Defense Grid 2 review Samsung Gear VR

I got a 2nd hand Samsung Gear VR few months ago and was a bit lacking with the experience since I did not get the one with the controller. The controller was the one released by Samsung alongside S8 and S8+ which will take the Gear VR experience to the next Level and yes, the experience was amazing and I'll be using this to review Defense Grid 2 for Gear VR.

The game may sound familiar since Defense Grid 2 is also available for PS4, XBOX and PC it’s a tower defense game developed by Hidden Path Entertainment last 2014. You basically defend Cores from Core stealing Aliens by building towers.

First time I played tower defense games was way back Warcraft 3 where map customization is so robust that someone build a tower defense game there. The mechanics here are the same. You have to build towers and defend the core. There are various towers, from Guns, Teslas, Cannon, Lasers and more. Each monster is weak to a specific tower and you need to strategically build and place the towers to the right grids for efficiency. You need to act fast here! The good thing though is that if a monster gets past you and took a core, you have the chance to get it back if you kill the Aliens when it goes back to your turrets.

There're various modes to choose from depending on the challenge you need. Choose from Story , Fixed resources mode, No Red Towers, Limited Towers and so on.

What I didn't like about the game is that, the graphics were really downgraded and zoomed out. So we end up with blurry towers and enemies. The game also feels like your viewing on top of a basketball Arena. You look down to look at what's going on in the battlefield then look up to see the next wave of the enemy and your gold. Next is that there's no fast forward in game like other TD games. You'll end up finishing the 20 waves per level and sometimes waiting will bore you. There were times that I cannot build a tower on a spot due to some towers blocking. Text were blurry also and you won't really be able to appreciate the art here. It runs smooth yep which is a good thing even though there were tons of enemies on the screen. There's also a story mode with annoying folks talking in the background.

This is a good proof of concept on how we can play VR games in the future. This game was already great on other platforms. Buy the one's for PS4,XBOX and PC instead.

Pros:

· Fun TD game

Cons:

· Graphics were dramatically degraded

· No fast forward

· Blurry text

· Annoying story mode

Overall: 2.5/5

This review was also published in Philippines Gamer Lounge website.