Savage Moon – PlayStation 3 hands-on review

Took me more than a day to finally convince myself to get this game. The main reason is because the game consists of only 12 levels and second reason is I’m a cheap gamer. In the end its the combination of sci-fi theme plus the fact that I’m a semi-hardcore fan of tower defense strategy games that made me make the purchase. I was a bit skeptical at first but after playing the first 4 levels, I must say this game offers a lot of content for the price I paid.

The goal of the game is simple, defend the mining operation from swamps of deadly alien insects called Insectocytes. The first 3 levels are basically tutorials, although you can switch off in the Options menu if you decide to replay those levels and I’m pretty sure you will. Just like any other tower defense strategy games, you will always start with the basic towers, just like PixelJunk Monsters, but instead of an arrow tower, your first tower will be a machine gun tower. By killing of waves and waves of enemies which gradually grow stronger than the previous waves, you will earn money to research new towers as well as upgrade your existing towers (up to level 5). You can als earn more money by advancing the enemy waves, if you feel that you can handle more without preparations.

Unlike PixelJunk Monsters where different types of enemies only take away one life from the total (one villager), different enemies take away different amount of health in Savage Moon. The stronger the enemy the more health or damage it will deal to your mining operation’s overall health.

As I mentioned before that this game offers more than what you are paying for, at least in my opinion. There are a couple of features that are not in PixelJunk Monsters – Command system, new types of towers that can be researched and you can rotate/zoom in and out of the map as well as camera mode from a particular tower.

Another difference between this game and PixelJunk Monsters is that you can only build a limited number of towers based on the available drop pods, even if you have the resources to build more. This makes the game more challenging as you need to plan carefully where you want to place the towers. A very nice feature. But don’t worry, the number will refill itself after each wave.

The command system has three aspects – more money per kill, stronger tower attacks and defense. At one time you can only have up to two of the three prioritized and sacrificing the third aspect. Or you can choose to have all three balanced. Early on you will pick more money per kill plus more fire power so that you can build up more, upgrade existing towers and research new ones.

There are also new types of towers to defend your mining operation such as the Repair Tower that will constantly repair nearby towers and Amp Tower that will make your nearby towers stronger as well as the very useful Block Tower that will allow you to block a path (not all paths can be blocked) by building multiple of these towers beside each other. Other towers can also be built on top of these Block Towers. There are more powerful ones as you progress through the game, I haven’t finished the game yet but I know there are more just by looking at different loading screens. I can’t wait til I get my hands on the Orbital Tower!

One negative comment I have for this game is the lack of multiplayer support (co-op) but I am sure a simple patch can change that?

Overall this game isn’t easy, except for the first 3 levels. The 4th level on Duergar on Xipe took me a few tries before figuring out what’s the best to deal with those pain-in-the-ass giant Insectocytes. This level is the first challenging level that will sure frustrates a lot of people playing for the first time. For those that are stuck on this level, just build a lot of Mortar Towers and you should be fine, at first I thought the Laser Towers would take them out quicker but I was wrong. And don’t forget to upgrade them as much as possible.

Most of the time you will use your money for researching, upgrading and building towers but occasionally you will want to use the Repair Base option to repair your damaged base.

PixelJunk Monsters has a relaxing and cartoonish feel to it, on the other hand Savage Moon has a totally different theme that takes place in space. Graphics are obviously more realistic, I am not criticizing PixelJunk Monsters’ graphics though because it was meant to be cartoonish and unrealistic. While its not Metal Gear Solid or Call of Duty quality, the graphics are more than enough to justify the price you pay.

I think the audio is what stands out the most besides the game play. When you kill waves after waves of enemies, you will constantly hear death screams which are very, very satisfying. I also love the sound each tower makes when it fires as well as when it upgrades and transforms into a stronger tower (great animation too!).

I highly recommend this little downloadable game on PlayStation Network for 9.99+tax. Fans of the sci-fi Tower Defense genre will not be disappointed with its refreshing style of game play. If I was to pick between PixelJunk Monsters and Savage Moon, I think I will pick Savage Moon over Monsters because there are just more things to do and the battles are much more intensive. Let’s hope there will be add-ons for this game in the future.

8.5/10

[Update]: If you are looking for Savage Moon walkthrough, there isn’t any so far, not even in gamefaq.com. But I have found video walkthrough from PSU’s Savage Moon Walkthrough

Image source: PlayStation.Blog @ Flickr

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This entry was posted on Saturday, February 14th, 2009 at 6:12 pm