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| Source // Nintendo |
The Tower Defense genre has always been a home for small projects as well as large ones. It started with Flash games for your browser, and the gameplay is something that doesn't take much effort to get used to at all.
As such, it's an ideal genre for a downloadable Nintendo DSiWare title by the name of Starship Patrol, or your regional equivalent - and perhaps more obviously relating to its genre, Starship Defense.
You've got a starship to defend, and turrets to defend it with. You know the rest.
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| Source // Nintendo |
Fun Times
You're going to have to know the rest because I haven't been able to play Starship Patrol. P2 has a Nintendo 3DS, but it hasn't been online ever, and a little tower defense title doesn't immediately strike me as something I need to urgently look into.
But Starship Patrol does at least do some things a little differently, in part thanks to the stylus and touch screen. Buying new turrets is a case of not only pointing to where on your ship's hull you want to attach it to, but with some of the weapons, what angle you want them pointed in - an angle which isn't always fixed, so long as your stylus inputs are fast and precise enough.
Couple that with the path of the enemy wave being drawn on the graph-paper-like background and you've got a tower defence game that allows you to plan out your defences that much more strategically, and reap the rewards from downed opposition ships by scrubbing over them with the stylus, hoovering up coins and power-ups in the process.
It looks simple, thanks to its minimalist graphics, but 'invisible' enemies and bosses will keep you on your toes as you frantically grab as much cash as you can before plonking down another turret in the hopes of it being the one to finally finish off the threat before it destroys you instead, only to not aim it in the right direction and miss your opportunity.
Final Word
But I wouldn't know if that is the case at all. I watched a video, I saw a tower defence game with minimalist graphics and does-what-it-says-on-the-tin gameplay, and I'm in no rush to experience it for myself.
I think it looks good, and it probably plays well, and it is higher up the tower defence rankings of this 1001 list than others at least, but is it enough to track it down? Well, I'm not in the mood to track it down and find out, if that answers anything.
Starship Patrol looks alright. Probably entertaining for a little while, but not for a long while, not for me at least, who doesn't know having never played it.
Yeah, okay, we'll chalk this one up as one to look out for, just to be sure.
Fun Facts
30 levels of graph-paper doodles set in space? That enough to tempt you?
Starship Patrol, developed by Q Games, first released in 2009.
Version watched: Nintendo DSiWare, 2009 (MrDSiReview)