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Grave Defense HD Review – Slaughtering Zombies Has Never Been So Beautiful

Sharpen your eye, because the creeps are startin’ to look a whole lot scarier! ArtOfBytes ups the ante with a solid revision to their tried-and-tested tower defense game that rocked your afterlife – Grave Defense. Who said being dead couldn’t be pretty?

Title: Grave Defense HDDeveloper: ArtOfBytessGenre: Strategy/Action | Players: 1 | Version: 1.0.2 | Size: 18.6MB | Price: $2.90

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Back in November of 2010, we reviewed the original Grave Defense title and slapped a healthy 4-star rating on it. When it comes to tower defense games, GD is a unique one in that it combines high-quality, detailed terrains with swanky turrets, and tons of undead. Who in their right mind doesn’t enjoy mowing-down the undead after a long day at work? Especially when 14 waves of zombies and ghosts are followed by the likes of oh, say Dracula himself? Grave Defense was, and still is, a really really difficult and high-quality game. Throw-in some revamped graphics and ui, tweaked game mechanics, new turrets, a new bonus level, some shiny-glimmering background animations, and you’ll find the HD version is money well-spent. Assuming you haven’t already beaten the original “gold” version, that is…

My quick-and-dirty synopsis: If you’re new to the game, go HD. If you’re old to the game, but just want to play it over again with pretty graphics, go HD. If you beat the original and want something new, this isn’t for you.

The new graphics look great – as they should in 800×480 resolution – with slight tweaks here and there that really refine the core game. The enter/exit flags are brighter, and if off-screen are highlighted by animated arrows. The bonus items are now drop-shadowed in white so they’re easier to recognize. Unit sprites are more crisp and clear, and the “snail-trail of death” is markedly vibrant. Tower-overlays have been overhauled (placement and upgrade), as have the in-game towers themselves. Towers now have several upgrade-version graphics, so the style actually changes as you upgrade them. My favorite is the laser-sighted minigun. And if your eye is scrutinizing, you might just notice some new animated background graphics – twinkling water, drifting smoke, and bobbing daisies.

As far as game mechanics are concerned, I didn’t notice a whole lot of change. Bonus item drops seem more numerous, and the $ drop is more valuable (a prior complaint of ours). ArtOfBytess has also added a couple new turrets for your deconstructive pleasure. Of notable difference are turret cool-down meters – why you really need this, I’m not sure… but it’s fun to watch. Next to each turret’s sprite, you’ll see a vertical yellow bar indicating how long before the next shot (dependent on speed). According to the developer’s app description, there’s a bonus level as well! Hopefully you can get that far into the game… I’m still stuck on the 5th level.

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The Good
Grave Defense is as good as Grave Defense HD, but prettier. The game is hard… really hard. Even on normal difficulty. But at least you can be wowed by the graphics while you repeatedly die, right? The new ui enhancements and the bump to bonus items gives the HD version a more balanced and “perfected” feeling. The game finally feels polished, and will provide countless hours of playtime. I wish I had a tablet right now to see just how awesome this version looks, but alas…

The Bad
I still don’t have a tablet to try this on… My only complaints, and these are really pushing it, are the following: When you open the overlay on a tower and a bonus item drops “beneath” the radius of the overlay, you can’t click-through it to get the bonus. I’ve lost plenty of bonuses this way. I wish they’d added more levels to the HD version, but I’m sure the various levels of difficulty will keep me frustrated for the near-term. The $ drops, in my humble opinion, are still not worth the effort (compared to the cost of turrets).

The Verdict ★★★
As stated earlier – if you’ve played/beated/aresickofitalready, skip the update. If you’re a fan of tower defense games and/or zombies and have a nice device to play this on, get it. Hands-down, Grave Defense HD is one of the best tower defense games on Android.

Below are some comparison screens that should give you a good idea of the contrast between the original and the HD versions (“GD” vs “GD_HD”). In my opinion, Grave Defense is still one of the best tower defense games on Android to-date, if not the best. And this revision adds some serious polish.

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