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Earth is once again under attack by alien life forms. What’s a human to do? Build towers to defend it, of course. Sentinel 2: Earth Defense is Origin8′s latest entry in the already crowded tower defense genre, but what a praiseworthy entry it is.
The tower defense genre’s typical mechanics are intact in Sentinel 2 — tower building, a touch-to-upgrade feature, slow towers, passive support towers, ion towers, boss enemies, and flying enemies are all here. The game also offers drones which can be used to repair barriers and to harvest resources for money and energy.
When times get tough and energy is abundant, players can also use special moves which unleash powerful attacks, like a devastating laser from the sky that can be directed by dragging a crosshair over the enemy in question. If you’re looking for a full-fledged, path-based tower defense game, this is it.
All these features are presented neatly and intuitively on the touchscreen with perfectly sized buttons for towers and tower-type flipping. While the action is frantic, it may be harder for players with larger fingers to tap on specific towers for upgrading, but don’t be afraid to press the pause button and zoom in.
The music in Sentinel 2 is steady and unobtrusive, but to save on battery life, I turned it off in favor of just listening to the tiny weapon sounds of my victory. Every stage in campaign mode is long enough to last at least twenty minutes, so I worried about running out of batteries halfway through each.
Sentinel 2 was also my first look at OpenFeint, which can be described as Steam or Xbox Live for the iPhone. OpenFeint integration was surprisingly seamless in the main menu and in the game. It was satisfying to see achievements pop up as soon as they were unlocked.
Fans of the genre will feel right at home with the normal and advanced difficulty levels of each stage. Novices may need to read the help section just to familiarize themselves with the different tower types. In the beginning, the different towers may be hard to distinguish on-screen, especially while zoomed out, but the small subtleties between them will soon become apparent.
Sentinel 2 feels like a stand-alone PC game. Its graphics are mind-bogglingly good on such a small screen, its production values are high, and it’s so addictive that waves will fly by, leaving you wondering where the last 30 minutes have gone. For $2.99, Sentinel 2 is a no-brainer for any tower defense fan.
[...] games available on the App Store at the same price or cheaper than Earth Dragon– Sentinel and Sentinel 2 come to mind as titles that took me a while to beat, both because of content and because they were [...]