Phalanx of Resistance – Review
It’s something some people might not immediately admit, but even the most hardcore games, or those that want nothing to do with games, find themselves tapping away on a Tower Defense game at one point or another. This genre has had many interesting entries, ranging from browser games, to mobile titles to full-fledged PC and console games. The genre has interesting possibilities and is also a gateway for junior programmers to create a home project. Sadly, for some reason, these home projects get planted on the Steam store and actually cost money to play. Phalanx of Resistance may not charge a lot, but what it’s currently charging is more than it ever deserves in its current state.
Story
Even though the game had a single-player mode dubbed ‘campaign’, there is no story to be found. You have no clue why you’re defending your base against cyborgs, trucks, tanks, choppers and so on. There is no narrative to be found in the hideous text boxes the game utilizes during its missions.
Graphics
Graphically Phalanx of Resistance looks like a combination of cheap assets thrown together to create a first project. The proportions of the buildings and units don’t make sense, as the humanoid cyborgs are larger than jeeps and tanks, and also larger than the dropship they come out of. You’ll also be forced to click away horrid looking plants in order to collect wood. Most of these plant-like items look like moss, or other obstacles that would never in a lifetime generate wood. The effects and the wooden animations don’t help the game either. Also, the designer wanted to go for cyborg enemies, but they tend to bleed more than any regular human being would. Overall things don’t make a lick of sense and everything could have looked so much better with some extra effort, or at least by getting some of the proportions right.
Sound
Horrible is the proper term to describe the sound design. While the turrets sound okayish, the rest of the game is just horrid to listen to. The clicking sound when you harvest resources or when you earn some income is mind-gratingly annoying. The music also deafens you right from the beginning, only for you to turn it off. Turning it off is also the logical option for everything, as it’s either make your ears bleed, or have no sound at all. The menu and options were clearly designed for a mobile title, rather than a decent PC game.
Gameplay
Phalanx of Resistance is a tower defense game that tries to infuse its gameplay with some strategy components. This means that outside your regular tower defense mechanics, you’ll have to harvest resources and so on. The latter is sadly created in such an annoying fashion that it takes away from the base game. To collect wood, you’ll have to painstakingly click every form of plant life around you. This makes the gameplay a bit dull, as you’ll always have to expend your core base with power plants, for your grid to reach new plants, allowing you to click away again. This also feels a lot like mechanics from a mobile game.
We found ourselves stranded in the tutorial for some time, as the next objective didn’t pop up, or the waves wouldn’t spawn. After some messing around, we apparently hit the jackpot and the game started working. The Skirmish mode also refused to spawn its waves on many different occasions, not knowing what we did wrong. After that, it’s pretty much the same as other tower defense games, except that enemies don’t follow a proper structure when attacking you. It’s possible your first, and only affordable, turret is at the wrong side, while your income generates so slowly you have to watch the enemy attack your base for ages to come. Nonetheless, everything is straightforward and the game does unlock new items as you progress.
While pretty much everything is bad about this game, the overall tower defense portion is decently handled, allowing the game to be some fun for those who can oversee all that’s wrong with the game. It’s hard to completely destroy a game in this genre, and that’s what prevents this game from getting absolutely no points in our grading system.
Conclusion
Tower Defense games are hard to screw up because the core of the game still remains somewhat interesting and this is also true for Phalanx of Resistance. Sadly, because of the poor mechanics, the slow gameplay, waves not spawning, the horrid sound design and the excruciatingly bad graphics, the asking price of less than a dollar is still a dollar too many. If you love the genre, either find a free to play mobile game, or pay a bit more for something decent. Perhaps with some love and care, this one could become more interesting, but we sincerely doubt that this project will ever top the charts.
Phalanx of Resistance - Review,
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