X-Morph: Defense

Review

Breaking news . . . at 2 pm this afternoon, a gigantic unidentified rhombus-shaped object crash landed somewhere in South Africa, destroying everything within its vicinity. The authorities were quick to react and sent aircrafts to check the site. Upon arriving, they were swiftly destroyed by some sort of defense towers system. Since then, many more of these unidentified objects crash landed across the earth. Is our planet being invaded, and if so, by whom or what?    

X-Morph: Defense is a top-down shooter / tower defense game developed and published by EXOR Studios where you take control of the Alien race X-Morph who are invading the planet earth.

The game has a couple modes of play and dlc’s. You can start a new campaign, which involves missions in 14 locations across the world, or play in a survival game by yourself or in coop (local) with one of your friends. There are four levels of difficulty in this title, from easy to brutal. I would suggest sticking to the normal difficulty at first as it will give you a good challenge before moving up to the next difficulty level.

I am going to mention it outright; I was extremely surprised at how good and addictive this game is! Personally, I really enjoy top down shooter and tower defense games, and the way these two genres are combined is just brilliant, in my opinion.

In all the missions, you must defend the X-morph Harvester Core. As soon as the rhombus dark alien object hits the ground, it will transform into some sort of shrine with a levitating ball in the middle of it. You will be controlling the flying craft next to it. With this craft, you’ll have the ability to build towers before and during each attack. There are five types of towers available in this game. The main tower shoots a projectile every few seconds towards any enemy units. However, as you progress through the game, you’ll be acquiring a flamethrower tower (which is effective against ground units), artillery (which is great against both armour and ground units), laser towers (which are effective against ground shield units) and anti-aircraft towers (which will attempt to destroy anything that flies in its perimeter).

Each mission consists of 5 to 7 waves to defeat. As the goal is to defend the Harvester Core, you’ll be viewing a small introduction from the human commander between each wave. Most of the time he will outlay where the human forces will come from within the map or what new unit you might face. Before launching each wave, you’ll have the ability to position towers within the map where the enemy forces will come from. Each tower you place on the map will cost you energy points, which is represented by the gauge on the bottom left corner of your screen. Each time you upgrade a tower to one of the four other types, it will cost you extra energy to do so. The other interesting thing you can do in this game is the possibility of deviating the enemy routes by connecting your towers with laser shields and making these routes as long as possible before the enemy convoy reach the Harvester Core; and of course, adding plenty more towers around them to destroy as many units as possible. While your towers are shooting at enemy units, you’ll be controlling your flying craft across the map. This craft will have four different types of weapons when it is fully upgraded. However, you’ll only have one at the start of the game. Your ship has two modes: normal and ghost. In the normal mode, you’ll be able to fly around and shoot at enemies’ units, but you’ll need to be very careful of ground units with missiles and machine guns. As the new waves are introduced, you’ll be attacked from the air by aircrafts and helicopters. On top of that, the map will expand even further, and enemies will come from new routes too.

While shooting units with your flying craft, you might find that the human forces move rather fast from another route totally opposite to your current location. By activating the ghost mode, not only the can’t see you anymore but you can fly faster from one side of the map to the other. You can also build new towers (if you have enough energy resources at hand) and collect debris (if you have the correct update) in that mode. At the end of each mission, you’ll be rewarded with technology and upgrade points, as well as with a medal from Bronze to Gold: of course, it will depend on how well you’ve done in that particular mission.

There are also three bosses fights in the campaign and must say they are challenging and extremely fun to play against.

In the survival mode, you’ll have to survive 10 waves and you’ll be prompted to choose an upgrade or technology between each of the wave which can make it very interesting.

Graphically the game looks awesome and the controls are super responsive with either your gamepad or mouse and keyboard making the game enjoyable. I really like the story and narrative all way through.