Tower defense is certainly a widely available genre on the App Store, so it's tough to pick and choose the good ones versus the not-so-great.

So, you might wonder, what sets GRave Defense HD apart from the other tower defense games out there? In a word: zombies. True, there are probably a lot of games in the genre featuring zombies. Seriously, zombie video games just won't die (see what I did there?). But, I remember that this review is supposed to tell you whether GRave Defense is worth your time. So is it? Let's find out. 

Via slightly campy (and, on occasion, grammatically incorrect) debriefings that take place before each level, you are told of how the undead first appeared, how humanity's numbers have hit an all-time low because of them, and how, with each completed mission, more and more hordes of dead things are descending upon the haven that is New Clear City (remember that thing I said about slightly campy?). 

Once these debriefings are over, the game begins. Anyone who has ever played a tower defense game should know what to expect. For those who don't know, here's the skinny: In GRave Defense, waves of zombies and other unpleasant things make their way down a path that weaves through the map on the screen, and your job is to place weapons along their path and obliterate them before they can reach their goal. Spread across each map are round spaces, to which you can assign various (and upgradable) weapons ranging from (but not limited to) rapid-fire guns to slow but powerful rocket launchers, to machines that can freeze all surrounding enemies, slowing them down. Every now and then, defeated enemies drop little bonuses like money, which you use to buy more weapons; health kits, to recover damage gained by monsters that've survived your gauntlet and reach the end; and various bonus weapons that can further impede the undead's progress. 

To wit, Grave Defense HD is pretty much standard tower defense fare. However, there are some neat little twists that mix things up a little. The most notable of these twists is how the undead will tread several different paths through most of the levels map. This adds a clever bit of strategy to the game, as you have to carefully plan out what weapons to deploy and where. Focus too much of your resources on the path the first wave of zombies tread, then you might find yourself without enough time and money to stop the next wave as they go down a different path. Also adding to the challenge is that most of your weapons can attack only one type of monster (grounded or flying). And, aside from the main campaign mode, there is a whole new campaign, as well as an extra-large bonus level with additional enemies boasting new abilities like healing nearby monsters and spawning new ones (more bonus levels will be added in future updates, so says the game). Little nuances like these help give this game a little more mileage than it could have had. 

At the end of the day, Grave Defense HD is an okay game. I wasn't truly frustrated by anything the game threw at me, but then again, I wasn't wowed by it either. Still, if you've played some of the bigger tower defense games and want to try something else, you could do worse than to try this one out.

GameDynamo's Score for GRave Defense HD (Mobile)

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