One of WiiWare's launch games was Defend Your Castle, a fairly good yet now mostly forgotten title based on the flash game of the same name, in which the objective was quite simple: defend your castle from endless waves of enemies until it finally crumbled. Mindscape and Kaolink must've been inspired by the title, because Army Defender plays almost exactly the same.
Army Defender is played holding the DSi like a book, similar to games like Brain Training/Age. You control a lonely soldier manning a cannon atop his army base on the right (touch) screen, while the enemies will appear from the left side of the other screen. The goal is the same as Defend Your Castle: prevent them from demolishing your base by blowing them all up.
Because of the DSi's touch screen the game is incredibly simple to play. Just touch an area around your cannon and it'll fire in that direction. But that's not all you'll have to do; apparently not one, but two armies want you wiped off the map, and as such both green and red soldiers and vehicles will be attacking you. The solution to this? Simple, just tap your cannon or hit any of the DSi's buttons (Aside from start and select) and your cannon, as well as its shots, will change colour between green and red. You must hit all enemies with the right colour to defeat them — mismatched shots will simply pass through them.
If it takes you too long to defeat an enemy, they'll begin firing at you. Some, like infantry, won't do this until they're right next to your base, but others, such as fighter jets, will begin firing shortly after they appear. Thankfully, shots of both colours will destroy the bullets, missiles and other attacks, but you've got to be quick because they move quite fast. If things get too hairy you also have a special trick up your sleeve — you can tap a nuke button in the top-right corner to fire off a nuke which instantly vaporizes every enemy on both screens. Be wary though, because you've only got a limited supply; you can earn them back by defeating enemies.
It's here where Army Defender goes off in a bit of a different direction than Defend Your Castle. Rather than being able to customize your stats after each round, the game will automatically do so for you. You will randomly receive increases to the amount of shots you fire off per attack, the refill speed of your nukes, and the amount of continues you have. Yes, you read that right — should you fail the mission and lose your base, you've got a limited amount of continues to continue right where you failed, rather than having the last hour or so of gameplay suddenly coming to an end.
The game offers a total of three modes, although they're all practically the same. Tutorial mode will teach you how to play, while Beginner and Expert are both the main game but different difficulties. There are seperate highscore boards for both Beginner and Expert, and that's all there is to it.
The game looks pretty basic, but the graphics have a certain appeal to them. There's quite a bunch of different enemies, and they're all decently well animated. There's only one song during gameplay, and although it fits the army theme well, you will likely barely notice it.
Conclusion
Although there's not really much to do other than playing the game over and over again trying to beat your highscores, it's hard to criticize Army Defender. It does a good job of bringing the popular "defense" game to DSiWare and is fun to play. With its 200 DSi Points price tag it's also extremely cheap, making it one of the better choices in said price range.
Comments (31)
Looks like a pretty good time killer. Especially, for a meager 200 points.
This sounds like a great deal!
I love wars
@JayArr I agree with you. I think It would make a perfect game to play in the car or something. I was really suprised when I came to the end of the review and found it was only 200 points. I won't be getting this probably-The points I get are going towards electroplankton, uno, and pinball.
well ima get dsi next year
Only 200 points? I may consider this.
this is a game im getting as soon as it comes out!
Perhaps I'll pick this up when I next have a few spare points kicking around. I just spent my last 200 points on myNotebook.
Hope this comes to the States sometime soon.
I want this and UNO.
Okay...now I'm jelous.
Other than the screen setup Army Defender is nothing like DYC, it's more like that old game where you're in a flak battery on the ground and have to shoot down paratroopers before they land.
What's an important part of AD is the combo system, hit enemies without missing an entire volley and your combo goes up (maximum 10) but miss with a whole volley and it goes back down. Since the bonuses at the end of the stage depend on your score you'll want to shoot carefully instead of rapid firing at everything that's there.
Reminds me of "Apple Assault" on Warioware Twisted, if anyone remembers it.
Actually, sounds like a pretty good dsiware time-pass.
When will this come out in NZ!?!?!?!
i NEED A DSI okay pull urself together and just wait for 13 months
Great review,
This has got to be one of the best 200 points games,
I love playing this with a nice warm drink...
...NOOO, i died!
quit making me jealous... ol' chap
"Reminds me of "Apple Assault" on Warioware Twisted, if anyone remembers it."
I loved Apple Assault for Wario Ware. If this is similar that is a good thing.
Got it today, not sure what to make of it. Seems real basic and simple, but for $2 what do u expect?
I got it a few days ago and have to say that for 200 points it is a very fun game. You can just play for an hour or so and then change to another DSiware or DS game and give Defender another go the next day.
For $2 there really isn't much to complain about...
Dang, I'm running out of room on my DSi's memory. I wish nintendo would come out with an update that allows me to store AND play games off of my SD card
I reviewed this on DSiHub.com and this game is such a great buy for 200 DSi Points.
Worth the points my highest is like 7 million
highest score
I have it & it rocks!!
this game would be a lot better without the color change thing
I wanted to buy this after reading the review but I cannot find it in the EU store under:
It seems likely it's been removed, but on the off-chance anyone knows if it was renamed and repriced by a different published can you tell me what it's called now? Thanks
@IwatasBananas: Are you searching from a 3DS or a DSi? I can see it on my 3DS just fine via the eShop (then again, I'm in the US, so ymmv?). If you're searching from a DSi, i remember it was pretty notorious for not picking up things via title search unless you put the entire title into your search, so instead of just looking for 'army', try 'army defender'.
@theblackdragon Hey, thanks for your reply.
I abandoned the search function completely, and just went item by item completely through the stores of both consoles.
I can say with absolute confidence that this title is not for sale in the EU (anymore?)
I absolutely love this game, a true hidden gem. If you have €2 (or maybe even still 200 DSi Points) laying around, don't hestitate to pick it up.
A so-so game.
Fun in the first couple of hours, very repetitive after.
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