Sol Survivor is an addictive, fun game that adds new material to the well-worn tower defense game type.
Graphics: 7.5
Difficulty: 9.5 (it's very well-balanced, especially since the recent patch)
Replayability 9 (as it is now, it is very addictive, but lacks some features I'd very much like to see)
Length 8.0 (it's a bit on the short side, with 4 worlds to explore)
Sound: 8.0 Nice ambient soundtrack, good sound fx (take note of the change in noise from towers when you upgrade them)
In nearly 3 years, I've yet to see my roommate get hooked on any game I've played. But when I began playing Sol Survivor he slowly became intrigued. And the more he watched, the more he wanted to play, until now he hogs the XBOX all the time playing it.
This is the addictive appeal Sol Survivor (and certainly much of the tower defense genre) has on people - it is very accessible. You begin as a low-ranking officer who is given responsibility by high command in small doses. Defend this spot and you get a promotion, and with it more commanders to choose from and new weapons to use.
For the first several levels on the first world, you have but one commander and his particular arsenal of weaponry to issue orders to. But as you progress through each level, and subsequent worlds, you are granted higher ranks and better commanders - and thus, more weapons - to do your bidding.
The weapons: The weapons in SS have a traditional tower-defense foundation - cannons, lasers, missiles, etc. Additionally, you gain access to tessla towers, which damage shields and do general damage to ground forces only. There is a "shotgun" tower, which shoots buckshot at groups of enemies in a straight line, a lightning tower, which zaps ground and flying enemies. There is a mortar tower, which shoots powerful concussive shells at ground-based enemies, and a railgun tower that shoots ballistic slugs straight through enemy shields. These last two towers also have very long ranges. Most towers can be upgraded twice (though the upgrade cost is very expensive).
The game has a second set of powers available to the player in the form of support abilities, which range from a laser beam, missiles, mines (ground enemies only), super-slowdown, and my favorite and most expensive to use - the nuclear bomb attack. All of these attacks are much more expensive to use than using towers - they're meant to help you take out those stubborn enemies that sneak past your defenses. This is a nice change from "Defense Grid," which featured an extremely-slow-regenerating sky-beam attack.
The levels in SS are all different, but in some ways they're all the same - the aliens are landing on one, two, three, and sometimes four landing sites and you have to keep them from reaching various objectives - a city, a power station, a supply depot, etc. Sometimes the aliens have but one route to one objective, sometimes they might have multiple routes to one objective and sometimes, they have multiple landing sites, multiple routes and multiple objectives. This last map type has me stumped, and is the reason why I only gave the game a score of 8.5. No matter how much I play the fourth world, I can't beat its last level.
And my roommate concurs. He's been playing it for about 12 hours so far and, as a scientist, he has carefully analyzed each of the first 5 levels, the characteristics of each alien type, and the capabilities of all the towers he's unlocked so far. He's played all 5 levels on easy, medium, and hard and his conclusion (and mine too) is that no matter how much you play, you don't get any better at the game past a certain point. Since getting stuck on world 4, I've gone back to the beginning and played through the first 2 worlds and, still on normal difficulty, I still don't do too well on some of them.
The funny thing is about the game, though, is that it is so addictive that win or lose we both keep coming back for more. I think you will too - and many of you will do better than us, which will increase your love of the game all the more.
There are some features missing from the game such as the ability to "maze" your towers (place them in configurations that force the aliens to wind their way around them and lengthen their path) and challenge modes or achievements (win the level using only cannon towers, or having only 40 towers in play at any time, for example). Still, for about six bucks, Sol Survivor is one of the best games I've bought in a long time. If you like tower defense games you owe it to yourself to pick this one up. One last point - the download is only about 150MB, which can be done in about 20 minutes tops on a broadband connection.