Written by: Ian

 

 

 

Double Fine have really launched themselves into a world of excellent niche downloadable titles. But with legal wranglings, is "Iron Brigade" (formally Trenched) worth the long wait?

 

 

Iron Brigade tells the story of an alternate past, where after World War I, mechs (or Trenches, as the game terms them) were developed by a US scientist who had lost his legs in the war. The Russians developed ‘The Broadcast’, and now you fight against their renegade leader, Vlad, and his foul creations. The story definitely takes the background seat, but is delivered through some amusing in-game and cartoon scenes, which are excellently voiced and far, far more polished than the majority of what you see on XBLA.

 

 

Trenched/ Iron Brigade is a really interesting concept to bring a tower defence game to consoles with success. It’s effectively almost more of a 3rd person action game with a tower defence element to it. You play as a ‘Trench’ which you have direct control over, and features a variety of weaponry and features depending on how you have customised it back at base.

 

 

The customisation is really good- it’s clear and obvious what is going on, but the list of options seem almost endless. You always have to defend one (or more) bases from waves of enemies.

 

Defeating enemies gives you scrap, and you can use scrap to buy or upgrade turrets which you can lay almost anywhere on the battlefield. It’s a simple but enjoyable system, but by yourself, the game is damn hard. You can’t die in single player (apart from boss levels), but each time you are downed, you lose valuable seconds mashing buttons to get back up whilst the enemy smash into your base.

 

 

The game also has too much trial and error, as weapon loadout becomes crucial to success as you progress through the game. On top of that, your progress is also quite badly defined, especially if you play multiplayer. The party leader (which can change) is the one whose missions you have access to, which is not very clear. After playing with someone else (when I thought I was the lead player), I came back to my base to find I had lost loads of progress, which I was very annoyed about. Turns out I’d just missed one mission, and after completing that, I moved about 5 levels down the road again to where I was after my multiplayer session. If the game had made this clear, that wouldn’t have been an issue, but instead I was left angry and annoyed.