Leading the Pack [Fieldrunners Review]
December 3rd, 2008
Whilst not immersing myself completely in Fallout 3 for the last few days, I’ve been sampling a bit of mobile gaming for the iPhone – primarily Fieldrunners from Subatomic Studios.
Fieldrunners is a great little Tower-Defence game that’s perfect for the iPhone. Not only does it look and sound great, have a decent touch screen interface which apart from the odd hiccup works rather quite well, but importantly it’s easy to play for either extended periods of time, or in short bite sized chunks as the game’s state will be instantly saved whenever you leave the application. Thus, a game can be stopped in an instant and resumed at a later time whenever convenient - a must for mobile gaming.
A tower defence game has a simple aim – to stop swarms of enemies, which can enter from multiple points on a map, from exiting the screen on the opposite side from which they entered for as long as possible. So that it’s not a stroll-in-the-park for all these enemies, you have at your disposal a selection of weapon towers which can be purchased and placed anywhere on the map so long as they don’t block an exit.
It all starts off easy enough, but each successive wave of enemies will be tougher than the last, and some creative defences will need to be constructed if you’ve any hope of defeating the 100th wave and being declared the victor. It’s completely up-to the player how they go about their defence and what towers to use, but personally I prefer to construct some sort of maze come “rat-run” that will force the hostile swarm to traverse the map for as long as possible whilst under a constant crossfire.
The weapon towers available in Fieldrunners follow a similar pattern to those found in most tower-defence games. And in order from least to the most expensive, we have the fast firing but short range “Gattling” towers, “Goo” towers which will slow enemies down, “Missile” towers which have a long range and cause splash damage, and finally “Tesla” towers which will cause massive damage but are very costly. In addition each weapon can be upgraded (for a price) a couple of times to provide incrementally improved firepower.
At present there are only two maps available for Fieldrunners. “Grasslands” is a simple open playing field with enemies appearing from the left and making there way to the right, whereas “Crossroads”, as the name suggests, features two entry and exit points that need to be defended. The limited number of maps is perhaps the main criticism that can be levelled at Fieldrunners as eventually, even with the unlocked “endless” mode, it could become a bit repetitive. However, after saying that it’s hoped that future updates by the developer will contain new maps to keep the game feeling fresh.
As mentioned earlier, Fieldrunners looks great. Both maps are colourful and they present a nice backdrop to play upon; the enemies are varied, and the sprites throughout are surprisingly detailed. There’s not much more that can be said apart from in summary it’s a highly polished, fun, and addictive little game that’s worth every penny of the £2.99 asking price.
Rating: 
