Sitting down in front of my computer on Saturday afternoon, I was browsing the demos on Steam, and I saw one called Defense Grid: The Awakening, developed by Hidden Path Entertainment. I like tower defense games and was looking for some quick entertainment, so I downloaded it. Less than an hour later, I was buying the game with great anticipation and excitement! Tower defense games aren’t new, but Hidden Path has managed to put together a really fun game that offers many hours of fun and quite a bit of replayability.

The hours of fun come from numerous levels that are available (20 according to the official Web site). But it isn’t just the number of maps, it’s the multiple modes you can play each map in, as well as the changing enemy composition each time you play a given level. Each level offers opportunities for different strategies, different initial setups and more. The better you know the map, the better you are able to create a good defense, though it is not always foolproof as the makeup of the enemy waves changes each game.

You have numerous types of enemies to face and defeat and many types of towers at your disposal with which to defend your power cores. The enemies are quite varied and come in your usual flavors, from the slow plodding but heavily armored Rhino to the fast moving but very weak Racer. But there are some doozies thrown in for good measure, such as the massive Crasher or Juggernaut that plods along but has a massive amount of health to the Seeker, an alien that can open dimensional portals that let even more aliens onto the map.

Towers form the core of your defense and range from the basic gun or flame turrets to missile launchers, concussion grenades, and even meteor strikes and temporal rings that can slow down enemy movement, giving you more time to shoot at them. In addition, towers can be upgraded twice, further increasing their damage, rate of fire and range.

If you manage to hold off the enemy successfully, the mission ends and your score is calculated, taking into account various factors such as towers built or upgraded, resources stockpiled, power cores lost or retained, and so on. Your score is then logged and compared to others on the online leaderboard. This was a great way to see my rank, compare myself to my friends and to see that there was indeed room for improvement on the map!

One thing Defense Grid has in spades is great graphics. Hidden Path did a masterful job with the details on the maps and even on the units and towers. There are three levels of detail in each game, and you can zoom in by scrolling the mouse wheel. The closer you zoom, the closer to the action you are and the less you can see of your surroundings. But you can really get down into the nitty-gritty of the action!

I find myself alternating between the first two zoom levels quite a bit in the game, using the widest view to scout the map and place new towers or devise strategies, and then using the closer view to observe the action itself.

One additional feature that has come in extremely useful is the checkpoint saves. After each wave of enemies, the game creates a checkpoint and saves your progress so that if you exit the game you can return to the middle of the battle where you left off the next time. But it has an additional benefit that is very useful; by pressing the backspace key during the game, you will back up the level to the previous checkpoint. Pressing additional times moves it even further back. This way, if something goes horribly wrong with your defense (which happens a LOT!), you can simply use your quick undo/redo.

The checkpoint save feature and the ability to quickly back up the action helps make up for the lack of a pause since you can redo portions of each level as many times as you like, learning the map and forming the perfect defense for the upcoming wave(s) of attackers.

If there is any downside or negative to the game, it is the lack of a map editor to give players the ability to create more levels and extend the life of the game. But, Defense Grid: The Awakening has been out a very short period of time and so such a feature may be released in the future.

Finally, at this time, there is no version of Defense Grid for the Xbox 360, though I read on the forums for the game that it is planned and should be released on Xbox Live Arcade in the coming weeks or months. Overall, Defense Grid: The Awakening is a great game that is a lot of fun and well worth the price.