Unstoppable Gorg

One of the first genre’s I ever got addicted to was tower defense games, but for awhile now tower defense games have long been stale. For a long time now, the genre hasn’t seen any dramatic changes, but still provided quality games for its fans. Recently, the genre has escalated to new heights thanks to advancements in smart phone technology and the integration of app marketplace. Developed by Futuremark Games Studio, Unstoppable Gorg attempts to reinvent the genre, but costly design choices ruin a potential hit.

Unlike most tower defense games, many don’t even attempt to tell you story or enrich you in the setting. It was simple fact that creating a story was never the main focus because they were always on the gameplay, Unstoppable Gorg tries to change that. Every time you start a mission, you will be greeted by a short 50’s movie that creates a unique atmosphere. Now these are often quick, but it really dose fill in what goes on in the world and give you some purpose. Now they won’t impress you graphically because frankly no graphics are used at all. Most of the cutscenes in the game were shot then later edited to bring its 50’s look. It’s a nice change of pace and helps separate it’s self from the competition.

Your main opponent and Earth's arch nemesis, is a species called the gorg. Leader of the race is the vile and vicious King Gorg. There are various types of gorg you will see, to heavy HP units that will take forever take down, to seeing a steady stream of gorg saucers that are easy to taken down with a couple of rocket turrets. Like most Tower Defense games you are going to have spend your hard earned credits on various turrets you battle through the various 21 stages in the game.

Gameplay wise, Future Mark dose a lot of things right, but costly design choices hurt hamper the product … on the pc. From the opening moments, Unstoppable Gorg adds another dimension to the tower defense genre. Traditionally, the map and terrain will be grid based always plays stay in place and will never play into gameplay. However, that’s the main difference. Gameplay plays out much like an I phone game. Your main goal in the game is to defend a space station against endless waves against the gorg using the stations gravity.

So how do you defend? Playing into the space feel of the game. You place turrets around the space center orbital gravity. The way you control your stations orbital gravity and allowing you have opportunity to the station, is through each surrounding circles the station. Here you put turrets to stop the invading force from reaching the station, but there is a slight problem with its formula. You can only place turrets on white marked areas on the surrounding circles. You can drag turrets to make up for this, but it becomes a problem later on.

What it attempts to do is make the player feel claustrophobic and make the game chaotic. In most of the levels you only place to two per surrounding circle. I wouldn’t have mind if in exchange of lack of turret power if I was given the chance to upgrade my turrets, but there are very few times the game gives you options to upgrade in mid game. There are options to do upgrade your turrets before the game starts, but you are limited to do so when the game begins. There are very few spots where you place turrets and it doesn't do enough to give the player more options. During my playing time I felt I pushed to do certain things in a certain order or I would fail.

Even though this is a PC title, it hardly feels like one. Unstoppable Gorg feels like it was developed for the IOS market then later ported over to steam. I can see why since the gameplay choices on how you defend you screen make sense for a portable handheld device, but on the PC. It just doesn’t work and it can be bugging at times. Don’t get me wrong, I see where the developers were going, but more time was needed iron out mistakes. Many times it’s hard to grab turrets and position turrets in the right position. There is good five-second lag when you drag turret, which inexcusable in the later levels.

The Music is composed by Stakula, who previously made the music for the other games like Rochard and MMORPG Gunshine. The music is a lot like Unstoppable Gorg. It had the potential to be great, due it’s 50’s sci-fi setting and the elements it could have taken from other movies at that time. However, the music turned out to be the one of the worst things about due to it not staying to roots. If you hoping for the music to set a tone and enhance your experience, then your sadly going to be disappointed.

"I just don’t understand some of the game choices made by Futuremark."

After you get done with the campaign, which is still rather short with 21 levels. Your have a couple of challenge maps you can go through and they’re probably the best part of the game in my opinion, but for most players they will skip over this entirely due the game not having any leaderboards. Again I just don’t understand some of the game choices made byFuturemark. For everything it does right, there are hundreds of things it does horribly wrong.

Unstoppable Gorg had the potential like the most games to be a great game, but costly mistakes hamper the product. I can’t recommend this to anyone who is looking to pick this up on the PC. I suggest if you really want to pick it up on the Apple store since it’s cheaper and your getting for what it was intended for.

Score: 5 Out Of 10