Unfortunately that's where the charm ends with Desktop Tower Defense, as the core game is pretty much identical to what you can find free online. More titles need to follow this formula not necessarily in the art department, but in the concept user-created content. The editor is pretty simple – you won't find as much precision or as many options as DTL – but it works, and is really the only reason I can recommend the game to even the most die-hard players. The core style is still the same as the free online game, but the DS version also takes a page from THQ's own Drawn to Life, allowing players to go into the game's art set and literally change every frame of the game, be it creeps or the towers themselves. This works fine for a flash-based game since you aren't required to drop any cash for it – heck, Desktop is one of the fastest loading and easily accessible of its kind I've come across… try typing it in google for a second – but on the DS people expect more for their cash, and to a certain extent that call was answered.Ĭreate+and+play+on+DS.+or+just+play+the+free+version+online. One of the creeps is a circle, one is a triangle, one is a small slime-like character, and another is a different, larger circle not super inspired. With Desktop, everything has a very basic, pixel art style, and while that's perfect for the platform (and easy to pull off in-browser online as well) there isn't any real style to the experience. Like the countless tower defense games before it, Desktop is all about placing down turrets and defeating creeps as they spawn into a stage and attempt to exit the other side. In the case of Desktop Tower Defense though, I can't help but feel like it's more about cashing in than expanding the game's audience.
Here on DS the handheld offering of Linerider is another good example of a game that's doing a lot of things right despite having a small hint of cash-in emanating off of it. The core concepts are too fun to pass up, the presentation is spot on for consoles, and everything feels well worth your cash. In the case of something like Peggle – I already mentioned it, so we'll keep picking at it a bit more – the title transitions very well. Don't get me wrong, I dig me a nice game of Peggle every now and then just like everyone else, but once some of these otherwise-free or "on the cheap" gaming experiences hit it big people start to see dollar signs, and things can get out of hand. The whole world of flash games is a very dangerous thing.