Bloons Tower Defense (iPhone) Review

Costas Stephanides’s Review

Why do monkeys hate balloons so much

Following on from the successful port of the original Bloons game from PC to iPhone, Ninja Kiwi has entrusted Digital Goldfish with the sequel, Bloons Tower Defense.

As with all tower defense games, the aim is to stop the enemy from travelling through various sinusoidal paths. This being a Bloons game, the enemy comprises a number of balloons and your soldiers are monkeys (makes a change from the politicians). The graphics are in a similar style to the original game and Bloons TD retains the charm of the original.

The difficulty and learning curve of the game is spot on. While it might initially take a while to get to grips with the game, once the basics are under your belt you can move on to the harder levels/settings and fine tune your tactics.

Rather than have an endless stream of balloons and to make things a little interesting, the invading balloons have balloons within balloons. Popping a blue balloon will reveal a red balloon and so on. Towards the end, the levels get quite manic with a airship that bursts into a ceramic balloon which bursts into a rainbow which then goes into a series of white, black, yellow, green, blue and red balloons or something like that. To be honest, the action is extremely frantic by the end and it can be difficult to keep track but with enough weapons you should be able to handle with it.f
You have a host of monkey operated weaponry which you can place around the paths. As with other tower defence games, your weapons can be upgraded to give faster and longer shots. The emphasis here is on lots of sharp implements with a personal favourite of mine being the spikey catapult.

There are 5 level packs included with the initial purchase and each pack has three levels. All the levels also have easy, medium and hard settings with bronze to gold medals up for grabs.

Once you've figured out a winning tactic, it is pretty easy to replicate throughout the levels but the sheer number of different levels will keep you playing for hours. A level is officially completed after the 50th wave but you are free to carry on and go for a high score. By the time you get to level 50, you should have a rather large army to hand but even these will struggle aster a while (the furthest I've managed is wave 59).

Having completed all the levels on easy, I have proceeded to finish off all the levels on the hard setting. There's not many games that draw me in to such extent so that should be a recommendation in itself.