It’s like the best worst alien invasion movie ever.
So in games like these, you’d usually expect to play as the humans in the story; you know, fighting the alien invaders and being all cool and all kinds of American… But in this game, you actually get to play as our weird green invaders instead!
X-Morph: Defense is an odd type of wave based tower defense game, merged with a kind of bizarre twin-stick shooter, which kinda makes this game the perfect tower-defense game since you would usually get bored of waiting in these kinds of games (Think similar to Dungeon Defenders). The twin-stick element to the game makes it a lot more tolerable and adds a lot more playtime to your game – There’s a lot of strategy behind placing your units and all that jazz, blocking enemy paths, funneling choke points and just knowing you’re some alien asshole fucking with a bunch dumb humans is a pretty fun idea to me.
The game also is rather aware of its cheesy alien invasion movie nature, so it’s riddled with really dumb dialogue, and because of it’s over the top nature you get some really genuinely funny moments and situations.
…But because of its mindless nature, a lot can assume that the game is easy-peasy, but it really isn’t. My experience was fairly challenging, and I’m not sure if it’s because I’m dumb or the game is just genuinely challenging… So don’t think you’re gonna be mindlessly placing units and shooting a bunch of mechs and expect a win. You have to learn how to use all your tools effectively to create chokepoints and flood certain areas with allies – This is a thinking man’s game.
Except for the twin-stick part… You kinda just go ham on that front… So let’s call it strategic mindlessness.
You have a decent amount of content which is really well suited for when you’re out and about with your Switch with you. Your regular campaign missions are just a decent enough length for small play sessions, and then you also have things like an endless survival mode which is always a really good time with games like these.
So this game actually came out two years earlier on much more powerful consoles and it’s still a great game on the Switch, but the main problem is that things do not look as great as they should as compared to competing consoles, and the fact that the game came out 2 years ago should also at least mean that we would get something new for the Switch release… But at least it has co-op, so that’s always a good time.
The controls in this game can feel really jank at times, and I know that is an issue for pretty much all console versions of the game. The game is pretty much ideal for a mouse and keyboard setup, which sucks because the wank controls keep this game from leaving its peak levels of fun. You always end up screwing something up because of them, and because it’s the Switch it gets a lot harder just because the JoyCons aren’t really the best when it comes to precision decision making and such.
Overall I had a pretty good time with this game. It has some really fun stuff going for it but I just wish it offered a lot more in terms of content, different modes and the like. The story and voice acting is simple, but really effective and funny, and it’s great to see that the game doesn’t take itself too seriously. It’s a really cool concept that takes the core concepts of two really good genres of games and makes them better without revealing the respective genre’s shortcomings.
I give X-Morph: Defense a:
7.0 / 10