Savage moon is one of the best and worst tower defence games out there.
Welcome to my none savage Savage Moon Review. I promise that is the lamest joke I use in this review. Well first off let me explain what Savage Moon is. Savage Moon is a tower Defence game downloadable from the Playstation Store. It costs around ten dollars to buy and then you download it, which I have.
I have played this game on and off for a couple of weeks now. I looked foward to its release. I read online once that it was hard and I was like no problem I am smart and I love a challenge plus the person countering that statement said you just had to know how to play it. No problem right?
Well apperently there is a problem. The game sucks...Alot. I mean at first you can look past it, but as the game draws on well you can't. The game is rittled with design flaws and I mean rittled. It has more holes in it that a 70's mafia rat...Okay that may be a huge exageration but still it has design flaws.
Well first off I guess I can go into the game design. Well here is the Gist of it. You play as this commander. Us as in humanity have completely harvested all our resources and are now mining resources in space on these Imoons cause apperently Mars, the asteroid belt (there is one in the game), the moons around Jupiter, hell anything that won't kill us wasn't good enough for humanity to mine. Now what is the big woop about an Imoon and what the hell is an Imoon and why they Hell should you care? Well simply put an Imoon is a living moon. It is part organic as you can see in several levels of the game. So to answer the first to questions it is a living terrestrial body. To answer the third question cause you have to fight on it using towers deployed from a ship. Why do you have to do this you may be wondering or not, well simply put they don't like us mining them, so they make these things called insectocytes. IE giant insect the Imoon produce to defend themselves which come out in handy waves. These are deadly creatures as apposed to the fluffy bunnies of other tower defence games.
So that is was the run down of the games important details. But here is where the first problem of the game comes up. It is kinda hard to get behind killing something like this. Sortof. After awhile you stop caring if you had at all but when you think about it, it is kind of bitter sweet cause essentially we are the bad guys. Yep.
Anyway on to the core gameplay stuff. You control the camera with the left control stick and the L2 and R2 buttons. You bring up the menu with the X button. The menu is broken down into 4 areas. Tower deployment selection, research, Skills, and Info. Evidently we have figured a way to force the Incetocytes next wave to advance on our command if we so desire early. That can be done in Info. Plus you can get details about the next wave. Tower deployment selection is basic. Use the left joystick or dpad to select your tower and then find a place to put it. I will get into more of that later. As for skills you get three skills. Higher credits, Defence, or Offence. You can select one but it will take away from the others and greatly increase that one or you can choose two and slightly take away from one. Same amount is taken away from the one as it would be one choice or two. This is another design flaw as if you think about it it doesn't really make any sense from a tech point of view but that could have been over looked if it was a great game, but it isn't so that gives me another thing to poke at. : )
And finaly the Tech selection and you know this is going to be good cause I gave it is own paragraph. It should feel special. Now here is the gist of the tech from a gameplay perspective. You can research different towers not inprovements for the towers which probally would have improved the gameplay. But you can research increased level in two options. You can research 3 and 4 in one and level 5 in another. Beyond that nothing. Each tower does its own thing and has its advantages and disadvantages. As of this part you may be wondering why this game sucks so far it sounds like a pretty good game. Well I am getting there as now we get to the fun part. The flaws. You see your commaders in their infinite wisdom make you reresearch everything each turn spending the creds you only earn that turn as they do not carry over on them. Though you do get some to start. This cause we all know is a bad idea cause we are trying to win here. From a gameplay perspective it keeps things going but in the later levels this becomes a hassle and will more often then not screw you over and over and over. Another flaw we could over look if the game was great.
Now for the main part of the game. The game it self. Well you see you must defend the mining station from these insectocytes by deploying towers as you probally have guess by now. In the early part of the game as in the first levels and sector this works out nicely with slight hicups to it. Owe by the way you can't unlock the second tech lvl till next sector. Not a problem as the stages are typically 14 waves long progressing in difficulty. You have ground insectocytes and flying insectocytes to deal with in the beinging each coming out of their own thing, Ground comes out of a hole and flying comes out of a nest. You get a limited number to towers to deploy increasing as waves go on. In the begining challenging but good.
But if your like me and actually keep playing this is when it gets bad. The later stages as in past the first sector get rediculus. Well the first stages in sector 2 are okay but then we introduce the insectocytes that can spit stuff (the game doesn't say) at your towers. This is okay though cause we want a challenge and what could be wrong with this. Well...How about your towers health sucks and they cost credits to replace which wouldn't be a problem if they weren't all destroyed. Cause once they are blown up you don't get a refund or a slight refund you have to redeploy and then relevel them up which takes creds cause at the later stages a basic tower isn't going to do jack. Unless it is one of the powerful towers then it will. This would be okay but then the game decide to throw insectocytes at you that have bs health (trust me they do.), but there is a solution to this. Repair towers. Yay, but and this is a downer in the later levels they decided to send things with bs health and attack. I mean things that can destroy your towers at level 4 or 5 surrounded by a repair tower in one hit. This is fine for the bosses and mini bosses but for regular units this is rediculus.
Now this can be over come. Sometimes. Okay in the end it can't. I lost 6 level up towers to these things. Artilery, laser, and machine gun towers. So point put they screwed up at this point. Now you want to know how you can loose. Well that is simple. They go into you mining station and attack the core. Which then you are treated to a nice you loose scene which is nice. Now at first you won't knowtice this but then after awhile of getting irritated it dawned on me. Why the hell isn't there a door on the mining station? Seriously there is no door and it is a building which could easily have a door and no no work is going on. No emergency thick door. This would have been a good thing to put in the game cause the weaker ones would have had to break through it first giving you time to destroy them and the stronger ones well they would have ripped through it but still it would have been nice. Here a kicker there is no shielding or grate on the roof just an open hole for the fling ones to drop themselves in. Though there was this one fling boss who did just attack the station which would have been preferred if they all just did. You would think that they would have better designed these things (people in the game but the developers to if you want to take it that way) better cause they know that there are theys things trying to destroy the reactor core. It isn't a surprise. It isn't like you are just in the sector and all of a sudden you get a distress call and have to hurry to defend these things cause the unthinkable has happened. We know they are there and are coming. Huge design flaw. Also fire the ingame architech.
These problems keep getting worst as the game progresses. Becoming more and more apperent till they actually will hinder you game movement. This game is not hard as some would claim it is rediculus. Not rediculusly hard but just plain rediculus.
There is a vengence mode where you can go up against endless waves but you can't use higher tech then the level you did in single player. A major failure as I would have loved using higher tech on the first levels. Cause eventually they get stonger enough were if you don't have it your screwed.
There is a glossery where they explain stuff you have encountered or used called the Tech-Creature Library. It is enjoyable if you like game lore and I do.
Now for the worst part of all. It actually has some enjoyment in it. When it isn't being rediculus or suffering from an apperent design flaw you actually get some enjoyment out of it. This make is worst cause if it is just a crappy game you can just shrug it off. Owe it as a crappy game screw it but if it has a bit a good game it in then that makes it worst cause you want to enjoy it and I did but in the end all I could say was this game sucks over and over again. So as it kinda saddens me well not really but still this game sucks. I do not recommend this game at all. Even if you are a tower defence fan (warning you will feel ripped off in the later sectors cause it will not reward you for you inovativeness do to bad design flaws) I can not recommend it to you. This game is the best and worst tower defence game plain and simple.