothing new beyond that. There's no innovation, no creativity, nothing to really distinguish this game past any other tower defense game out there. It also lacks any kind of Game Center support, or even Retina Display support. Retina Display support is something I'm willing to look past if it's not noticeable or if I'm unsure if it supports it or not. In this game, it's clearly noticeable with the blurry enemy sprites, especially when you zoom in on the map.

The game also has some major pacing issues. Each level in campaign mode lasts 60 waves, and no real hint is given as to when it's actually over. The first time I played the game, I was doing so well that I started to wonder when it would end, and quit out of boredom. I returned later, when I was willing to give the game another chance, played a few more waves, then let the enemies take over, assuming that I had progressed far enough to unlock the next campaign level, as the level certainly had dragged on along enough that I felt like I had earned it. My instincts were quite wrong, and I indeed had to beat that level before I could hope to see a new environment. So, I started over and trudged on to the hopeful end, which finally came at wave 60. It felt more like a boring task to complete, instead of a game I was having fun with. The skinny of it is that this game has major pacing problems - it either needs to last a shorter number of waves, or it needs to go twice as fast.

This is a game that might have been acceptable in 2009, but here in 2011, I don't think it's unreasonable to expect more. It's not even so much that the game is unoriginal, it's the game's design problems and technical shortcomings that really get to me. I can tolerate an unoriginal concept if the game is fun and plays well, but this really does not. This is only for tower defense traditionalists that need a new fix.