Fortified Reviews

This is Orc Must Die, but 4 player and more focused on players than traps. It's great fun, and worth the buy, especially on sale. Don't expect the polish, the depth, or even the ease of use of OMD but it's a fun game to get together with some friends and play. My only complaint is this. This is not a VR game, but for some reason it triggers STEAM VR to launch every time I launch the game. I had to disconnect my head set in order to get it to play and it still tries to launch but I'm at least able to kill it (VR) with out it killing the game if the head set is not plugged in. I'm sure devs probably don't see the good reviews but if you/they do.. Please fix that... Thanks

4 different "saviours" of Earth battle waves of aliens in this throwback to old sci fi films game. If you like tower defence type shooters, different weapons and upgrades together with traps etc youll like this game. Ground troop placements can be commanded to move around the map too (actually animated), so its not a totally static affair. The game is great online and the online code is so good , you would think your in single player even with 4 players and a massive army of aliens stomping toward you. Check out the trailer video, the actual gameplay is just as frantic and such a buzz blasting those nasty aliens to bits.

Actually. It's not bad. Not that great. But not bad. I co-op'ed it with my brother. Took us 4 hours to beat all 12 maps, and then some survival. Survival sucks because you don't XP. And there is not a lot of story is the campaign. Not worth more then a 5'ver. But absolutely not the worst TD i have tried.

The game is entertaining, but the online seems dead, and there are no ai companions, maybe I'm bad at the game, but it felt too hard for me solo halfway through the missions when enemies spawn from multiple points and you have to defend multiple bases, so it feels like a shore to complete rather than exciting. I would recommend it if you have friends to play, but otherwise you might find it frustrating,

What a SUPERB game!! The comparison with Orcs Must Die is inevitable. But I like this one MUCH better! The controls are much more intuitive. The overall views of your shooter and surroundings make it harder to get lost or overwhelmed. The difficulty levels are better balanced and at least playable for ordinary humans (although the game remains quite hard). And the graphics with this 'Retro Comic-Books' style are Amazing!! Siege Camp: If you're ever reading this. . .We are ready for 'Fortified 2'! "GO-GO-GO!"

Got this looking to get a good co-op tower defense going with a friend and, hey, it was like $2 on sale. After about a half hour it's just not scratching that itch. The comparison to Orcs Must die is an easy one to make but the difference here is that the towers/traps feel almost secondary - it's more of an arena shooter with some backup. The towers/traps you can place in any given level are relatively few, plus they feel both slow and underpowered. Arena-wise I'm pretty disappointed in the layouts; they seem pretty cramped and there's not many strategic decisions you can make with placement; just plunk something directly in the path because there isn't much space on either side to do anything else. Maybe it gets more engaging, or maybe it's just not for me, but it certainly seems like there games out there that do this much better.

Fortified is a tower defense action game, developed and published by Clapfoot, releasing on the PC in February 2016. The game follows the same style as the extremely popular classic tower defense title, Orcs Must Die! The gameplay is played from a third-person perspective of one of four characters. You have a selection of four different classes to play as, each with their own unique special abilities. Each map has a target which you must protect from oncoming martian invaders. You are able to do this by taking on the enemies yourself as well as building defences along the enemies routes to your base. Those that have played Orcs Must Die will feel very much at home with the style of gameplay on offer here. You are able to build defences for your base on the fly in the midst of battle and at the beginning of every level. This allows you to redeploy different units in the middle of a level depending on what enemies you are facing in oncoming waves. The gameplay does get a little bit repetitive towards the later stages of the game as you get used to the different types of enemies. Enemy types can range from drones, robots, flying space ships and giant bosses. Visually, Fortified hits all the right notes. The game is graphically based on a 50s movie with some neat character designs and top notch animation along with them. The environments are a little bland, to say the least, but other than that, the game looks really good and that’s mainly down to the interesting art style being used. Fortified is a tricky game to master; the first few stages do a good job of introducing you to the game, but you soon get thrown in at the deep end as you find the need to min-max your defences almost to perfection once you hit the halfway mark in the campaign. The boss fights are probably the trickiest aspect as they have some really interesting mechanics that prove more of a challenge than the rest of the game combined. Even with a state of the art defense system in the works, you may still fall victim of a boss simply just waltzing through your base and wrecking everything you have worked so hard on. The levels throughout the game are nicely designed; the beginning stages only have one entry point for enemies to join the fight, but as you get further and further into the game, you soon have to deal with three or four points of entry; this is when things turn very hectic and you’ll be zipping to opposite sides of the map on a reoccurring basis. The game does miss out on having a teleporting system that Orcs Must Die had which does make transporting a bit of a chore, especially when the character’s sprint ability isn’t much faster than their regular run. A single play through the game using one character took me just under four hours to complete; the game has tons of replayability with three more characters to use which will make for a different experience each time due to their variety in abilities. Fortified also has varying levels of difficulty which will also keep the hardcore tower defense fans amongst us jumping with joy, with the likes of Orcs Must Die! Relying heavily on higher difficulty levels to keep you coming back for more. This game could quite easily reach twenty hours of content if you try and complete everything. The game runs very well at higher resolutions with a wide selection of graphical options for you to change to your liking. I preferred using keyboard and mouse for my playthrough but full controller support is available. All in all, Fortified is a good tower defense title, it does a lot of things right but it did WOW me at any point. The price point of £10.99 is fair and you’ll easily get your monies worth, but if you haven’t played the more staple tower defense titles out there, you’d be better off trying them first. Veterans of the genre will for sure want to be picking this game up, though. [b][u] Tom's Score Card[/u][/b] 1) Stay away 2) Not Recommended 3) Only recommended when on sale [b][u]4) Recommended[/u][/b] 5) Highly recommended 6) This is a must play If you found this review helpful, please give it a thumbs up. If you would also like to follow my reviews more easily, be sure to join my group by clicking [url=http://steamcommunity.com/groups/TeamTomsReviews#curation]here[/url] and checking out the [url=http://teamtomreviews.co.uk/]TeamTom Review site[/url] http://store.steampowered.com/app/334210

I didn't mind the bland designs. I played past the repetitive gameplay. I wasn't totally bored by the same music track played over and over. I was somewhat amused by the hokey story and characters. I even didn't mind the small choice of weapons and towers and their abilities. What really caused me to give it a thumbs down was the tower cap of 12. 12?! What TD game has a cap on how many towers you can put up? This could've been fun but when the enemies get stronger and your strategic hands are tied with caps I gave up. Aside from that, I got annoyed by the lack of areas that the towers can be constructed on and the crappy controls getting them into spots. It's a shame really. This could've been fun. I'm a BIG TD game fan and I cannot recommend this. 4/10.

[h1]FORTIFIED....but lacking some essential ingredients[/h1] [b]Now I loves me some "Tower-Defense". Classic, Actions, FIrst-Person, Third-Person, Tactical, I love them all. So this game was an easy sell. Buuut I quickly realized that I was probably a little above the skill grade for this game. Fortified, if you hadn't figured it out, is a Third-Person Action Tower Defense Game with multiple characters, a leveling system, and a strong Co-op focus and has the added bonus of being of rocking a 1950's- 60's retro Sci-Fi aesthetic which I personally think is a criminally under-utilized design ethos. So you'd think that'd make this game a must have....you'd be wrong. Let me break it down [/b] The setup is rather basic. Aliens are invading. Earth needs to launch rockets to destroy their mother ships, hordes of robots would rather the earth didn't and it's your job to stop them. You have 4 playable characters, each with their own specializations. and you are awarded XP for completing missions, with each level granting you points to unlock and upgrade weapons, and more loadout options as you progress. [hr] [h1]The Good[/h1] [list] [*] Retro 60's Sci-Fi Aesthetic. [*] Four(4), distinct* player characters to choose from. [*] Simple Mechanics make for easy pick up and play. [/list] Yeah, I'll admit it. The Golden-Age comic art-style and the retro 50's sci-fi look were instant likes for me. The Captain specializing in troops, The Rocket-Scientist and her explosive AOE, The Spaceman's crowd control, and the Agent's Jack-Of-All-Trades. Combined with their unique weapons, traps, and the ability to upgrade each, things can get pretty interesting. The mechanics are streamlined so that the traps are more there to assist you is blasting the invaders to scrap than to do the work for you. [h1]The Bad[/h1] [list] [*] Simple mechanics limit how one deals with any given map. [*] Poorly designed maps. [*] Poorly balanced characters. [*] The Grind. [*] Dead Multi-Player [*] Too many useless items. [*] Lacking content. [/list] Those same simplified mechanics that makes the game accessible sadly also makes things rather shallow. Open-ended problem solving is a core aspect of any good tower defense game, the ability to experiment and apply linear and lateral thought to the challenges presented keeps players coming back to try old missions with new tricks and stratagems. But in Fortified, this engagement is nigh-non-existent. There's really only 1-2 ways to approach a mission regardless of which character you choose. On paper each character gives you a new way to play but sadly they only amount to a difficulty setting. Spaceman Spiff is Easy, while Ms. Rocket Scientist is Hard. Then there's the leveling system. Because you will need certain upgrades and gear to actually pass certain maps (especially the boss maps) you will have to go back and grind earlier missions for for XP so you can unlock the needed upgrades, and since there's very little variation in how one can approach a mission you will feel the grind. As for content. There are 16 maps; 12 Campaign, and 4 Invasion and let me tell you the campaign maps are depressingly small and cramped for tower-defense map. The invasion maps are even worse giving you next to no room to place any defenses even with just one player. Honestly, I almost wonder if the map makers knew they were designing for a Tower Defense which only makes the aforementioned grind worse. And the multiplayer...Good luck finding a match or getting anyone to join yours. [h1]The Missed Opportunities[/h1] For all the work the developers put into giving creating a unique look, the setting and characters are more 2-dimensional than the comic book cutscenes. The heroes, the robots, the sparse voice lines, they all just feel a little wooden. There was a real missed opportunity here to sell the setting, but as is, there's nothing apart from the announce cutscene announcer, that says "Retro 1960's". Compared against games like "Orcs Must Die",or "Dungeon Defenders" there's just no soul to compliment the visual style. Even something as simple as giving the shared loadout items a different look for each character would have gone a long way in making this game feel more polished. Workshop and Mod functionality would have also gone a long way. [hr] [h1]Conclusion[/h1] [b]Fortified is good for what it is; a developer's first tower defense, for people who've never played tower defense. Good for Genre newbies, and at the very least an interesting aesthetic twist for veterans.[b] If you're already into the genre, you've already played better games, and if you're new to the genre you will likely have a fair deal of fun before the boredom kicks in. To the former I say: [i]"The retro sci-fi aesthetic is pretty unique and it won't require much of a time investment, (unless you're a completionist)"[/i], and to the latter I offer these words, [i]"This is the kiddie-pool of the genre -- it only gets deeper and more interesting from here."[/i].

3rd person co-op tower defense. Yes, it's basically a sci-fi version of Orcs Must Die but (A) it's a great retro-futuristic setting, (B) it has 4 playable characters all with their own unique abilities, and (C) it has some interesting twists on weapons and defenses. I played for a couple hours with my kid and we would have kept going but it was getting too late in the evening. Even on Normal difficulty (there's no "Easy") it was quite a challenge. Once we got to the third stage, we found ourselves getting whupped pretty good until we figured out a few tactics. One important tactic is to resell and move/mix your defenses around as needed. They don't depreciate so the game encourages this. If you have minions (way way cool) they act as a squad you can issue orders to. Once I discovered that, it made a pretty big difference. Other than that, smart placement of defenses, situational awareness, timing "Super" mode correctly (you get a super boost you can use once or twice per map), and good aim is pretty much all you need. The game's slick, the graphics are nice, the setting is unique (groovalicious!), and the gunplay, tactics, and mechanics are a ton of fun. The progression system of earning points to spend on upgrades is well paced. You can respec if you want to try spending your points differently, and I think that's essential. My only gripes: I wish they had more female characters (at least one other), and I wish the game had more levels. Heck, it would be cool if there were a few "adventure" style maps where you'd have to make your way from point A to point B fending off enemies (like in the Sniper games). There are a couple different modes for each map though, so that's cool. If you have a friend who might be interested in playing this with you, I highly recommend it.