I have always wanted to bring reviews to Kedrix.net(after all I did reviews on Upcomingdiscs.com for 8 years), it is just matter of time and effort. I also wanted to do it in the right way. Review the small games, review the games that might be overlooked by traditional game review sites. Not everything is about Fallout 4 and Call of Duty: Black Ops. Sure, there might be a few big ones, but I’m going to try and focus on the smaller titles. The first one on the plate is a tower defense title called Fortified for the Xbox One, a digital game about the 50’s pulp obsession with aliens. Let us step inside and see if we can save society from aliens, robots and foul space creatures.
Information
Game Rating: Teen
Size: 3.31 GB
Release date: 2/3/2016
Developer: Clapfoot Inc.
Publisher: Clapfoot Inc.
It is the 1950’s and the Martian invasion is quite real. Choose one of four classes including the Captain, Rocket Scientist, Agent, and Spaceman all with shared and unique abilities & weapons to thwart various robots and alien creatures. You will also need to build various unique structures and troops that will aid your defense against this evil menace. In addition via Xbox Live, three additional people can join you for some Martian killing fun.
Graphics:
The first thing you will notice when booting up Fortified is the cell-shaded graphics (think Borderlands). Some players will hate them, but some such as me will really appreciate the color and depth that has went into making this a true pulp presentation. Captain with the square jaw and heroic demeanor, check. Amelia Earnhardt girl with the flak leather bomber jacket, check. The Martians have a very “Mars Attacks” type feel to them with the lack of the pulsating brains. The only knock against these graphics is that we don’t tend to see a lot of variety. Each stage is another shade of gray buildings (the exception being the movie theater above but its still basically gray), each enemy type (while different) is a mixture of greens and grays. The lights are all yellow, etc.
Sound:
Sound unfortunately is probably the weakest quality of the Fortified experience. Effects while they fit the mood are usually a series of repetitive beeps for every time you shoot an alien. The flying saucers did give a nice whirring noise as they flew overhead and proceeded to suck you straight up into the air. But after a while, it felt the same and whether shooting a robot or an alien, the sound didn’t really change. Same with the character voices whose banks of phrases were pretty low. I did appreciate though that this was all voice acted which you don’t always find in indie games. However, do not expect many musical numbers in this title either as it basically has one theme that is repeated over and over for your enjoyment.
Gameplay:
As mentioned in the header notes, you have four character classes to choose from. Once you have made your choice, you are thrown into the first campaign mission aptly named “Easy Street”. The player equips his two guns, builds a few structures with a fixed amount of cash (which can be everything from Infantry to mounted style guns to wall weapons and so forth) and then hits the appropriate button to start the wave. From there, Martians and robots will start to walk in from their spawn points and towards the base containing a rocket behind you. Your objective, protect the base at all costs so that the rocket is able to take off (and not crash to the ground).
The idea here is while you could treat this as a third person shooter game is that in order to progress you have to build the appropriate structures to help you out. Some structures are better for the ground game, some for aerial and then some even help with the game’s 2 bosses. If you don’t figure out which structures help the best, then your character will become overwhelmed in a hurry. The base will take damage and eventually with enough hits will fall. Your character can also take damage and with enough shots and can be “killed”. From there you must wait a few miserable seconds before you respawn to continue the defense.
As you complete levels, you get experience points. Those experience points help you to gain levels which in turn unlocks more guns and more structures to play with depending on the class of character you chose. If you screw up picking your upgrades, then simply reset your character and chose your improvements again. Trust me, you will be doing this function a lot as the various stages tend to change up which structures you need during play.
Rest assured, this game is not easy. In fact, it is the very opposite of easy. This game is demanding and requires you to really think about which structures to put into play, sometimes every round. The amount of money you are given at the beginning of the stage and before every wave never seems to be enough as you really have to weigh the decision of one more infantry unit or a more advanced unit such as an anti-air gun.
The interesting thing about the difficulty is that when you play with others, it tends to get a little easier. The single player experience is difficult, but pair that up with one or two other players and it does become a more bearable experience. However, I did notice that once it gets up to four players, it tilts the other way again with chaos being the operative word. Of course, if you join up with random strangers and some of them don’t play up to the necessary skill, then its a dogfight to get anything accomplished.
Replay:
The game has a twelve mission long campaign which serves as the “story” mode. Beating one (whether in single player or multiplayer) opens up the next map. Normal and Hard settings are open from the beginning with Insane opening up after you complete the initial difficulties. To be perfectly honest, I have not seen anything of insane, normal and an occasional hard level are more than enough challenge for it. Each level with the exception of the first few will require multiple replays to get the hang of that level’s patterns.
If you conquer the campaign mode, then Invasion mode is also available. Three small type maps are available to choose and then its twenty waves of increasingly hard Martians for you to blast through. These are not your normal garden variety Martians either. Some might explode, some might be faster and there might be other factors that will make the difficulty that much harder. It is not uncommon for your screen to fill completely up with creatures in this mode, sometimes faster than the human eye can really follow. Or at least mine, and I’ve had Lasik.
As mentioned previously, there is a multiplayer mode and it is basically broken into three parts. Co-Op Public where up to three strangers can aid you. Co-Op Invite where you can invite up to three buddies to join the fray. Finally, there is Quickmatch where you join a random team on some random map and hope its one that you have not done already twenty times. As this implies, there is no “Find Custom Game Option” where you look to see what is out there, pick a session and then join in. I would suggest to Clapfoot that they add this in an update down the line.
The game has thirty achievements for one thousand gamer score. While there are achievements for completing all of the maps on normal, hard, and insane (yikes!), most of the game’s achievements center around specific tasks. For example, Circuit Breaker requires the player to use Tesla Coils to kill at least 50 Martians on a single map. Another one, Ice to Meet You makes use of a freeze gun and that ten enemies at once must be in that state. In addition, there are experience level achievements, and while it might sound easy, getting all of your characters up to level 20 (Defenders of Freedom) is the hardest achievement of all due to the stingy level progression. In fact, TrueAchievements.com reports only 5 of the 935 tracked have unlocked this achievement, a mere half of a percent.
I honestly feel that most players will be able to unlock half to two thirds of the achievements in ten hours or less. In addition to Defenders of Freedom, certain achievements will require double that amount of time and some serious skill. Cloud Nine (getting past level 20 in Invasion on Hard) is particularly troublesome as I can say I was part of a team that made it past nineteen waves only to die in the final bout of craziness.
Summary
My time with Fortified so far has been a great source of enjoyment. While the game does not have many modes, one will spend a lot of time trying to master what is there. The characters, guns and structures all require some thought to use in order to maximize the potential they have on the battlefield. While I did enjoy the graphics, they can be (as the same with the music) at times repetitive. However, it is a great game to blow off steam and one where you can really appreciate the effort that was put into the environment. At $14.99, this game is well worth the price tag and hopefully will have a decent community for months to come.
Disclaimer: The reviewer purchased his digital copy on Xbox Live. He played it for nearly ten hours which included messing around in the menus, respecing his character umpteen times, killing lots of robots, and being booted out of a multiplayer game session once due to less than adequate play. He also managed to gain 16 of the game’s 30 achievements.
| Graphics: |  (7.0 / 10) |
| Sound: |  (6.0 / 10) |
| Gameplay: |  (9.0 / 10) |
| Replay: |  (8.0 / 10) |
| Overall: | (8.0 / 10) |
