Overview

Savage Moon is a tower defense game for the PSN. I personally have always thought of tower defense as a game best suited for the PC, but I was eager to see it on a console.  Does it work? And if so does it manage to be a fun game as well? Read our full review to find out…

Gameplay

Savage Moon works well as a tower defense game, and is very well put together. The object of the game is very simple; protect your mining facility from insect-like aliens who want to destroy your operation.  This premise works very well because it requires very little explanation and provides endless amounts of enemies for you to destroy. These aliens come in waves of increasing strength and are either land or air based.

To combat these aliens you are given the ability to create towers all over the terrain you are trying to protect. There are a few different types of towers for you to choose from, with each having their own specialty and weakness. They are all upgradable, but not any choice between upgrades just a generic upgrade choice. You must research extra towers and upgrades which gives a little more of a strategy element when you choose which towers to combat the forces attacking you.

The biggest problem that I have encountered with the gameplay of Savage Moon is the fact that the best and easiest way to win each level is just to build as much as you can, and then upgrade every tower to the maximum level. It almost feels like an RTS instead of tower defense since the player has no real control of the towers that are defending and it’s just the building and upgrading that the player is involved in. This is a problem that many veterans of this type of game may be used to and accept, but I almost feel too far away from the action to feel truly involved with everything that is going on.

Graphics

It is tough to judge a game like Savage Moon on its visuals because the visuals were obviously not the top priority. That is not to say that it’s a bad looking game, but it isn’t particularly good either. The graphics themselves are decent at best and would be right at home maybe during the last generation of consoles which is understandable given the $10 pricetag.

The color scheme is rather plain with blood and explosions taking up most of the environment with small little hills all around the map to put the towers on.  It is unfortunate that the game doesn’t look better because it does seem to have the potential. The enemies are all rather bland, and won’t surprise anyone who has seen aliens of their type, and are almost exactly the same as any you have seen before which is unfortunate.

Fun Factor

It is tough to say that Savage Moon is a fun game because of how distant the action feels, and how little control the player really gets. Don’t get me wrong, fun can be had in the building of a huge army of towers, and then watching them demolish a small army of aliens. This can be fun for a short amount of time, but after a while it gets old and tiring with no real incentive to continue. There is no story to speak of, and everything sort of looks and feels the same.

Overall

Savage Moon is a tough game to categorize because it is a tough game to really explain. It does have its moments with some pretty cool action, and some upgrades to mix up the way the towers work. It is a well put together game as I stated before, but it isn’t quite the game I was expecting. I was expecting a tower defense game because that is how it was described, but it was almost certainly more of an RTS that just focuses on the construction small towers. Some people could find fun in this game, but sadly I didn’t enjoy my time with Savage Moon too much or too often.