Critical Play: Tower Defense

For this critical play I played Plants vs Zombies and Kingdom Rush. First I played plants vs zombies. I had never played this game before, as I don't usually play tower defense games, but I thought I'd give it a shot.

The goal of Plants vs Zombies is to use your plants to protect your house from the zombies. You have to strategically place certain plants to stay alive until the level is over. The theme amplifies the game experience because it strays away from the traditional tower defense type game and instead puts a unique twist on it. In addition, there weren't a lot of extra features, such as changing the difficulty and buying new items, it was a lot more straightforward.

I also played Kingdom Rush, which is a very classic tower defense game where there are enemies trying in infiltrate and you must build towers to defend yourself. This game was very traditionally medieval kingdom themed, which also worked well with the game. This theme was apparent throughout the game, as the levels were laid out on a map and you could “upgrade" the towers and get better defenses as the game played out.

While both had similar general goals, the vibe of each game differed. Plants vs Zombies, despite being about zombies, seemed more light hearted because of the visuals whereas Kingdom Rush had a much more complex, classic, Tower defense vibe. I enjoyed both games more than I thought and I didn't get tired playing one after the other because themes were so drastically different.