Savage Moon: The Hera Campaign is a Tower Defence/Strategy game which was originally on the PS3 and imported onto the PSP. Your objective is to place towers on 20 Imoons and defend your base against oncoming Insectocytes. You have a choice of the usual weapons present in TD games - machine guns, air defence, large-area and long range. Again, there is also a decent selection of enemies ready to assault your base, including, ground, air and also insects that will retaliate.
What’s Hot:
- The music fits in with the dark and sinister theme.
- Very simple tower selection menu, making it easy to navigate while in combat.
- Strategic pre-game screen works well.
- A port from the PS3 PSN version, which has worked well.
- There is 20 Imoons which will keep the player challenged.
- Well worth the £6.29 price tag.
- Vengeance mode gives the game some significant lasting appeal.
- Most levels can be approached from a strategic outlook or a Rambo type of playing.
- Good range of enemies.
- Command skills a good addition to TD.
What’s Not:
- Sometimes awkward to place towers in desired areas.
- Takes too long between waves.
- A very steep learning curve, higher difficulties are near impossible.
- The camera is quite awkward at times, and can only be zoomed in and out. Panning could be added.
- No multiplayer mode.
The game is set in The Hera Cluster and your job is to defend 20 Imoons (Planets) from an onslaught of unpleasant creatures, you must endure a set amount of waves on each planet, when your health gets to 0, the game ends and you run the risk of losing an Imoon to the Insectocytes (Insects).
Intertwined with the main game is a mini-strategy type game in which you have to allocate yourself resources for each attack, based on how many waves and the types of enemies that will be present. This adds an interesting twist to the game and does make you think much more tactically about your playing style, for those that don’t really care for that sort of thing, there is a recommended amount of resources displayed as well.
The graphics aren’t stunning in any way, but we are talking about a PSP and there are limitations on what can be done, they are still decent and the gory art style ties in well with the gameplay and sound. The gameplay is top-notch, with only a few minor discrepancies. There is a good selection of towers to choose from, which can be upgraded up to 4 four times. There are also some extras, which other tower defence games don’t have. There is a blocking tower which is used to carve a strategic path for your enemies to follow or you can just make lots of towers and hope that brute force does the job, so it caters for both audiences.
Command Skills have been added, which enables the player to change certain aspects of the gameplay, they can either make their damage stronger, better defence or a higher credit income but using one will result in something else being affected negatively. This is a good addition, especially when your struggling in a certain area. There is a very steep learning curve though, anything above normal is just ridiculously hard, even normal is challenging for experienced TD players.
Upgrading and navigating the tower menus is very simple and easy to pick up on. Some problems with the gameplay are hard to spot but they do make themselves known, there is quite a long wait between waves, which can be fixed with the Advance Wave function, but it’s still long none the less. Placing towers in desired spots is often awkward and quite fiddly, there also is no option to pan the camera around, only to zoom in and out, which is often annoying when wanting to see what’s happening in a certain area.
The lasting appeal for this game is enormous, even when all Imoons are completed, players can change the difficulty and make it more of a challenge for themselves. “Vengeance Mode” has also been added, which in essence is never ending, putting the player to the ultimate test in endurance gaming. This time around, multiplayer is not present, it would be great to have, but fingers crossed it will make an appearance in the next Savage Moon installment. Overall, this game is a steal at only £6.49 and is a credit to the talent at FluffyLogic, definitely a buy.
