That said, I really, really like Comet Crash. I almost feel wrong in calling it a tower defense game, it's more akin to simple, arcade style RTS, complete with unit construction and resource gathering. Yes, you do build towers to defeat oncoming enemies, but there's an actual enemy base here, and you win by destroying it, not by outlasting a particular time limit or other goal. It's definitely an interesting take on your typical tower defense title, and one worth checking out for PS3 owners.

As the game begins you're introduced to the basic mechanics. The on screen display is fairly simple, and while the game is obviously in HD, there's not a whole lot to the artwork outside of the different area designs. The turrets you can build are simple, the units you create are little more than geometric shapes, like a triangle for scouts or squares for tanks, and the only thing that really stands out visually is the ship you pilot around that actually creates your structures for you.

As the game begins it'll guide you through the construction process, and introduce you to your base and the basic concepts of the game. Using your ship, you'll simply tap X to build a turret, which takes up a small square space on the game map. On the left side of the screen you have a small display the shows the current health of your base, along with your current resources. Typically you have 100 points or so of resources to start out with, allowing you to build the cheap turrets to get a basic defense going.

You'll notice too that there's a red line of arrows pointing from your opponents base to yours, spread out across the terrain. This is basically your enemies trail to reaching you, but you can alter this by placing turrets or other structures in the path, with the idea being that you want to create the longest path possible for you enemy to reach you, allowing you to buy time enough to gather resources and build up not only a proper defense, but a sizable offense as well.

To create your own army, along with building turrets, you can create command structures, which will run you a little bit more in resources. Once built, they'll allow you to make scouts, which are fairly quick units with little amounts of HP. You can upgrade your buildings you've created, so eventually you can produce tanks, which are just a bit slower but far more sturdy than the scout units. The more command buildings you create, the faster your unit production is. When you want to actually put the units into play, you simply hold a direction on the analog stick, which will release all the available units onto the field, coming from your base. These work just like the enemy units, going along a predetermined path. Eventually you'll unlock a few things to help them along their way, including a barrier that actually blocks off the enemy units but allows your units to pass through, potentially creating a shortcut to the enemy base.

The game isn't all about base defense and mass army construction though, at least not in the campaign. There's quite a few missions that work out almost like puzzles, with a ridiculous amount of either enemy units or turrets already in play, wherein you'll need to figure out which specific weakness or weak point to exploit in order to quickly end the round. These bits help to break up the gameplay, which would get a bit monotonous over the course of the campaign. Thankfully, if you're not big on figuring out puzzles, you can opt for a hint that will pretty much tell you exactly what you need to do.

There are three difficulty levels here, one of which is a ranked mode and will allow you to upload your time for each stage to a leaderboard, which is nice for those of you that enjoy some competition. If you're just starting out you might want to play around on the beginner stages a bit, just to get a feel for the controls and basic ideas behind the game. The controls are really not problematic, but it can take a little time getting the hang of how everything is mapped to using R1 for the menu and switching between the units you build and upgrade, along with trying to manage resources.

Speaking of resources, they come in the form of the actual comets, which really appear to be asteroids that fly by overhead. Your turrets will fire on these, and if they're broken up, they'll let out the points you need for your resources, which you can gather up using the ship you control on the stage. Your ship also comes with a tractor beam of sorts, allowing you to grab a hold of a particular asteroid and keep it in place, so that your turrets can easily break it apart. Resource gathering is pretty easy, but in certain stages it can get a little dangerous, especially if your enemy has anti-air cannons in place, which will take pot shots on your ship (it can be shot down). It doesn't provide too much danger, but it's something else to keep each match interesting.

So visually the game isn't really impressive, but the gameplay certainly feels unique. It's a pretty cool blend of RTS mechanics and tower defense strategies, but nothing about it feels like a retread of something I've played before. Even if you're feeling a little burnt out by other games that you might think are similar, it's worth giving a shot to Comet Crash, as I think it'll surprise you. It might not be the most technically impressive game on PSN, but it's certainly fun to play, and worth checking out for PS3 owners.

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