Destructoid: Is it just me, or is the tower defense genre becoming the latest overly-exploited trend in the videogame industry? I guess since they're so easy to design and the concept is something that anybody can grasp, it's hardly surprising that so many have been popping up, especially on portable platforms. Speaking of which, here's Hudson with Creature Defense for the PSP.
Creature Defense does things a little differently by bringing in another exploited videogame trope -- card games. Yes, Japan's obsession with cards has also been crammed into Creature Defense, lending more strategy to the usual "build towers, wait for monsters" gameplay by letting players draw cards that will affect the course of each stage. Special skills, attacks and monsters will all appear during a stage and players will need to deal with them as and when they appear.
Gaming Nexus writes: "In my ten years writing game reviews, I've managed to review games in just about every genre. It doesn't matter how weird they are, I probably reviewed it. I've blasted my way through a shooter masquerading as a tactical role-playing game, battled it out with a 2D rapping dog and even played 3D games back before 3D was cool. But in all that time reviewing games, never before have I reviewed a tower defense game. Thankfully all that has changed, because I recently had the pleasure of going through Hudson's PSP tower defense game, Creature Defense. This inexpensive download title offers enough depth to warrant the price tag ... even if you're brand new to this genre."
Diehard GameFAN writes: "I enjoy a nice tower defense game every once in a while, but with access to the Internet, at the same time, it's kind of spoiled me in regard to the genre. When you jump on the Internet, you can find a massive number of free tower defense games just waiting for someone to give them a tender click of the mouse. So whenever a tower defense game would land on a console or handheld, a price of $20 or more would usually equate to sticker shock. Fortunately, Hudson Entertainment looked to do something a little different with the genre by mixing the tower defense genre with a card management scheme and for the first time, I paid attention to a handheld tower defense game. By tossing in a fantasy element akin to what people might see in Magic: The Gathering, Creature Defense creates a unique identity for itself, but fans of tower defense games will be pleased to know the title didn't mess around with what makes the genre fun."
Instead of a set group of items to place along the enemies route, players will be able to take only 5 creatures to the battlefield. As the game progresses, there will be a huge number of creatures to select from, each represented by a card. Each card/creature has an elemental type, weak against one, strong against another. This is in addition to damage dealt, rate of fire, and other typical properties that one might expect with the genre.
