100 Word Review: PixelJunk Monsters Deluxe
Posted on 13. Oct, 2009 by Chris Evans in 100-Word Reviews, Featured, PSP, Reviews
Tower defence games were always something of an acquired taste, but Plants vs Zombies proved that with a bit of polish and streamlining they can have mass appeal. PixelJunk Monsters Deluxe achieves none of this, managing to be unnecessarily complex and tediously limiting at the same time.
Rather than using a grid, Monsters uses trees as construction points for your towers, meaning you can’t influence the direction your enemies travel in like the Desktop Tower Defence style games. Conversely, the purchase, selection and construction of towers seems overly convoluted and time consuming. While by no means a broken game, there are far better examples of the genre out there.
A copy of PixelJunk Monsters Deluxe was made available to us by the developer.
Kspraydad
Oct 14th, 2009
Dude…
The whole POINT is that it isn’t just like every grid based TDG out there. Tower selection is ‘time consuming’ because it affects strategy…want a more powerful weapon…it’ll cost you time.
You’re missing out on a wonderful game.
10/10
This is what you said about PvZ when giving it a 9/10:
Plants vs Zombies is, at heart, nothing more than a fairly run of the mill tower defence game. …There is nothing really innovative here.
Now how does THAT garner a 9/10 and PJD gets 6?
The_Malodorous_One
Oct 16th, 2009
Ha Ha. Well said Kspraydad. Every other reviewer raves about this game. Maybe this reviewer just didn’t get into it (or, to be mean, maybe he didn’t actually play it?)
Mark Cullinane
Oct 16th, 2009
That’s a bit harsh! We don’t review games unless we’ve played the heck out of them.
That being said, a lot of the online reviews for the game have been a lot more positive than Chris’.
Any thoughts Chris?
Chris Evans
Oct 16th, 2009
I fully appreciate that I’m hugely in the minority on this one, but somehow I just did not see the appeal. I stuck a lot of time into the game, but far from enjoying the experience it felt more like a chore – never a good start when you’re playing with a review in mind!
PvZ got a much higher score simply because I found it to be much more fun, regardless of how basic the core gameplay may be. PJM may offer a lot more complexity, but for me that didn’t equal more entertainment.
I’m sure Mark would agree that we appreciate any comments you have regardless though, feedback is always welcome! As always, these things are all down to personal preference, it would be pretty dull if we all agreed the whole time!