| OUR RATING:
8.2
GREAT
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TANGIBLES:
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Why you should buy it: You enjoyed playing PixelJunk Monsters with a friend and want more.
Why you should rent it: You’re not smart enough or don’t have the reflexes to handle offense in a tower defense game. |
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UNIQUE RATING:
8.2
  SUGGESTION:
Buy It |
Written by: Chris Selogy | Tags: Comet Crash, Playstation 3
The major hook that Comet Crash has going for it is that you’re no longer on defense from waves of enemies coming at you, but are now able to take the offensive and fight back. Each level in the campaign opens with your enemy’s base and towers already set-up and you have to start setting your own up so that you can handle any waves that they send your way. Like PixelJunk Monsters, you control a ship as your cursor that flies around the level to build towers or grab comets to drag to your towers to destroy for the juicy money that they contain. At first you start with just the basic turret and basic ops towers, the latter of which builds scout vehicles that you can send at your opponents’ base, that grow after each level you beat. Your opponent usually is employing the tower or new basic/special ops ship that you’ll unlock upon beating the level, which also means that you cannot use those towers earlier than that when replaying missions.
The battles with your opponent in Comet Crash definitely happen at a faster pace than both PixelJunk Monsters and Savage Moon since it isn’t confined to the structured wave system. As you’re building up your arsenal of ships to send at the opponent’s defenses, you can send them out all at once like a Zerg rush or a bit more methodical, though the former tactic tends to work best at times when you just need to overwhelm your opponent’s defense. It doesn’t seem like there’s just one way to win each map, but that there’s some flexibility if you seem the opponent’s layout of towers to see how to counter it so you can beat the AI.
Comet Crash does a good job of easing you into it with the first planet, which is a cakewalk for anyone that has played a tower defense game before. It does ramp up as you hit the second and third planets’ worth of levels when you need to be able to play without the training wheels. The game does offer beginner, casual, and ranked difficulties, of which the ranked difficulty being what you needed to play to get on the leaderboards. Though the first set of levels were easy enough on ranked, the second set required a downgrade to casual to get the same effect while the last two planets required beginner just to stay afloat, so not only is skill important later on, but it’s crucial to lasting.
Comet Crash does offer co-op for up to three players and multiplayer for up to four players, but both are unfortunately only offline. Co-op doesn’t seem to change the AI at all, so it’s similar to PixelJunk Monsters in that playing with friends makes the game easier. Each of you has your own money supply and storage of ships to send at the single opponent’s base, so you work together to beat each map. The multiplayer component, called Battle mode, is probably where the game becomes the most like an RTS as you set the location on the maps where you base is to be built and the frenetic building of towers, storage of attack ships, and collection of money begins. It can be a fun time when all players are of similar skill, which could be attained by playing through co-op first before you turn on each other in battle.
What may be the result of being from an independent studio, Comet Crash does have a minimalist art style. There’s nothing flashy and nothing that really stands out as the levels are pretty much all the same with some color changes here and there, but you mainly have plain ground with several of the same rocks placed around the level to be the boundaries of where you can build towers. The towers you have at your disposal have a simple sci-fi look to them and the same can be said for the ships you can send out, though the latter looks a bit more impressive when you send out a horde of them at once that move through the level towards your opponent’s base. The music has that same kind of sci-fi style to it that can get a bit tedious after a few hours of it, which is why support of the XMB custom soundtrack feature is most welcome here. Having the simple pleasure of playing the PixelJunk Monsters soundtrack over the action in Comet Crash has a certain charm to it that can’t be achieved with the default soundtrack.
Comet Crash is a pleasant surprise with the slow stagnation of tower defense games by adding a new hook that is backed up by quality gameplay that hasn’t been seen since PixelJunk Monsters. It has nice multiplayer and co-op features that extend the fun to others as you can talk strategy together or talk trash to each other depending on what mode you’re playing.
| D/1770 L1, also known as Lexell’s Comet, is a comet that is best known for having passed closer to the Earth than any other in recorded history. It passed the closest on July 1, 1770 at 0.0146 astronomical units, or 1,360,000 miles, away from the Earth. |
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