PixelJunk: Monsters (PlayStation Store Game Re-Review)

Note: Way back in the Summer of 2008, I wrote an actually quite dreadful review of this game. It's certainly not something I'm proud of, and, come to think of it, I don't consider anything I've written before the Angels & Demons review in May 2009 as worth half a damn (doubly true of the pre-September 2008 period). I personally feel that that was my turning point from "writing to some arbitrary illusory publication standard" to "writing with the intention of formulating genuinely interesting insights." And this isn't just because that's the occasion when my reviews began to crack the 1,000 word threshold regularly. It's because that's when I felt I began to dig beyond the surface of plot/acting/presentation looking for things to say about cinematography/narrative structure and cohesion/technological refinement, etc. Looking for neat things in the finer details worth talking about, generally.

One of the reasons I rewrote this review was so that I could discover how much better (if any) I've become at writing in the time since Summer 2008. This wasn't the main reason, however. No, the real point of this was so I could enter a criticizing contest on the Escapist's User Review forums with the prize being a published guest review. A pretty good foot in the door by any standard, even if I don't end up pursuing it entirely.

Unfortunately, my entry got nixed in the first round. Not by a land slide, mind (in fact only by one vote), but it's out of the running nevertheless. Either I'll have to wait for the next competition or just deal with the bureaucratic traditional guest submission process for my next shot.

Anyway, here's the rewritten review. It's a shade under 1,000 words, and should easily be a step up from its progenitor by any standard. Also, the contest called for an "indie game" to be reviewed, hence my selection. I personally think it's great, but what the hell do I know? This was the contest's first casualty after all...

PixelJunk: Monsters

I was once a cynical person who looked at downloadable games from the PlayStation Store and the like as tantamount to browser games; cheap trinkets only useful for frittering away empty time. And while I can’t in good conscience say that I’ve been cured of this perspective, I have come to realize, however, that this isn’t entirely the case. PixelJunk, for example, is a series of downloadable PlayStation 3 games created by small teams of developers from Japanese based Q-Games. Their catalogue is four games strong in just two and a half years, and more remarkable than that is how varied their catalogue is. They’ve already got a racer, shooter, platformer, and tower defender under their belt, and I can confidently say that the two lattermost games are exceptional. I will be reviewing their tower defender, PixelJunk Monsters, today.

Tower defence is arguably the simplest statement of real time strategy gameplay. Every game in this genre features a base, a selection of towers for the defence of said base, and an assortment of persistent foes from which said base must be defended. And while the gameplay of PixelJunk Monsters doesn’t deviate terribly far from the well established conventions of the tower defence genre, it nonetheless endeavours to throw a few novel spins on a largely stale idea. Yes, there are towers, and yes, the primary function of those towers is to defend, but there’s a bit more to it than that. The combination of the fully predictable levels and the paper-scissors-rock gameplay manages to create a surprisingly appealing and addictive experience. Each level in Monsters consists of either 10 or 20 waves of baddies (depending on the difficulty setting) and each wave is comprised of a single sort of monster that staunchly marches the exact same path in the exact same formation. One might think that such banality would detract from the spontaneity and excitement of the assaults, but this simply isn’t the case. Seeing swarms of enemies getting decimated by mortars and flamethrowers never gets old, and the panic instilled in the player when the odd monster slips through the cracks and threatens victory is often very real, if occasionally a tad cheap.

Complimenting the very formulaic and very predictable AI is a generally well balanced array of towers, each possessing their own strengths and weaknesses against certain enemy types. The player has 500 gold coins at the start of each level with which to build their initial defences of four or five towers. By default, three towers are available at the beginning of each stage: the arrow tower, which is the standard all-rounder, along with the anti-air gun and cannon tower, which are effective against flying and ground critters respectively. Six other towers, including a laser, tesla, and hive tower, can be unlocked over the course of each level at the expense of blue gems, a rare item collected from fallen foes. Gold coins are also dropped constantly and need to be snatched up so as to increase the defensive lines warding off swathes of baddies.

One of the more interesting features of Monsters is how the player is actually required to run around the battlefield to collect items and build towers in real time. Most of the tower defence games I’m familiar with (Defend Your Castle, Lock’s Quest, etc.) give the player a window of down time between waves of action so that they have a chance to collect and organize themselves. However with Monsters, there is no down time. Everything the player needs to do must be accomplished with the seemingly endless stream of enemies stepping towards your base at a murderous stride. There is no intermission or break that lets you regroup, seize plunder, and tweak your defences. For this reason, there’s a particular fervour that arises when you’re zipping through battle lines picking up coins, building new towers, and powering up existing ones. It’s doubly peculiar considering how it’s some rather rigid and methodical core mechanics that are eliciting genuine intensity.

Visually, Monsters is simple and crisp. There are no ground breaking visuals to be had here. Instead, there’s a very charming and sensible art style, presented in full 1080p HD. The core colour palette makes use of soft and subdued earth tones with the only vibrancy in game coming from the occasional sparkling blue gem and the effects from the stronger towers. Even the character models are dressed in soothing and agreeable bands of colour. Browns and greens dominate, evoking an idyllic sense of nature. In fact the overall aesthetic is so pleasing and refined that almost any in game screenshot feels like it could be framed and mounted.

The music functions on a similar level of tranquility as the graphics, largely consisting of airy and peaceful synthesized sound loops. It’s quite repetitive, especially considering how many times a short track can cycle through a lengthy level, but it’s never obtrusive, which is what matters most. The sound bytes, on the other hand, can occasionally be a bit discordant. Each type of enemy sounds alike, as does each type of tower. When dozens of identical enemies are being attacked by dozens of identical towers, the ensuing dense torrent of noise does occasionally become a tad grating.

Yet despite some minor audio quibbles and gameplay that, for as hectic as it can sometimes be, is nonetheless entirely stiff and routine, PixelJunk Monsters is an excellent title. Tower defence games have seen a bit of a resurgence in recent years owing in no small part to the likes of the PlayStation Store and WiiWare, and Monsters seems to stand at the forefront of this particular renaissance. Its well balanced gameplay and breezy aesthetic makes it an easy buy, either for a $5 pittance on the PlayStation Store or for the $20 PSP Deluxe edition.