Dungeon Defenders
Just the mention of the words “tower defense hack n’ slash” has me drooling, and despite some small stumbles, Dungeon Defenders delivers on that promising combination. The tower defense elements are stronger than the hack n’ slash combat, though. Depending on who your character is, fighting boils down to jumping into a pile of goblins and mashing the attack button. It’s the build phases that make the game fun, because watching your carefully-placed shields and turrets hold off a huge army is pretty rewarding. Dungeon Defenders is a co-op game at heart, though, almost to a fault. The game is surprisingly difficult with only two players, even on Easy. And while I love having four-player local co-op, there’s a lot of tiny text that gets lost once the screen starts getting split up. This was really meant to be played online, which you can totally do, but either way works. Once everyone’s gotten used to the somewhat unintuitive menus and intimidating build options, you’ll find a deep, addicting, and satisfying experience wrapped up in a fun fantasy setting.
My wife and I have been playing this again lately, and wow… there is so much content here. This could easily have been a $50 retail game. I just bought the DLC, too, though I’m not liking the extra level that much, because of all the stupid spiders!