Today I had the pleasure of playing McDroid, a third-person tower defense game, and honestly was a bit let down. When I first saw the footage for McDroid, I was surprised by how good the art looked. I have always been a huge fan of tower defense games in general so I couldn’t wait to get my hands on it. When I first loaded up the game, I was met with a cute start game screen and after exploring the options I hopped right in.
The first cutscene and mission really shows off my favorite points about the whole game which are definitely the oversaturated cartoony graphics, great controls, and the game’s dialogues. It’s all easy sailing through there but then you hit the second mission and that sense of repetitiveness hits you. That’s very normal for a tower defense game but the way they make up for that is by usually adding tower upgrades, harder and unique enemies, or just a big pool of towers to choose from. They do all these things but implement them in the wrong way.
The way they implement harder enemies is very sudden and would usually be too much for any player to handle if not for the enemies getting stuck. The way they introduce the unique enemies is so sudden and they differ so little that you don’t even notice them. The way they introduce upgrading your towers is almost a grind that takes you away from the game itself and instead you have to focus on collecting diamonds to buy the upgrades. I don’t even know how to express my frustration here. To get your desired towers you need…it’s almost like you have to either focus on them-which could easily cost you a loss-or you have to go back and grind levels. With the game being as repetitive as it already is, it was a complete mood killer for me.
Now the second problem I have with the game is the lack of content. McDroid has about twelve unique story missions in total, two challenges for almost every mission that are harder versions of the missions, and three arenas which you defend against waves of enemies independent from the story. I spent a few hours with the game and was a little over half way through the story even after I spent a lot of time messing around and testing different aspects of the title. Now this is a good bit of content from an indie developer but with the overall grind and repetitiveness of the game, it’s an issue you can’t look past and ignore. If the game were to get a few updates, I have no doubt in my mind it would certainly grow and become much better.
Summary
Some people have called McDroid a fast-paced game but I have to disagree. Most of my time that was spent in the game involved standing still waiting for strawberries to grow or to repair one of my towers. This completely negates its supposed fast-paced feel and replaces it with almost a clutter effect. This interruption causes you to miss important events that could cost you the game. I feel like to improve the game the developers need to stick to its strengths. McDroid should be tweaked where it focuses more on the story instead of forcing you to grind it out.
Noel was a regular ICXM contributor in 2016, publishing 83 articles across game reviews, Windows and PC, and Xbox news. Their work focused on hands-on reviews, platform commentary, and breaking-news reporting during the run-up to Xbox One S and Project Scorpio, plus the broader Windows 10 gaming push.