The ULTIMATE Tower Defense Guide

What about Tap Defense?

 

GeoDefense and GeoDefense Swarm do have tutorials/help. its at the start of the levels where each feature is first introduced. if you play through the first few levels of easy you will see the help/tutorials.

 

BTW just realised teh use of the items I said were obsolete so cross off that problem.

Full review here:

Bloons Tower Defense was an amazing flash game. For some reason, it kept you hooked with ingenious towers and varied upgrades (you can actually upgrade certain parts such as power/aiming area), probably thanks to the cartoony graphics and use of ultra-cute monkeys. With such a title to live up to, is there any chance that the iPhone version of Bloons TD can be in the same league as the original flash game, or even with the other flagship games like geoDefense?

You may be surprised with the answer, but first I’ll introduce you to the game. Like any old tower defense game you are trying to defeat the baddies before they reach the end of the path. You have towers, which are upgradable. But these aren’t any ordinary baddies, and any ordinary towers. No, because the things you’re trying to destroy, or pop, are balloons, and the towers range from monkeys, super monkeys, tack shooters, catapult using monkeys and boomerang monkeys.

The presentation of this game is amazing. The menus are slick, with responsive (and good looking) buttons. Nothing lets you down here. It’s easy to switch levels and difficulties. The graphics of the game is very good. No flashy stuff, just basic, cartoon monkeys/balloons, and it works really well in this game. The environments are also good, representing the theme of the level well. It does seem like the developers took extra care with graphics and presentation, as, to be completely honest, it dwarfs the likes of geoDefense and is right on par with its older flash-game brothers.

The audio is where I come to my first gripe. There is only one audio track. In the original Bloons there was only one song but because of the catchiness and feel that the tune had it was fine. In Bloons TD, this track is fine for the first few goes but it gets tedious and boring pretty quick. At least you can listen to your own music, just from playing it and then loading the app, but listening to, in my case thrash metal while playing Bloons takes away the aurora it gives off.

Now down to the most important hurdle – gameplay. Luckily this game is incredible fun, as it pauses before the next wave to give you more time, the towers are awesome and all have two upgrade routes (aim and power), you have a decent amount of lives (100, to be exact) but every balloon that gets through takes 1 life. This isn’t a problem, as balloons, say they start at yellow, when they’re popped they go down to green, then blue, then red, then they’re properly popped. So a yellow balloon would take away a chunk of your health. The difficulty is good, with medium being a challenge and hard being the veteran task. There are bosses – massive airships that when popped split into lots of the fastest, most resilient balloons. You can also buy a ‘Super Monkey’ tower, which is so awesome it never gets boring. This game also has some trick up its sleeve that I can’t identify. For some reason it is extremely compelling and addictive, yet it’s basically any typical TD. I can play Defender Chronicles for an hour and get bored, but I could happily play this all day for some reason.

And probably the best feature, no lag even on the craziest of sections. This is tested on an iPod Touch 1G and it had brilliant performance, so on a 3GS it would be perfect, if it isn’t already on the lowest devices.

It isn’t all good news though – there are some problems, all minor. Except one – no online features. This means no high scores with everyone, no twitter/Facebook integration and other potential options. Although this isn’t a problem at first, once you have played it for days and days and unlocked all the levels, got a gold on all the levels there is no challenge to trying to improve your score to climb up online leaderboards. I mentioned unlockable levels – you can unlock many other sets of levels, all with their own theme, some exclusive to this iPhone version and some of the best from the flash game.

Luckily the other problems are small and ignorable. Sometimes the controls aren’t responsive enough but because of the level pause before waves this is fine (and they do work as long as you don’t put towers too near the sides of the screen). Some of the towers are obsolete, like the boomerang, but because of the wealth of upgrades and towers this is fine. And they are all my problems.

So how does it compare to other games in the genre? I actually think it is better than geoDefense, its nearest rival with the same gameplay. Even though geoDefense is fun, looks amazing and is a challenge, this game is just more inspired and fun, with solid difficulty for the veterans and easy challenges for the beginners. And is it better than Bloons Tower Defense 3, the acclaimed flash game? Yes – with more maps it pips it, but when the fourth game is out unfortunately that will blow this out of the water, but as this is based on the third game you should be expecting this. But BTD4 isn’t on iPhone, so you don’t need to worry.

So overall – a very fun tower defense game with lots of unlockables. The towers are awesome with two upgrade routes, and the balloons idea as enemies and the cool environments put the icing on this fun package. Definitely worth $2.99.

9/10

EDIT: icon

 

Sorry for the double post, but I'll write what you need to fill in for the boxes to save you time:

Game Name:
Bloons Tower Defense


Game Type:
Fixed Path

Graphics:
2D

Theme:
Cartoon (?)

Tower variants:
8 Permanent, 3 Temporary, 1 Ultra Weapon

Tower Upgrades:
2 paths, each with 2 upgrades

Maps/Levels:
15

Endless Mode:
Yes

Global Highscores:
No

Special/Unique Features:
Great Graphics
2-pathed upgrades
Unlockable Levels
Save In Middle Of Game
Extremely Addictive
Inventive Towers
Bosses

Limitations:
No online features
Repetitive audio (but can play own music)
Some maps too similar

 

The core gameplay is, in my opinion better than any TD game out there, even better than Defender Chronicles and Sentinel 2. But no online features is a big letdown. I'm going to ask the devs if they will implement online scores but for now, I'm kinda undecided whether it should be 9 or 8.

It's only fault is no online features, so really it should get a 9.

 

Just tired of updating this awesome spreadsheet, Camzy?

 

Thanks Camzy!

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