Fieldrunners (PSN Mini) Review

Fieldrunners (PSN Mini) Review

Subatomic Studios hopes to provide a fun and compelling pick up and play mini with Fieldrunners, a tower defense game, with weapons mayhem and addicting gameplay.

Theres five maps in Fieldrunners but you'll have to reach wave 50 on one the unlock the next. The maps gain in difficulty quite dramatically even when playing on easy mode. Reaching the highest wave of 100 will unlock two more modes for that map. Extended mode will add three more towers to your weapons range and Endless adds the three extra towers plus does exactly as the name suggests.

The towers are you're basic types for tower defense games, you have a less powerful but fast shooter, a slow but powerful missile shooter, a tower that shoots goo that temporarily slows down an enemy and a tower that is middle ranged, powerful but not to fast. The three extra towers in unlocked in the extra modes are a flamethrower tower that shoots constantly and is powerful but doesn't have much range, a laser shooter that is very slow but powerful and a mine shooter that is powerful with long range outwards but cants shoot anything close to it.

The towers are evenly strengthened out but when upgrading you can only upgrade twice and it doesn't make you feel more powerful with each upgrade. It would have been nice to be able to put points out to different sections, like speed, power, etc.

You gain you're points by destroying enemy's, different amount of points depending on the enemy. Theres a wide enough range of enemy's to, fast enemy's, tough enemy's, and a mix of all makes for not a one winged game.

This isn't your average tower defense game either, theres is a lot stronger of emphasis on strategy than most tower defense games. Simply placing towers all over the map wont work out, planning a strategy from the start is essential, thus the ability to pause the game is a good thing to do.

The games backgrounds look good, full of colors and nice cartoon effect. The towers looks good as well but i had a problem with the enemy designs, they looks very bland and like little red dots running across you're screen. The music is ok and suits into the game just fine, but can become a little repetitive and annoying.

High scores are kept on a leaderboard and you'll most likely fill it up with your name, unless you share you PS3/PSP with someone else. An online leaderboard would have been appreciated for a game likes this, even just an ability to share you're scores with friends. Beating you're own scores isn't as exciting today as it was in the Arcade era.

Fieldrunners is an addicting game and fun to play, its the kinda game that'll make you wanna keep coming back just because you know you can do better. The strategy element is good but the upgrading system for your towers doesn't back that up and online leaderboards would have greatly benefited this game. For the price range its well worth it, its enjoyable and fun just to pick up and play.

Gameplay: 8

Presentation: 7.5

Sound: 7

Replay Value: 8.5

Overall: 8.0