High Addictive
Yes, you heard correctly... theres a co-op two player mode. I haven't played all the Tower Defense games out there, but I don't know or think any of them featured a co-op mode. It also adds a lot more depth to the game. Now you have to work co-operatively, communicating to one another and being organised. No longer can you place towers 'willy-nilly', you must put them in the most efficient coverage areas where a monster will be in your towers range as much as possible. If you dance (upgrades towers) on a tower together it can upgrade much more quickly. In two player, your funds is cut in half so you need to spend your money wisely. However I think it should theoretically be easier to achieve victory in co-op because now to people can upgrade to towers, build two towers, be in to places at once collecting coins and gems.Its many strategies like these in co-op that add that extra layer of depth to Pixel Junk Monsters adding to its re-playability.
Ahh... the online leader boards. Who's better than you right? Well, apparently thousands, no tens of thousands. This is one of the features that drives the player to play again and again proving that you are the best. By the time you know it, the clock will hit 6 A.M in the morning whilst you are still trying to beat someone half-way round the world.
The game is extremely challenging, despite its cartoon-ish, hand drawn look. Even on Easy and Medium ( Hard I have not gotten to ) you will try again and again, using different strategies to defend your hut. So you think your good because you cleared a level? So what? After that you have to get 7x Rainbows to progress to the Hard levels. To get a rainbow, not a single one of your children can die in your hut. Lets put it this way, I thought it was hard on the medium levels. I'm not ashamed of it, but I admit It I'm not the best at this game. So I wish the game had a difficulty setting that you could set to lower or higher as you please. *Crosses fingers for Pixel junk Monsters 2* 'Its harder than it looks'
The music is by Otograph, as shown playing the game. Its is made up of slow lulling, soothing sounds which fits perfectly in match with its cartoon-ish looks. It does get repetitive, so keep the volume down or otherwise nightmares may follow :O.
The gameplay is straight-forward. Monsters come to your hut to kill your babies, so you build towers out of trees to kill the monsters. Once the monsters are killed they drop coins and gems. Coins increase your funds to build more towers for the onslaught of monsters that are to come. In between waves an interest is calculated of your total funds and is added to your current funds. This adds yet another layer of depth, forcing you to decide if you are willing to not spend and accumulate an investment for the future. Interest can be increased from 5% to 10/15/20 with the use of gems. Gems are used to research new towers or if your in desperation they can be used to instantly upgrade your towers. That is one thing that should be noted: on the internet Tower Defense games (the ones I played) you do not need to research to buy towers, they are automatically at your possession. All you need to do is have the required funds to buy those towers. I guess I just like my games to be a little more fast paced but I think they put the gem-research mechanic in to make the game harder, as you also use the gems to upgrade your towers. You have 9 towers in your arsenal - ice, fire, tesla, laser, hive, mortar, canon, arrow and anti-air. Ice slows enemies, Fire burns them in a direction. Tesla uses an AoE electricity attack. Laser shoots air-borne monsters. Hive sends bees to attack air and ground units. Mortar shoots a huge canon-ball with a wide range, VERY wide splash damage but has the slowest fire rate of towers. Canons shoot, well... canon-balls ^.^ but with a short range, slow fire rate and splash damage. Sure that sounds easy, place towers and they kill the monsters. But its harder than that. After each wave, monsters get harder and their types start varying. To counter this you have to place the appropriate towers, the appropriate number of towers and types as well as upgrading the towers. Upgrading towers allows the towers to increase their damage, speed and range according to different towers. Different levels of upgrades give different upgrades to that tower ( damage, speed and range).
Every tower in the game has some sort of weakness and strength, so the player needs to bring variety to his constructs to cover those weaknesses. The game is mad, it puts you on your toes every second. When you are low on cash you will have to sacrifice and sell your precious towers so others may rise. Its a resource management game in that sense. So much strategy is required to get rainbows and to the harder levels that one only wonders how much the play tested this game. To me its as if theres only one or so few ways to win a level. I heard that Pixel Junk Racers was too hard for most, if that was true, the same holds for Pixel Junk Monsters.
All in all, this is a great PSN download, a lot of replay-ability, good price and a must get for tower defense enthusiasts. I'm hoping for a second release of Monsters with more towers, you simply cant have enough. If you compare the number of towers available with Monsters and other tower defense games, Monsters has less. It plays up to 1080p and on a Widescreen HDTV how can you go wrong? It looks awesome playing it on a big screen than a smaller monitor.