Fieldrunners

Today I played Fieldrunners.

No surprises here, it's a Tower Defense!

I expect we've all played Tower Defense games by now. They're pretty popular and pretty formulaic. There's not a whole lot of variety in towers; if I were to tell you this game has gatling towers, slow-shot towers, rocket towers, and lightning towers, I expect you'd nod your head and instantly know exactly what they do. If I were to then tell you that towers have three levels, are placed on a grid, and block enemy movement, you'd know all there is to know about Fieldrunners.

Okay, maybe I'm being unfair, since there are some other features.

See? There's, like, different stages, and Endless mode, and...

...Nah, who am I kidding, it's pretty derivative. Which is fine, of course, since the basic formula is a perfectly good formula that usually results in fun games.

My biggest beef with the game is that the towers all feel the same. There isn't a lot of variety. Now, there are different tower types in every level, and I only played the first one, so take this with a grain of salt. But I'm disappointed that they seem so similar. In Defense Grid, the towers all have unique effects; they play very differently, and they're balanced well against one another. Likewise in Sol Survivor, where you have the added variable of different characters, each with different sets of towers that work together in different ways. In Fieldrunners, the rocket tower is basically just a bigger, stronger version of the gatling tower, and the lightning tower is basically just a bigger, stronger version of the rocket tower. Boooring.

Also, I'm pretty sure the enemy infantry dudes are blatant ripoffs of the Soldier and the Heavy from TF2.

That being said, it's a passable riff on the genre even though it does nothing new at all. Could be worse.