Gamertell

Title: TapDefense
Price: Free
System(s): iPhone and iPod Touch
Release Date: November, 24, 2008
Publisher (Developer): LL Group, LLC
ESRB Rating: “Rated 9+” for Mild Cartoon or Fantasy Violence
Pros: The game is free, runs smoothly, and the online score competition offers up enough incentive to keep replaying.
Cons: Forces you to visit sponsors to save your game, no music, sound effects are repetitive.
Overall Score: Two thumbs up, 90/100, A-, **** out of five.

TapDefense for the iPhone and iPod Touch is your basic tower defense game with touch controls and a Heaven vs. Hell theme. There are various demon types that run through a simple maze trying to avoid being slaughtered by your towers attacks, as they clamor to the gates of Heaven.

Tapping Your Defenses

TapDefense’s main objective is simple but accomplishing that objective steadily grows more and more difficult and that’s really what makes this game so fun. Starting off with a decent amount of gold, it’s up to you to strategically place up to six types of towers, so that the armies of Hell never cross Heaven’s gate.

At the start, you can choose to place an Arrow tower, a Water tower, or a Cannon tower with each tower having its own attributes to use to your advantage. As you progress through levels, you will collect gold from killed demons and income, to spend on more towers or to upgrade ones you already have. You will also earn Halos, which allow you to research more tower types, such as the Magic tower and Earthquake tower.

Once you either reach level 42 or finally have been overcome by those stupid locusts, you will be able to save your score to the online boards to see how you rank against other players.

Power Through?

TapDefense doesn’t have a lot going on in the graphics department but that’s OK because what’s there is good. It’s a simple game with a simple look and that’s all it needs.

The sound department however, well there isn’t much of one to speak of. Either something is wrong with my iPhone or there’s no music in this game, only repetitive sound effects that will drive you bonkers after a while. Luckily you can listen to your music or podcasts via the iPod while playing.

Using touch screen controls is not as special as it may seem since it’s reserved to clicking through menus and pointing to where you want to build towers. I will say, however, that the touch recognition works seamlessly. Not once did the game misunderstand where I was pressing my finger.

Nice Stronghold

TapDefense is fun game that offers enough of an experience to help you knock some of the transit time off your bus ride or kill twenty minutes of your work day.

That’s the point of these iPhone/iPod Touch games, to offer short burst fun and that’s what you are getting here and it’s free. Plus, it looks good and, while the sound is sub-par, you can easily remedy that with your own tunes. 

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