Phoenix Defense Force Review

Phoenix Defense Force is a defense game where you are supposed to defend your planet from alien invasions.

Phoenix Defense Force is a defense game where you are supposed to defend your planet from alien invasions. Aliens will drop bombs on your planet with a counter. When the counter reaches 0, it will explode. The goal in this game is to get rid of the bomb before it explodes. You can control spaceships to pick them up and transport it to a nearby warp gate that will teleport the bomb somewhere far away.

In the title, there are Campaign and Survival modes available. However, they are both the same. The Campaign mode does not have any story or explain anything. The game also fails to explain what the objective is, or what you have to do. You will have to learn everything by playing the game, although the game concept is pretty straightforward by looking at spaceships moving around a planet.

It was hard to plot a detailed route of each spaceship, and went to a random direction once they reached the end of the plotted route. That was inconvenient for me, because I was expecting the ships to keep going forward in the same direction as the end of the route.

One enjoyable aspect is the upgrades system. You earn a point for every bomb you successfully transport, and you can spend them for better defense. The bombs have different color, and you need to transport them to warp gates with matching color. Green points can be used to upgrade your ship such as making them move faster. It can also be used to call in more ships. Blue and red points enable you to place turrets on your planet, which will shoot down enemy ships, preventing bombs from being placed.

The game is only interesting for the first 15 minutes. Different colored warp gates are the only thing that becomes available as you play the game. Besides that, the number of enemies is the only thing that changes. Same gameplay, same boring strategy. Of course, this game is priced at $0.99, so you can’t expect much out of it. However, adding a few levels and a story system in addition to including instructions will make this game much better. Plus, there are many other games with the same price that are way better than this game.

Reviewed Device: iPod Touch 4G

[review pros=”Exciting, puzzling, and requires quick reflexes” cons=”Only lasts a short while” score=40]