Kingdom Rush

 Well, despite the entirety of the West Coast of the United States being on fire, I am still safe, and thus working on another review.  This week, and the next two, are following the Tower Defense game series Kingdom Rush, starting with the first one, merely labeled Kingdom Rush

I have no idea what's going on here...

Kingdom Rush started off as a flash game on the internet browser, a tower defense game among millions of them.  Then it launched a sequel, then they went to first tablets, then computer, and now after three games across three different types of platforms, a fourth is being released for PC, which is already out on tablets.

What made Kingdom rush different that it launched past the average and depressingly same old gameplay of tower defense?  Ironhide Game Studios, the people who made the series, did something that revolutionized the tower defense games  Well technically three somethings.  But we'll start with the biggest change first, which are these three dudes.

 

Say hello to George, Jerry, and Tim.

 Kingdom Rush has four basic towers, Archer, Mage, and an Area of Effect tower that can hit multiple enemies with bombs, the artillery tower.  But the fourth is by far the most important, as it does not shoot at enemies, but instead deploys three soldiers to block and fight ground enemies.  Of course flying enemies can't be blocked, and some enemies can't be blocked even if they are on the ground running, but this is a huge game changer.  Suddenly you can decide where to put a barracks, where to put shooty towers, and the shooty towers will kill the enemies that are stopped by George, Jerry, and Tim.  If any soldiers die, they just respawn 8-10 seconds later.  Must have great health care.

 

The second thing is that unlike most tower defense games I've played before Kingdom Rush was released was that you can't place towers anywhere.  You can only place them in certain spots, and of course it takes money to place them, varying with the type of tower.  This means you can't just clump ten towers at the spawn point of the enemies and kill them before they can even walk past the towers, you have to think how to best use these sites.

For the third, you have two abilities you can use and 'heros' you can deploy on the path.  The abilities in this game are Reinforce and Meteor, one of which summons two soldiers to block the path, and the other rains down a god damn flaming rock ontop of enemies.  The heros in this game start at level 1 in each map, and level up fighting enemies, and respawn automatically once dead.  There's over a dozen of them to choose from.

I have a feeling this is a injoke I'm not getting...

There isn't really a story, other then "you hero, Wizard evil, you kill!".  But the stages are fun, and some offer interesting obstacles to overcome or helpful devices to use to destroy enemies.  The gameplay concept of armor types, some enemies take reduced damage to Mage towers, others take reduced damage to the physical damage type all other towers use.

I thoroughly enjoy Kingdom Rush, both when it came out as a flash game, and later when I got it on Steam.  So I technically played it twice, if not more, and still loved the heck out of it.  if you like Tower Defense games, try this gem.  Even if you hate them beucase of reasons you got from trying them before, I'd say try this before giving your final verdict.  

That's all this week.  Next week I will review the next in the series, Kingdom Rush: Frontiers