Then a few days later I downloaded the demo.

First off, the graphics are gorgeous. Clean, simple, powerful, they capture perfectly the melancholy of the solitary guardian of a people who are forever beyond his grasp. The problem is that the pretty lights that make so much sense in-game don’t really translate to excellent screen captures, which is apparently the only metric used by most of the gaming public. These graphics are complemented by a hypnotic soundtrack that you listen to for hours, uncomplaining, while the Immortal Defense addiction fever burns its way through your body.

This game is worth every penny. Graphics, music and gameplay make this one a gem. I hope the developers gets this on the XBox Live service or the Wii downloadable content service to bring ID to a broader audience. This game has the chops for the bigtime.

Belgian dude, if you want to go pick up FFVII for $10, go for it. I dont think appreciation of Immortal Defense’ unique beauty is beyond the majority of gamers. It’s just beyond you.

1. First Impression:

The game starts up quickly, runs smoothly with no errors or obvious glitches. Very… odd startup music though. Interface is fairly intuitive, difficulty option is nice, and the ‘encyclopedias’ are useful.

8/10

2. Story:

You are a new Path Defender, whose job is to guard a hyperdimensional area known as pathspace – which is basically a highway for space vessels – from the evil empire called the Bakvah, who are attacking your home planet and many others. Not original, but it is very well done, with plenty of dialog and interesting characters, and only a small amount of Engrish.

7/10

3. Gameplay:

Your cursor is your main weapon, and automatically fires little arrows at the enemy ships, which move along a predefined path from one goal to another. You can also use ‘points’, basically upgradeable circles with symbols, to attack the aliens in various ways. These points are paid for and upgraded with your ‘cache’, earned by defeating enemies. Sometimes, you get help from Aa (original name, huh?), another Path Defender. There’s a timer, and each level lasts about 1-7 minutes. If you prevent most of your enemies from getting to the other end, you win. Usually, about 10-20 enemies can get through before you lose.

This isn’t a new concept, but is well done. The attacks are varied, the enemies can be though as well, but sometimes you feel grossly overpowered, and at other times, underpowered. The upgrades can make your points insanely powerful, but also cost insane amounts of cache, making it a very careful balencing act.

8/10

4. Graphics:

A lot of the graphics look like they come from a 1990s Space Invaders game, but are generally well done and well animated. The point animations are very pretty, and your little cursor is nice, if not very shiny or advanced looking. The menu graphics are similarly old looking, and the entire game is sprite based. Still, the graphics obviously were done with a lot of effort.

6/10

5. Sound

The music in the title menus, as I mentioned, is an odd woman’s voice warbling some sort of showtune. Not exactly action-game material, and very out of place. However, the rest of the music, if not varied, is suitably mysterious and space-like.

7/10

6. Replay Value:

Unfortunately, the game doesn’t have a ‘free for all’ mode, though there is a similar level at the end of each of the four sections of the story. Still, the levels are fun enough to replay, though not as exciting as the first time around. You can turn the difficulty up though, which helps.

4/10

7. Final Word:

Immortal Defense is a great game, and has a very solid concept behind it. A good buy, and a great GGOTD offer. Please, more of this, not DoubleGames!

Total: 8/10

Whilst they are not likely to turn the tide of battle as an archer in any particular army battle, I would not be surprised to notice many of the opposition falling asleep on the floor, obviously complete with cobwebs and those other bits of stuff that cannot be identified, only to be spiked by these precision arrows.
Anyway, my point is that I seem to spend more time deciding whether to put the points ‘here or there’ on the map, than actually finishing the bloody levels. Therefore, it is quite possible that the only limit of strategy in the game, is oneself.

I personally think this game has much potential, apart from the colossal amount of particles and fragents (detail) going all over the place.

Within a few months this game will shine to those unfortunate, ADD types who do not sit still for more than 1 nanosecond at a time.

Anyway, nice one Paul.

I have already purchased the game btw. I look forward to the update of 1.05 and beyond.

I completed at least 5 campaigns and I was on number 6.

When I started up this game again, there was a few errors and ignored it, went to the stage section and I had to start all over again!

Did anyone get this problem when I ran into this?

I was pleased to see the writer is already established.

I will very much look forward to future programs from RPGCreations.

Thanks again, take care,

Merril

I wonder what would happen if they try to read a science fiction novel?

The story is great. I liked the game play. I would tell the author of the game to keep up the great work.

Just as a note, the writer of the story is a professional writer, so that’s already the case. ^_^

I do think that whoever did write the story should work on books and/or films in addition to games, I think the story of the game is beautiful and deserves recognition outside of the gaming world so that a greater scope of people would get to experience it.

I don’t mind at all about you using my comment, in fact I am very flattered, thank you!

In other words, it seems premature to tell us that we should be making movies instead of games if you don’t play enough of the levels to experience the depth of the gameplay. For instance, the first two campaigns — the first 16 levels especially — are intentionally easy and simple, in order to teach people to play the game, and I suspect you only got through that area of the game and thought the full game was just as simple as the beginning.

By the way, despite my complaints, I linked to your comment on the Immortal Defense press section, since I liked the review so much, hope you don’t mind.

Because of this it is necessary to write a review based on a trial play. Although some people do indeed seemingly just glance at the screenshots and make assumptions, which is wrong, it is not practical on a game such as this to go through the whole lot and therefore reviews must be based somewhat on the first impressions. I personally try to give full reviews and in the majority of games am able to comment on the game as a whole as they are much shorter. For this game which is of much greater length, the first levels had to be the basis of my review. I do appreciate that the beginning is not sufficient to rate the whole thing but although as you say it gets more intricate and strategic later on, the first levels at least are clicking on circles along a wavy line which does appear much less intricate than the story. In your (excellent) analogy of basing a book review on the first chapter (although I did go deeper into the game than the very beginning), I suppose it would be like that chapter being very flat or full of spelling mistakes – no-one would want to read on. (In fact, book publishers do only ask you to submit the first chapter when offering them a book you have authored – they decide whether they would like to read more and then go on to publish it from this chapter, which is why it is so crucial.)

The only way I can think of to combat this problem is for the top of each daily page to have an extra link back to archived pages only when they have been added to. This would keep such pages fresh in people’s mind to click on and read reviews fuller than the initial play allowed instead of them just being archived and forgotten.