Sanctum is a brand new (Well, brand new with DLC at least.. Ok, It's about a month old already, but I've only recently gotten this urge to play games in this genre) game in the rather “casual-centric” genre of Tower Defence games. Tower Defence is very simple: There's a giant horde of evils trying to get past you. Your job is to stop them indirectly by erecting various towers that will annihilate those all who come pass. Despite being all kinds of evil, they come in waves to run past you and they don't even try attacking you, so as to maintain some sort of dignity while being shot to little bits. There's nothing else to explain about TD games really, and Sanctum continues very much in that same vein as other tower defence games. Although, there's a twist...
Unlike other TD games, Sanctum is probably the first of it's kind (as a full game that is) that mashes it up together into an FPS, meaning you not only build towers in first person, but you get to run around and shoot enemies, which gives you a little bit more sense of control. Especially in those situations where the enemies have all gotten past your towers and are slowly careening down towards your core with you yelling “NONONONONONONO!” while desperately trying to gun them down.
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| They're called Bobbleheads... Not the first thing that came to mind actually |
Anyway, at your disposal of towers are the usual suspects in any TD game. You've got the rapid firing gatling, the slow but high damage lightning, etc. The FPS weapons add a bit of extra breadth to how these games work. You're given the choice of using one of 3 weapons, an assault rifle with a grenade launcher, a sniper rifle and a freeze gun. All in all, these elements work very well. Constructing towers is as easy as selecting it from the build menu from your HUD and just pointing and clicking on the tile you want to build it on. The themes for each level are very distinct despite there being only 4 of them. Though, they quickly become a blur after the waves start coming in.
What started out as a UDK demo, has turned into quite an impressive game in itself. It's easy to discount it as a mere TD clone, but the paradigm shift from top down to first person is more than just perspective.
Unlike most TD games which are built around an RTS engine, where projectiles and movements are very precise with little to no physics in effect, being built on the Unreal engine meant that the enemies and towers adhere to the rules of the first person manshoot. Bullets actually have a trajectory and don't instantly hit their targets. This translates to mean that guns and rocket based towers are now even more dependent on positioning and their effectiveness varies depending on enemy movement. Add together the fact that all enemies have a weak spot (Which towers don't exploit) or have some unique way of dealing with them (The Hoverer can only be damaged from the back), meaning you can't exactly sit on your laurels during each wave as you'll be frantically running all over the place trying to stop stragglers from breaking through your maze of death.
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| If only you could play it from this view... Then you'd be missing the point |
But it all comes together pretty well. The weapons that you have work remarkably well together as you hot swap between different guns to maximize their use (Like freezing enemies, so you can snipe their weak spots better). The same goes for the towers of course where you have slow fields that slow enemies down so that your mortar towers can have a better chance of landing hits.
The only real gripe I have with the game is the length of each level. Since the build and defence phases are separate (because it would be quite daunting to do both at the same time), this means that each level takes a rather long time to finish. It's a problem because unlike a standard TD game where you can quickly shift your view through different parts of the level, in Sanctum, you yourself need to be right there which means either teleporting or making your way there on foot. This isn't so bad in single player where there's checkpointing every few waves, but it's excruciatingly missed in coop where endless runs can go for hours. But, I suppose that could be considered as a subtle hint for us that we should try a harder difficulty setting after surviving almost 4 hours on the Casual difficulty setting.
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| Not pictured: Me frantically screaming "RELOAD FASTER!" |
Coop's quite the thing. Almost identical to single player, except that there's now 2 of you instead of one (Quite literally, since they didn't even bother making a second player model) and they double the number of monsters. It makes the game a lot easier as you have more cash at your disposal early on and an extra trigger finger is a big plus. It's quite buggy though. Playing as the client, I had pretty high latency (Despite both of us being Malaysians) and some of the animations and weapon prompts bug out every now and then (Leaving me trying to guess when my freeze gun has reloaded). Aside from the fact that I was as accurate as a Quake 3 player on dial-up, the game's still perfectly playable.
It's not exactly the most content rich TD game out there, with only 4 maps (Plus 1 with the latest free DLC, with the devs promising more) and about a dozen enemy types, it can be quite difficult to justify. But it's so much more involving than your standard TD games. Being an active component (And sometimes vital) during defending is what makes this standout from the rest. It's not exactly an easy game either, so you can spend plenty of time honing your tower combinations as you try to climb the leaderboards.
Pros:
- Interesting take on Tower Defence with FPS mechanics
- Cheap
- Wide variety in enemy types that require non-conventional TD tactics
- 2 player coop
Cons:
- Only 5 levels so far
- Games can take a long time to play out.
- Coop has no saves and is a little buggy
Verdict: FPS and TD makes for an interesting combination for any TD stalwart
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