I have always been a fan of tower defense games. The idea of me vs. waves of enemies just gets me pumped to kill waves of enemies! So, learning that the wonderful studio, Double Fine, was going to create a tower defense of their own, left me more excited than a finding $5 dollar bill in an old pair of jeans.
To make things perfectly clear, I feel Double Fine hit the ball right out of the park with Trenched. There are so many aspects that I could ramble aimlessly on about, but that would rob you of truly appreciating the improvements Trenched has to offer a seasoned Tower Defender, like myself. So, I will try and keep the idle banter to a minimum, and delve into this game.
Once you begin, a story will start to unfold about Frank Woodrof and Vlad Farnsworth. Through a series of events, both are overwhelmed with a radio signal, increasing their intelligence drastically. Frank uses these newly learned abilities to create leg replacements for the physically disabled. They are called mobile trenches. These mobile trenches are highly customizable with emplacements, weaponry, chassis, legs, and paint. The trenches will be the player’s means of transportation on the battlefield. Vlad, however, decided to create monsters called ‘Monovision’ or ‘Tubes’. According to Vlad, they are carrying the broadcast all over the world. Sending the transmission to the masses. The tubes will become the bulletsponges in this war. But, with over 10 different variations of tubes to fight, you are going to need more than bullets to win this war.
Trenched takes place in three prime locations. Europe, Africa, and the Pacific. Each of the regions is then broken into 5 separate maps. As most tower defense games, you are given tutorials and explanations as you continue to unlock and move through the game. As you progress, each level will provide new challenges that will require the combination of your mobile trenches’ weaponry and its personal emplacements. These emplacements can range from shotgun turrets to explosive mortar shots. And once you think you have the feel and configuration of a good Trench, there will inevitably be a new tube that comes along and messes with your plan.
While making a jolted segue about configurations, I feel the game’s best feature would be the amount and depth in customization, regarding their mobile trenches. Of course, at the beginning of the game, you are given a standard trench with basic weaponry and emplacements. Shortly after your third level you will begin amassing a stockpile of goodies that you can attach to your much larger, or smaller, trench. Should you choose landmines? How about mortar shots? How about a dampening generator to slow movement? Do you want one slot for weaponry and four for emplacements or six slots of weaponry and two for emplacements? While the options stack up, I’m sure you will quickly begin to choose a favorite weapon combination. Mine you ask? The Karlsson Mark III with a Gungir and 3x ‘Razor of the Gods’ attached. While that might sound like a bunch of rubbish to you now, in time, you’ll pick up what I’m laying down.
Moving past the features and details of the game, we get into the gameplay and audio/visual aspects of the game. Keeping in mind that Double Fine has rolled out a massive 1.3GB XBLA title, there are only a handful of qualities about the game that I would consider “Arcade” like. Graphics and audio quality would not be one of them. While playing trenched, I can recall losing many battles just wanting to either die from an explosion, or get wasted from an electrical discharge. The amount of clarity and detail that went into the content of this game was incredibly surprising. In fact, RonyDean actually poked fun and said that one explosion from Trenched looked better than all of Call of Duty’s. Now, whether that is some good natured ribbing, or the truth, you’ll just have to ask him. But, something we both agreed upon while playing was the audio quality left us wanting to die more often from the electrical discharge. On certain levels, the sky will go dark, and your screen will begin to turn shades of blue. Shortly after, your audio will begin to muffle and you will be surprisingly awoke by many impressive blast that you must avoid to keep from exploding yourself. Even though these plumes of evil would nuke our trench, we couldn’t help but enjoy the time we got listening and being impressed.
To put the final topping on an almost perfect cake, all tower defense games have a level of near limitless re-playability. Trenched is no exception. Once I completed the game, there were still achievements to obtain. This required me to learn the levels in depth and plot a perfect course for Gold Medals. And, if you get ahead of your friends, it is so satisfying to go back to early levels and completely obliterate the enemies there. And, once those are all said and done, this games still has 4-player co-op. You can take your trench onto Xbox Live and compare your trench to others. I know I will.
While this game does satisfy those needs for a great arcade game, only a few pitfalls keep it from the top spot. Firstly, the game turned out to be too short, for me. Only 15 levels deep and I still wanted to continue and fight more waves of enemies. I still wanted there to be another region to traverse and more enemies to kill. Secondly, while playing there were a few moments of lackluster frame rate issues. While this seems like nitpicking, it should. I’m trying really hard to bring an honest face to the table. This frame rate issue didn’t happen often but when it did, it hampered the experience a bit. The problem occurred maybe three times the entire game and only while playing on some massively intense levels.
Trenched is a must have game for tower defense lovers. Grab your friends and play this game. The game experience only gets better with more trenches on the battlefield. I do have some improvements when you make a sequel, Double Fine, if you ever need to know be sure to ask.
Score: 9/10
Trenched was developed by Double Fine and published by Microsoft Games for Xbox 360 on June 22th. A copy of the game was provided to us by Double Fine for reviewing purposes.
