iEntry 10th Anniversary
RSS
AboutDefend Your Castle {Wii Ware}
November 25th, 2008 by Reinier
Defend Your Castle Screen Shot
Release Date: May 12, 2008
Developer: XGen Studios
Genre: Action
Wii Points: 500
Fair
Defend Your Castle is a recreation of the popular Flash game released by XGen Studios. The concept is very simple. You have a castle and all these stick figures come and try to break into that castle. The castle has to be defended from the stick figures. This seems like it works very well as a free Flash title on the PC, but the real question is whether it warrants a 500 points purchase on WiiWare.
Killing the stick figures is fun at first. It really is. It sounds awesome to pick one of those stick figures and torture it to no end. They can also be converted to your side once the pit of conversion is purchased. Once that happens, the converted stick figures are put to work in your castle. After about 30 minutes though, watching the attacking stick figures die just gets old, no matter how they are disposed of.
As with a lot of Wii games, multiplayer is the best way to play this game. People can easily enter a game that has already started. The one with the most points at the end of a round becomes a “general” of sorts, getting to pick which upgrades are bought. Getting four players together to work towards a common goal of defending the castle is great and has the potential for some epic moments of teamwork. Without a good storyline though, playing Defend You Castle alone is a lonely experience.
There is no music in this game either. Something that might have really helped is having climactic music play when the castle is about to be broken into. That would have made a more tense and anxious, but fun experience. But I suppose the transfer of this game from a free Flash download to something people have to pay for is not enough of a reason to give Defend Your Castle more than a couple of nifty sound effects.
I actually love the art style of this game. The style is bad, but it’s done that way on purpose, in the same fashion as Mega Man 9. XGen went for a certain look and for the most part nailed it. But as good as the style is, there is not enough variety. I am looking at essentially the same exact castle, the same exact hill background, and the same exact stick figures the whole time. Some trees might have helped to create more variety. There has to be something different they can put in the background.
This is the type of game that sounds perfect when one is sitting in the back of a classroom or lecture hall with nothing to do. But paying 500 points to play this game in the bedroom alone is a steep price to pay, especially when you consider that a lot more can be bought for 500 points in the NES section of the Virtual Console store. But if you know for certain that friends can be brought over to play this, then the price becomes acceptable by the slightest of margins.
Category: Wii Ware Game Reviews | 1 Comment »
