GROSS

What a breath of fresh air to the tower defense genre GROSS is. I have been keeping a close eye on this one for a while and now that I have spent some considerable time with the game, I feel like I can share my early thoughts on the game with you and also let you know why you need to check this out. The big twist here is that is not just a tower defense style game, this is also a first-person shooter and it smashed the two genres together very well.

Fighting Back The Horde

There is not exactly a great deal of story going on in GROSS and while I am usually the kind of guy that loves a good story in his games. I can get over the lack of a deep and engaging story here. What we have is a classic horde of zombie monsters that want to storm your safehouse and eat you for lunch! You of course do not want this to happen and that is the basics of the story we have here.

Planning Can Save Your Life

We will start by talking about the tower defense aspect of GROSS as this is the first part of the gameplay cycle. Like most other tower defense games, you need to set up turrets, and traps and try to build things to force the horde to go where you want them to go. You have a limited amount of money to use, but you are not against the clock here. You get to take as much time as you need to make sure that your defenses are planned properly.

Gunning Them All Down!

When you are ready to defend your home, the first-person shooter part of the game starts. You are thrust down to ground level and you can get your hands on many different guns. As well as having different guns, ammo is very important in GROSS as different ammo will affect enemies differently from setting them on fire, and knocking them back to straight up ripping right through them. It is very fast-paced and you are always kept on your toes. You can also activate various abilities to help give yourself an edge in battle. This part of the game could have been just tacked on, but it is not. It is a fun, frantic, and awesome FPS experience!

Money Makes The World Go Round

Turns out that even in a zombie monster apocalypse that money is the key to everything. When you kill enemies, they drop cash and it is this cash you use to build your traps, walls, ammo, and pretty much everything else. There is a twist here though, first of all, there are others wanting to get their hands on this cash, and also, you have to take it back to a safehouse so it is ready to be used in between rounds. It adds an extra layer of excitement and danger that I really liked. Although, losing your hard-earned money can be aggravating at times.

Pros:

• The tower defense setup phase of the game is very fun
• This is a damn fine first-person shooter in its own right
• The game is just so much fun to play
• It has a surprising amount of depth to the gameplay, but it is still easy to pick up and play

Cons:

• I wish there was a bit more to the story
• Losing your money can be frustrating