McDROID – Review

Tower defence games have never really had a huge presence on consoles, mostly heading directly to PC. So when seeing a game like McDroid for the first time, it can’t help but draw your interest. As a 3D action Tower defence game on a console, it’s a rare sight. While a novel concept, some major flaws hold McDroid back from ever reaching its full potential.

As McDroid, your mission is to save your home world with the help of your very talkative ship, Shuttle. While there is very little in the way of story, levels are introduced by Shuttle usually talking to McDroid about what needs to be done. These interactions can sometimes be humorous as Shuttle is mostly oblivious to the threat they are under, usually saying that everything will be fine right before a huge attack. McDroid himself speaks only in robotic tones but his relationship with Shuttle evokes memories of the relationship R2-D2 and C3PO had in the Star Wars movies. Although mostly simple, these moments do at least give some context to the levels.

Each of the twelve levels begin in the same way, having McDroid landing in an area before setting you a number of smaller tasks and the primary objective of, quite simply, don’t die. Similarly to other tower defence games, the action takes place in waves, sending groups of enemies toward you that you must defeat before they destroy you or your ship. The key difference here to other games is that all the action takes place in real time having you play as McDroid himself, repositioning and repairing weapons, gathering resources and even, on occasion, joining in on the action.

“McDroid himself speaks only in robotic tones but his relationship with Shuttle evokes memories of the relationship R2-D2 and C3PO had in the Star Wars movies”

As with most, if not all, strategy or tower defence games, resource management is key as you need to monitor your supply of your two main currencies, strawberries and diamonds. Strawberries can be planted using seeds picked up from defeated foes and are spent primarily on weapons and other gadgets, while diamonds are gathered from more difficult enemies and are most useful for upgrades.

Levels can vary from enjoyable to irritating. At their worst, they are slow moving assaults on seemingly invulnerable enemies. At their best, however, they are short bursts of tactical bug-slaying excitement. When the flow of a mission is just right, alternating between gathering resources and preparing your attack against a nicely balanced series of opponents, the game feels satisfying. This is best shown in some of the earlier missions as, although there are only a limited number of tools at your disposal, enemies are not too overwhelming.

The second half of the game, however, suffers heavily from balancing issues as enemies are thrown at you in huge numbers and, even when using fully upgraded weapons, enemies can destroy your gadgets much more quickly than you can kill them. A lack of a checkpoint system also causes irritation as levels can take, in some cases, up to half an hour so if you are defeated on the last, seemingly indestructible, wave of enemies you are forced to redo the level in its entirety.

Some camera issues arise during gameplay. During levels where there are high trees or other tall objects, the view becomes restricted which, when caught in the middle of a clash with enemies, can be a frustration. Also, during times of intense fighting with explosive weaponry such as missile launchers, the play area becomes lost in a wave of yellow, making moments when you need precision aiming to defeat a particularly tough enemy, surrounded by his less powerful allies, much more difficult.    

The cel-shaded visual style gives a cartoon look to the game which corresponds nicely with the character of McDroid, with enemies being animated versions of insects. Having said that, models are quite basic and, with the power of modern consoles, could have benefited from a smoother look. While it isn’t an unattractive game, it has a very basic style compared to a lot of current independent games, possibly going some way to explain its fairly modest price point.