After three so-so games in three years, you should really think that expectations for the fourth Alien Breed would be low. I'm all the happier to report that with Tower Assault, Team 17 finally got their act together. It is the last one of the classic series, and also its pinnacle. Finally a game which can really be recommended. Why is that?
Well, it actually does address most of the shortcomings of the predecessors. Most importantly, level design differs quite fundamentally from what we've become used to in the series. Instead of a linear progression, different areas of the colony base can be accessed from a map in arbitrary fashion. They are connected through outdoor levels. These different parts of the overall base have different functions, but not only by name, but the indoor areas are then actually somewhat believable, in the sense that somebody could actually live or work there. Which concerns room layout (not as many stupid dead ends) as well as furnishing and other things lying around. Including those ripped human bodies, which may appear gratuitous at first, but actually do get one main point across – finally – this used to be a human-inhabited base!
The first strategy game I seriously played and loved was Dune II: Battle for Arrakis. Before that, I was absolutely not interested in this genre. I never found it particularly exciting to virtually push some combat units around on a map. But Dune 2 nevertheless cast its spell on me and has not let go of many of us to this day. A whole bunch of successors poured over the audience in the years that followed. However, these clones soon lost the appeal of the new. Perhaps I would have found these fresh ideas in other – less well-known – representatives of the genre back then. In search of such pearls, I enter the famous hexa fields of The Perfect General II.
Well met traveller! Come closer to the fire and warm your frozen bones a little before you continue the journey through those icy planes. While we are waiting for the clouds to clear up, let me tell you a story about a golden age… a golden age of role playing.
You know there was this game called Dungeons&Dragons, which was to many the epitome of pen&paper role playing. Don’t worry if it means nothing to you, the only thing you actually need to know right now is that it is a very nerdy yet strangely compelling way to waste a couple of hours with some friends while pretending, that is imagining, to crawl around the eponymous structures in search of the hoard of said lizards.
