Review: Day D Tower Rush

Dinosaurs, Towers, and Mayhem. A deadly combination!

Good 'Tower Defense' games are hard to come by on the PlayStation Vita if only by virtue of the limited quantity available to us. Indeed, there are only about half a dozen tower defense games available on the Vita so when Day D Tower Rush released one day in recent memory onto the PlayStation Store, I was intrigued.

I didn't know much about it and Googling the game filled me in little more. There was no PlayStation Blog post about the release, I found only one review on the title that gave it a terrible score, and some links leading to its place on the App Store and Google Play Store. All in all, little to go on.

I decided to hold off on the purchase since even though it is extremely inexpensive ringing up for only $5.99. I had games on the way and I told myself Day D Tower Rush would just get lost in the shuffle. This method of thinking didn't last long though as soon enough I bought the game with the spare cash I had on my account in case of a sudden flash sale.

The concept of Day D Tower Rush is certainly an imaginative one, but is hardly delved into with any sort of story telling. The basic idea is a scientist creates a time machine and gets sent to the Age of the Dinosaurs and thus has to protect himself with towers against waves and waves of enemy dinosaurs. Exciting, right? Sounds like a movie's plotline, it's a shame it isn't delved into very deeply.

Even though it isn't ventured into, to a high degree, it is a topic that is broached a bit each new level. As you progress through the levels new towers unlock which are presumably the creation of this man's genius.

Much like any other Tower Defense game you start out with your generic ballista tower and work your way up to a catapult in terms of weaponry at your disposal, but there are other interesting tower twists as well. Two passive towers are a resource producing tower which generates the currency you use in missions periodically as well as a drum tower which are purported to makes sound that Dinosaurs hate, strengthening the towers in its immediate area.

Each tower can be upgraded a certain amount of times to be more effective while in a mission and in the case of the weaponized towers they can gain different uses through certain upgrades. Your ballista towers can morph into towers that shoot sticky webs or ice to slow down or stop your opponent. Catapult towers? Pay the piper and you can have Rocket Launching Towers at your disposal.

One of the interesting characteristics of this game is its use of helpful "Geo-Charges", power-ups that help you dispose of the enemy in short order.

There are 5 in total:

• High Voltage - Temporarily lends boosts of range and power to all your towers.

• Deep Freeze - Creates a mountain of ice at a point you choose stopping enemies from advancing.

• Earthquake - Deals high amount of damage to monsters in the area you choose.

• Acid - Poisons and slowly deals damage to any Dinosaur that passes over where you have laid it.

• Meteor Shower - A meteor shower falls over the area you have chosen dealing damage to all enemies passing through it. 

If you're one for a challenge, this game certainly has a lot going for it in terms of difficulty. It has been very challenging for me to find the right combinations of towers to give me the tools to win on various levels, several have taken a great bit of trial and error to overcome. It helps that as far as I can tell the waves of enemies in each match are the same. Each time you play and get a bit further you have extra information on what to expect and how to react.

Something I've come to enjoy while playing this game is being shown before the mission starts what new Dinosaur you'll face. You can see just below I selected the Fast-oh-saurus to show you.

"Fast-oh-saurus is a fast dinosaur that dies fast."

It's a lame joke, yes, but it brought a smile to my face as do the other witticisms that are presented along with the other Dinos as they enter the fray.

Day D Tower Rush is not a game that is jammed full of extra content like PixelJunk Monsters Ultimate HD is by any stretch of the imagination. Unlike the aforementioned title, Day D Tower Rush lacks any multiplayer, medal challenges, or ad-hoc play. That said, it is also less than half the cost of the that game, so if you don't care about those features then you could in theory get a competent tower defense game on the cheap.

Note: I said "in theory."

As much as I enjoy this, the game unfortunately has its issues that could be quite annoying to some people and make the extra cost to avoid or the simple savings of not getting involved the better choice.

My largest complaint with the game is its audio issues. For whatever reason a horrific static-y and nail-scraping-on-the-chalkboard-y set of noises start appearing out of nowhere giving me a headache and causing me to turn my Vita's volume off to keep my sanity while playing. This noise can only be stopped by turning the Vita's volume down as I have tried adjusting the in-game music and sound effect to no effect. In fact, I turned both off and the noise was still trying to break my windows.

If you don't listen to in-game music much anyway, this shouldn't bother you. I haven't had the opportunity to test it as of yet with my music from the Vita's music player, so perhaps I'll give that a test-run later on.

Day D Tower Rush has frozen up on me requiring my Vita to have the power button held to force the shut off. This instance actually occurred in conjunction with a bout of audio issues, so if the two are connected I'm not quite sure. All through the freezing the audio issues continued, right to the moment my Vita forcefully shut itself down. This problem has only happened once, but I may just be lucky seeing it so little. It is definitely out there lurking as a risk.

Something that isn't much of a bother to me, but would be to some is that everything in this game is seemingly monetized.

While you don't need to spend the money in my experience, it is impossible to avoid the option to spend money. As you can see in the picture below, straight from the beginning you have the option to skip applying a little elbow grease into the game and getting the second set of missions. The cost? $0.99.

You can also pay another $0.99 to unlock all of the first level's missions as well.

During a mission if you are short on bones you can use in-game currency to purchase a tower or upgrade. You are reminded of this possibility if you should accidentally click an upgrade or tower you can't yet afford, as I have done several times.

In what is possibly the most glaring method to spend your money you can, as you see in the picture just below, buy a tower spot.

If you'll look towards the center of the screen you'll see a tower spot different than the others. It holds a boost on it. How do you make use of this spot? By spending in-game currency that while you get through normal gameplay, hardly get enough to spend carefree on spots like these. Most levels have on or more of them, but I've only availed myself of them once during the tutorial when they were explaining them so it once again isn't necessarily something you HAVE to buy, but it is impossible to not be reminded you can. It's pretty clear that you have quite a dew different ways to find monetization in the game.

I don't regret my purchase and feel that I have gotten my monie worth of it so far as I have played, just about to the point of clearing the first level at the bare minimum, but unless the issues with the audio and freezing were patched I couldn't recommend the game to anyone. It has the potential to be a great game, but it isn't one you are losing much out on by foregoing the adventure.

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This review was written previously and shelved, so I'd like to add a little update. 

Since that time where I said I just about fully beat the first set of 20 missions I have played a good bit more of the game, coming extremely close to 100% completing it.

I can emphatically state that there is NO need to pay a dime for in-game currency.

Here are two pictures of my current progress.