Double Eleven and Q-Games’ popular tower defence game PixelJunk Monsters Ultimate arrives on Mac OS and Linux systems this month, with all the content from its previous outing on the PlayStation 3. This time it’s all fresh and a glossy with its high definition giving its gorgeous 2D artwork a nice new feel.
The premise is fairly simple; in the role of Tikiman your duty is to defend a flock of 20 babies from creatures who just want to chow down on Tikibabies. Sounds bloody simple, right? Well, no, not quite. The unarmed Tikiman only has the ability to construct an assortment of offensive towers that have a limited range available to him in every level. As your towers take out the enemy you’ll earn coins, and gems for a new selection of towers, upgrades, and researching. Placing your towers strategically will improve your gem and coin management which will soon come in to play.
Did I mention the dancing? Tikiman also likes dance, and by doing this in front of a tower helps to upgrade it.
As with most tower defence games, PixelJunk Monsters Ultimate is easily addictive and rewards intelligent and tactical thinking. The feeling of gratification when you successfully cut down each wave of enemy with relative ease, and without a loss to your precious babies is a feeling many AAA titles would pay good money to replicate.
PixelJunk Monsters Ultimate provides a vivid variety of monsters with different strengths and weaknesses. You’ll be fighting large, fast but rather weak spiders to huge, tough, and slow creatures along with air based monsters that need to be attacked with anti-air defences You’re given very little time between waves to plan your next action. But fortunately, you’re usually provided with more than enough trees to build towers than you’ll know what to do with, this helps you prepare for the next attack massively.
Building a good balance of towers to deal with each enemy type can often be a huge tactical task and even though you only lose one baby for every monster that slips by, there’s always that niggling voice in the back of your mind screaming “I could have done better” and will probably force you to reconsider your strategy making you try another formation of towers.
Enemies drop coin and gems when killed and these will come into play throughout your time with the game. Coins are used to build towers. The weaker towers are cheaper, and the stronger towers are obviously going to be more expensive, it’s the gems that bring in the tactical edge to the game. They’re dropped less frequently than coin, but they can assist you in many different ways. Giving you the option to use them to research and unlock a new type of tower, or you could maybe put it to a more beneficial use and use them to upgrade existing towers to defend against the next onslaught. Choosing the right decision can often be the difference between perfecting a level and getting your butt handed to you.
Saving all your babies is the point of this game; doing so will result in you being rewarded rainbow awards which serve as your progression throughout the games three islands. Each island comes packed with unique levels, branching routes and new challenges. A fourth island is provided for the ‘Medal Challenge‘ mode, a randomly generated bunch of levels with unique conditions to encourage further play.
Bored of playing single player? PixelJunk Monsters Ultimate has you well and truly covered. Playing the local and online co-op brings a whole new dimension to the game. Players share the gems collected, but have their own coin reserves. Communication is very much the key, as it is with most co-op games. Seeing your partner wasting their money on useless towers while you seem to have a better strategy can result in failure, which often leads to the blame for this failure going on their shoulders.
Gem management can take a hit as well. While you want to buy a more powerful tower, your partner may be choosing the upgrade the the current towers have. It’s a fun option but single player is the main focus for the game.
There were a few issues I had with PixelJunk Monsters Ultimate and they lay mainly with the soundtrack and controls.
There’s a lovely soothing tune playing while you move your Tikiman around, this does however eventually get on your nerves as you continue playing, and you realise how limited this soundtrack really is.
This Ultimate version was originally released for the PS Vita, and therefore took advantage of the systems touch controls. While playing it felt very obvious this was a game for touchscreens. Although the keyboard controls work, they weren’t always the most responsive. However, I never found myself being overly frustrated because of them, and I could usually hold my hand up and say “my poor performance was of my own making.”
Within a couple of hours playing this wonderful title, you’ll realise this traditional tower defence game is more than just a cute casual game with a vibrant cartoon aesthetic. With its puzzle-type element added to the strategic planning adds a certain amount of depth to an already exceptionally fun and addictive tower defence game.
For a five-year old game, it doesn’t bring anything new to the genre, but it doesn’t need to. I’m not a big fan of the tower defence genre – but it reeled me in. I’ll definitely be going back and attempting to earn more rainbows, and to save more babies, and above all enjoy the game.
PixelJunk Monsters Ultimate hits Mac OS and Linux systems on September 30th through Steam.