Iron Heart 2: Underground Army

In Brief

Another tower defense game from 8 Floor Games via MyPlayCity

Introduction:

Destroy hostile machines to save the planet in a sequel to ron Heart Steam Tower, which we were given last week. You aim to to protect your base from attack by placing various tower defense systems strategically along the paths that the enemy take. There are two campaigns set in different area of the world. As wave after wave of enemies attack, upgrade your towers for increased efficiency and range as well as improve the characteristics and damage using the nuts that you earn during the campaign.

Apart from the level design Iron Heart 2: Underground Army is exactly the same as last few weeks Iron Heart: Steam Tower and apart from the viewpoint, the same as the other two TD games we've received last week (Iron Sea Defenders & Iron Sea Frontier Defenders) and the previous week (all released by 8 Floor games). This developer has rehashed this game loads of times, with the same game play mechanics in every game they have released in this genre. The only significant differences are the theme and environments, also, the game has been presented in a more realistic isometric view that gives the impression of depth. This is the first time I've seen this in an 8 Floor Tower Defense game. If you've not played too many of these games, especially ones from 8th Floor, then this is definitely a worthwhile download and the game is actually a well made TD game, though it's not as challenging as some TD games I've played in the past. If you have played a lot of these, you'll find Iron Heart 2 a little too predictable and lacking any originality. For newcomers to the genre I'd give this an 8.5 out of 10, for old hands, 6 out of 10.

Whiterabbit April 21st 2019

Installation:

Iron Heart 2: Underground Army downloads to a 107 MB zip file that unzips to three files, (a setup.gcd security wrapper the set-up file and a read me). The game installs to the following path by default, but can be changed if you wish. The installed game is approximately 117 MB in size.

C:\Program Files (x86)\MyPlayCity.com\Iron Heart 2 - Underground Army

Four shortcuts are installed to the desktop; the shortcut to the game, plus three others ''Play Online Games, MyPlayCity Games and a shortcut to a free online game. These latter three shortcuts can be deleted once the game has been installed. The Themida wrapper may alert your security and even block the installation; there are details about this issue in the read me that unpacks from the downloaded zip file.

Iron Heart 2: Underground Army is another tower defense game from 8 Floor with the same mechanics as previous tower defense games from 8 Floor, though I do think this one looks much better graphically. The game, or a version of it is due for release on Steam early in June. As you progress you unlock various skills, that like the towers and common upgrades you can upgrade to make them regenerate faster. However skills such as the rock fall, acidic vapour, pyrite bombs, EMP pulses and high voltage are not available at the start of the game. The main menus and shop menus are exactly the same as last weeks game as is the usual bonuses for starting a wave early. The main difference is the improved graphics over most of the 8 Floor TD games. Instead of a top down perspective we get an isometric view, that gives the appearance of depth to the levels.

There are two campaigns Underground Paradise and Iron heart; you require 45 stars to unlock the latter campaign. Each campaign comprises 20 levels which can be played on three different difficulty modes easy, normal and hard. When starting a new game you can skip the tutorial level if you wish. Along the top of the level screen you can see the amount of gold you have; this is used to buy your towers such as the machine gun, cannon, emitter, mine production, support and teleport towers. Next to the gold indicator are the number of bolts, which are used to buy special upgrades for your towers to have more damage, more range and cost less to purchase other items. You can also spend your bolts on common upgrades such as increasing the amount of money you start a level with, effectively giving you the ability to buy more towers, or you can spend your bolts on increasing the amount of loot you get from destroying enemies or increasing the strength of your base, so that more enemies are required to overcome it. You can also spend your bolts on regenerating your skill fully (a useful aspect if it looks like your base is under threat and there are still too many seconds to go before the skill is fully recharged. Each of these upgrades can be repeated six times, with increasing costs for each extra upgrade. Nuts are awarded at the end of each level. Also awarded at the end of the level are stars. The maximum number of stars you can earn after each level is 3 stars. If you lose base health you lose at least one star or more depending on how much health has been lost. You can potentially unlock the second campaign before the first campaign has been completed if you earn maximum stars for most levels. Stars are equivalent to bronze, silver and gold awards you see in other games and are calculated on a combination of your score and fort health.

Next to the nut symbol is your health indicator. You start with 25, which as indicated above can be increased by spending your nuts on the base upgrade, your first upgrade will increase the forts health to 30. This indicates the health of your base. If any enemies manages to survive the gauntlet of your towers, and enter the base, you lose one health for each enemy entering. Losing all 25 ends the level. At the start of a new level your base health is returned to 25.

Next to the base health indicator is the wave indicator. This shows you how many waves to expect in the level and which wave is current. Along the bottom of the game arena are four buttons. The first is your options button The second pauses the game and the third restarts the game. The fourth will increase the speed of the game. This is useful once you've completed your tower building to rush along the level. Finally, at the beginning of a new wave you are given a warning as to how long it will be before the next wave starts. This does not appear next to where the wave will start as in other 8 Floor games, so you must be vary of placing towers as some routes are very short and if you haven't covered that start area, you're likely to lose significant base health. This can change from level to level, so it's important that tower placement is done tactically so that you don't leave an entrance to the base area poorly or totally undefended. You can force the wave to start immediately by clicking on the next wave button. This will earn you some extra gold. The sooner you click on the button when it appears, the more gold you earn.

As you progress new inventions will appear, for example as soon as you start the game there are two inventions given. Machine Gun (your basic tower defense weapon) . The machine gun can hit all kinds of enemies both ground and air targets. Field tests have shown it to be highly effective against smaller enemies such as their scouts. The scout is a quick but weak opponent and therefore is destroyed easily

As you progress other inventions appear for example the cannon, which is more powerful than the machine gun and is more effective against armored enemies such as highly armored tank. The third tower to be introduced is the emitter cannon that is effective against energy enemies, but not against flying enemies such as the brood. These are quite dangerous when in large groups. There are more towers introduced later such as the mine that produces extra gold over time, the support tower that can improve the range and effectiveness of nearby towers and the teleport tower, that teleports enemy units within its rage back towards the beginning. The more you upgrade this, the further back your enemies will be transported. . There are several skills introduced in Iron Heart 2 Underground Army such as the rockfall and a toxic weapon, both of which effective at reducing the health of enemies passing through them; also (as mentioned previously) the pyrite bomb, EMP wave and High Voltage skills. These skills take time to recharge, however in an emergency, you can fully recharge them immediately by spending some of your earned nuts by clicking on the skill you want to use. The skills are also effective near the start of a wave when large numbers of enemies are still present. You can cancel your skill if necessary by clicking on the skill button again. Inventions are not restricted to the defenders. Your enemies also get upgrades; for example their second upgrade is the flying brood and later the commander, that inspires other enemies, who in turn increase their speed, they also get a repair bot that recovers health from damaged enemies and better flying enemies and tanks. Whenever a new wave is about to start you get a warning located in the bottom left of the game arena when a new wave is about to start.

When you hover over a tower defense, it shows you the area the tower can defend. Upgrading the tower using gold you've earned from destroying enemies will increase the radius of the defensible area. Once you have enough nuts you can upgrade towers further to increase their range even more as well as their destructible strength and reduce the cost.

As you destroy enemies, you earn cash, which can be used to purchase more towers and upgrades. Placing towers in the correct positions, especially at the start of a level is crucial to survive. Some defensive areas are not as effective as others, so you need to select your first positions with care. Initially here are two upgrades available for each tower, but later in the game, more upgrades become available that change your weapons into much more powerful weapons. Also, if necessa you can also sell towers for a percentage of the gold you spent building them. This is useful if you placed a tower ineffectively or towards the end of a level when all enemies have passed the starting area but you still require gold to upgrade towers nearer the base to protect it from attack If your fort loses all of its health you lose.

At the end of a level your level rewards will appear indicating how many stars you've earned, your kill score and points earned for defending your base as well as the number of nuts you have earned. Along the bottom of the Victory banner (where you can see your level statistics) are three buttons. The first one allows you to restart the level so that if you failed to earn the maximum number of stars you can retry it; (I didn't check to see if this resets to the previous level if you restart from this position), the second one takes you to the level selection screen where you can opt to play the next level, or any previously unlocked level. The third button takes you to the shop. As new inventions are found they are added to the shop and can be upgraded up to six times. Each upgrade costs more to buy for example the first upgrade costs four nuts, the second costs ten nuts the third fourteen nuts etc. Each upgrade reduces the percentage costs, or increases the percentage effectiveness of the upgrades.

Whiterabbit-uk 26th April 2019

Conclusion:

Conclusion:

Iron Heart - Steam Tower is a well constructed tower defense game, but it's one of many with the same game mechanic as previous releases by the same developer 8 Floor. Apart from the level design, which is an improvement on previous Tower Defense games released by 8 floor because this game has a 3D look to it. Game play is exactly the same in every game of this type that 8 Floor has released. We've been given a few of them over the last couple of years. As mentioned in the brief, if you've not played many of these, the game is definitely worth downloading as it is a lot of fun and not too challenging. However, for seasoned players of this genre this game can get a little tiresome. If you enjoyed playing todays game, or are already a TD convert I recommend you try one or more of the following tower defense games: Defense Grid: The Awakening, Defense Grid 2, Revenge of the Titans, Rock of Ages, Rock of Ages 2: Bigger & Boulder™, Plants vs. Zombies, Creeper World 3: Arc Eternal, Orcs Must Die, Towers of Altrac, Zotrix - Solar Division, Sanctum, Sanctum 2 to name just a few of the many decent and offering original content compared to today's game.

Videos of Iron Heart 2: Underground Army:

You can see several in-game videos of game play HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE & HERE.

If you miss today's game giveaway you can always get the game via MyPlayCity HERE; or If you prefer to purchase the game you'll be able to buy a version of it via Steam HERE from June 3rd 2019 that will probably combine last weeks version and today's together via dlc's.

Suggestions:

After you've had an opportunity to play today's giveaway please take a few moments to give some positive or negative feedback; for example, what you liked or disliked about the game, or how it could be improved. If you don't like the genre at all, please explain why and if any, what improvements would change your mind? If you don't have time to post a comment today, please do so at your convenience, thank you. If you wish to post a review or comment about the game later, you can access the comments section by going to the game giveaways home page, then scroll to the bottom of the page where it says Archives and select the date the giveaway was live (giveaway days are in bold type). This will open the appropriate page for you to post your comment or review. Alternatively, you can google the name of the game and include Gamegiveawayoftheday in the search. This should give you a list of links to whenever this game was given away.

If you miss today's game giveaway you can always get the game via MyPlayCity HERE; or If you prefer to purchase the game you will be able to get the deluxe version via steam early in june, when last weeks and todays will be released on Steam as Iron Heart HERE.

Problems getting the game to work:

If you're having problems installing or activating or getting Iron Heart 2 Underground Army to work please visit the FAQ's Thread HERE and read through the communities comments because sometimes fixes have already been posted, for example, a common issue seen since the Themida wrapper was introduced three years ago is that some community members installation of the game are blocked by their security because Themida code has been known to hide malware, (usually an error message is flagged for example 'The executable is corrupted' even though in reality it is not); so as a precaution some anti malware programs will block and even delete the suspect installation files even though the files (i.e. the setup, read me and setup.gcd files are actually totally free from malware. This issue can be solved either by rebooting your computer in safe mode with networking or a quicker method is to temporarily turn off your security software to allow the installation. You could also try white-listing the setup.gcd file. In the almost 12 years this game giveaway site has been operating there has 'never' been a game given away that was infected with malware.

If for any reason you want to contact the giveaway team, for example, you have a game to offer the community, or are unable to download the latest game or other issues that the FAQ's thread or these comments don't cover or solve you can do so HERE

I'd like to take this opportunity to thank MyPlayCity for giving away Iron Heart 2 Underground Army and also to the game giveaway team, as always, for securing other ways to get free games.

Useful Information not related to today's game giveaway:

If Iron Heart 2 Underground Army doesn't interest you, but you still hanker for something new to play, you'll find details of some game deals whether they be sale items, indie bundles or games being given away for free HERE (I've not updated the thread in a while, but most of the links still take you to the latest deals).

The rest of the information that used to be posted in the game review can be found in the forums HERE. Finally, check out Delenns threads for details of other free games and offers HERE and elsewhere in the game discussion forums HERE, (usually on the first page of the game discussion forums).