FIELDRUNNERS (PSP minis): A full and frank review.

COST: $6.99
SIZE: 24Mb
GENRE: Tower Defense

Fieldrunners is a well-known tower defence game from the iPhone that helped launch the PSP minis line. Though more expensive on the PSP, it claims to offer more content than its iPhone counterpart. It performs quite well for a casual tower defence game, though it has a number of flaws that prevent it from being a must-buy.

For those unfamiliar with with Fieldrunners, it is a typical tower defence game wherein you purchase towers and place them on the map in order to destroy waves of oncoming enemies before they reach their goal (if you have never played a tower defence game before, go try the demo of Pixeljunk Monsters Deluxe or one of several free Flash-based offerings available online). In Fieldrunners, the majority of maps are wide open and enemies will automatically take the shortest path possible to reach their goal. It is up to the player to build towers in such a way to force them into longer paths, exposing them to fire from as many paths as possible. The game wisely prevents you from simply blocking all paths to the goal, which is the first thing I attempted to do. There are a good variety of enemy units, from simple cannon fodder to fast-moving bikers, slow damage-absorbing tanks, and aircraft that circumvent the ground paths. To counter these, you wield up to eight different types of towers. Six of these do damage in a variety of ways, though in practice they never seem differ greatly beyond how MUCH damage they do. Thankfully the game does not segregate certain towers to only deal damage to certain units; Gun Turrets and Missile Towers do equal damage to ground and air units (though someone will have to explain to me how the Mortar can damage air units). The other two, the Goo and Ice towers, do no damage but slow enemies down. These are essential, and any Fieldrunners player who ignore these towers will find their games ending quickly. Each tower can be upgraded to level 2 and 3 versions. I honestly saw no overall effect to this other than a different sprite for the tower.

For a game that originated on a touchscreen, the controls on the PSP work beautifully. The d-pad controls the cursor, the X button builds towers on empty squares or opens the sell/upgrade menu when highlighting a tower, the L and R buttons select which tower to build, and the analog nub zooms the view in or out. I rarely had issue with the controls as such. Select can be pressed at any time to pause the game, allowing you to build, sell, and upgrade towers freely without worrying about units on-screen. The Start button lets you quit the game and save it, an essential feature for a game meant to be played on the go. There is also a generous autosave, something I discovered when I dropped my PSP while playing; even though the battery had dislodged, I did not lose much progress at all. The whole map can be seen at once at the highest zoom level, and I didn't feel the need to zoom in closer at any point. If your cursor ever overlaps the tower selection screen at the bottom, the tower icons fade out to give you an unobstructed view of the battlefield. I found this very frustrating: while I could see what was going on, I could not see which tower I had selected, leading to an incorrect build more than once.

While the game touts an impressive list of features, it starts with only one map and one game mode unlocked. There are five maps in total, each with very little variation between them. Some feature multiple entrances for enemy units (PRO TIP: for every entrance on the map, there is a corresponding "exit" on the opposite side, which are the points you have to defend. The game does NOT make this obvious and you will likely only find out about them when a unit emerges from an entrance and marches straight into an undefended exit) while others throw a few token obstacles into the terrain to break up the wide open arena design. For a short-order game, completing an actual level can take upwards of half an hour even on the easiest difficulty. The default modes throw 100 enemy waves at you, and surviving at least 50 of them unlocks the next map. You'll have to survive up to the final wave to unlock all modes for the current map. Extended mode is the same 100-wave survival game with the ability to use more than the four basic towers. Endless mode is exactly what it sounds like. After putting so much time into beating a level on just the basic mode, I couldn't convince myself to go back to it for the other modes; they just didn't change things enough to offset the level fatigue that sets in.

The game's difficulty is punishing even on Easy. That difficulty is inherent to structure of the game itself. You start each map with enough funds for two or three towers, and you earn a small amount of money each time an enemy unit is killed. Fail to kill an enemy, and it depletes one of your 20 hit points. Of course, the rub here is that any enemy you don't kill is also cash you don't get. Failure to plan your tower placement from the very first wave can lead to a very quick spiral of defeat. Several maps I had to start multiple times as I recognized my poor choices were bound to end my game early. By around the 40th wave, if you survive to that point, the map should have become an enemy-destroying machine. At this point Fieldrunners becomes less a game and more a show. You're typically watching the current wave run your gauntlet, racking up the funds you will need for better towers to take on the stronger waves that are inevitably coming. Fieldrunners becomes very hands-off as you progress through the waves and it leads me to question just how much of a "game" it actually is.

For a game you will be staring at for quite a while, it looks decent. All sprites look good both when fully zoomed in and fully zoomed out. The tower sprites are distinguishable for the most part, and they change with each upgrade, though it is sometimes difficult to tell which upgrade level they are at by sprite alone (the only other way is to select the tower and see if an upgrade is still available). The enemy units are varied beyond anything I would have expected. There are three or four different types of footsoldiers, and any of these types can be found driving motorcycles or jeeps. There are a number of tank types as well, in addition to helicopters, aeroplanes, and even zeppelins. Don't expect much in the way of animation on these sprites; vehicles turn corners by simply changing directions 90 degrees with no animation whatsoever. Some units have a quick "dying" animation that is typically lost in the chaos. Speaking of chaos, Fieldrunners can become visual overload at times. With multiple units, towers, explosions, missiles, goo shots, electricity arcs, lasers, flames, and more on the screen at once, it can be hard to tell exactly what is going on and how effective, if at all, your towers are at eliminating the enemy. There were several moments where the graphics chugged; you read that right, a PSP minis game caused my PSP-2000 to literally CHUG under the strain of the graphics. There is really no good reason for this.

If the visuals weren't chaotic enough, the sound effects during gameplay are just as bad. Each tower has a unique sound effect associated with it; they don't sound terrible, and they fit what each tower does. Most of the units also have associated sounds, such as the motorcycle's rumble or the helicopter's thwop-thwop-thwop. They all work well for what they represent, but with dozens of units on-screen and multiple towers firing at once, it can get a bit much. I would have preferred a little more variety in the sound effects for each object, but this is a PSP minis title, so I can understand being sparse in that regard. The game features a musical score of whimsical, quasi-militaristic tunes reminiscent of games like Worms. The tracks aren't bad for a casual listen, but there is only one track per map that continually loops as you play it. Since the shortest round I played was around thirty minutes, I found the music wearing on me. A bit more variety in this regard would have been appreciated, even just to play more than one of the included tracks on any given map.

Fieldrunners is a competent but frustrating tower defence title and not the best start for PSP minis in general. I cannot justify it for the price of $6.99, though I might have cut it more slack if it were priced at $4.99.

FINAL GRADE: C-

Just My Opinion Reviews - Brutal Legend (XBOX 360)

This was one of those games that I was waiting a while to play, why? Because it is truly awesome!

Brutal Legend is a game developed by the legendary Tim Schafer, you might remember him from the classic game Grim Fandango, as he brings you into a heavy metal fans wet dream. The story follows the roadie Eddie Riggs(voiced by Jack Black) as he is transported into the past by a demonic belt buckle he wears. The belt from hell takes Eddie into a past where demons and heavy metal control everything, including his guitar. I could go on about the story, but there is just too much to get into. All you really need to know is that the demons are lead by Emperor Doviculus(voiced by the godly Tim Curry) while helping Eddie is the resistance of humans (all voiced by metal legends - Ozzy Osbourne, Rob Halford, Lita Ford, and Lemmy Kilmister). Kyle Gass even makes an appearance, but that is only because he is friends with Jack Black and is a no talent asstard, so who really cares.

Gameplay is something that was kept almost entirely in the dark to me and a lot of the people I know. Even when the demo came out, I honestly thought that it was a hack and slash adventure, however, it was also an RTS in disguise. I have no problem with RTS games, one of my favourite games of all time is Warcraft II and is a RTS, but one thing that the consoles can’t do is a proper RTS. Mind you the RTS elements are not bad, but they are not perfect either. I think the game would have functioned a lot better as a hack and slash.

The Audio and Video are spectacular, environments that look like a Iron Maiden album cover, over 108 Metal Tracks, and Tim Curry...........need I say more.

The Multiplayer is exactly as I expected..........RTS, if you can’t stand a full RTS game, then do not, I repeat, DO NOT play the multiplayer in Brutal Legend.

Overall, the game is EPIC. Aside from the RTS elements, there is nothing bad about Brutal Legend. If you don’t agree with my review, just remember that this is just my opinion.