Competent but Forgettable
Download Size: 130 MB
Time Played: 5 hrs.
Missions Completed: 14/22
Manual Dexterity Needed: None
What I'd Pay: $5
Steam Price (3/6/12): $5
If I had to pick an average tower defense game, it'd be this one. Its crisp graphics, good sounds, and competent design (with a few interesting ideas thrown in) show the game's developers were skilled, but it's missing any style or strategy that would really make it stand out in the crowd.
The game throws you into the Pacific Front of WW2, pushing back the Japanese by building turrets to repel their kamikaze assaults on your base by land, sea, and air. You have 7 different types of turrets covering the tower defense basics (light attack, heavy attack, one-use bombs, slowing, range increase, AoE, anti-air), you earn money to place & upgrade them by killing enemies, and between levels you can spend victory points to increase their upgrade limits. You can select 3 perks (unlocked by reaching certain experience levels and other milestones) for each mission.
There's a few welcome quirks in the gameplay itself. The biggest one is the Dig In feature, which lets you spend money to dig in a turret, increasing its range & firepower in exchange for limiting its field-of-view to a small cone instead of anything nearby. Figuring out which turrets to keep freely rotating & which to dig in added another element to the strategy I enjoyed. There's also secondary objectives to achieve for more victory points, and even enemies that don't assault the base, but approach at odd angles to blow up your turrets from their blind spots, that added a bit more variety to the game. Finally, you have a rechargable rewind that lets you start an entire wave over, which comes in handy when you screw up and lose on Wave 17 out of 20.
So why didn't this game really make an impression, even with those additions? It felt too dry. It approached the Pacific Front like a "just the facts" documentary snoozefest. Exposition was minimal, graphics were crisp but lifeless, and there was no interesting characters or situations to get hooked on. It's just your turrets and the enemy on map after map. While I disliked some of the design decisions in Unstoppable Gorg, that game had style that stuck out in your mind. Meanwhile, iBomber Defense Pacific has (arguably) better gameplay, but it doesn't provide a good hook. Which one will you remember playing months from now?
Buy this only if you're a fan of the genre and want something to fill up time.