Harvest: Massive Encounter

Harvest: Massive Encounter is a mishmash of tower defence, realtime strategy and resource gathering gameplay mechanics. Build energy generators and harvesters, then use the collected resources to purchase defensive towers and missile silos to fend off waves of attacking aliens. You can battle increasingly large waves of foes that bear down on your defences at regular intervals, or build a titanic base then trigger enormous enemy attacks when you're ready.

The size of some of the battles is staggering, and during these epic encounters you truly feel as though you're being beset by a determined and terrifying enemy force, rather than the usual dribble of enemies thrown at you by most other tower defence games.

There are some interesting ideas here, including the ability to link power sources and turrets to increase their power and range, but the lack of building variety, samey enemies and an unshakable feeling that once you start to lose there's little or no way back, conspire to undermine Harvest: Massive Encounter's undeniably high fun factor and condemn it to the status of interesting novelty rather than essential purchase.