[MR] Defending A Rectangle Might Sound Easy, But Actually It's Challenging!

Defend the Rectangle is a game created by paradon

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Introduction

Welcome to my 49th review and my 45th [MR]. Today I'll be reviewing Defend the Rectangle by paradon. Paradon rarely makes games anymore, but from his previous games, he seems to be one of the top game creators on Sploder. What I would like to see though is that paradon hasn't lost his quality. But since this is only his second PPG and he hasn't made a game for a while, my expectations aren't high, but this game was featured, so hopefully, it won't let me down.

Review

The game starts off with actually quite a hard level for a first one. I hardly could understand what the aim of the game is straight away, but having only two lives and objects going towards the rectangle straight away is too much for level 1. It probably took me about 10 attempts to actually complete the first level. At that point, I could already tell that you have to know what's coming next to be able to win the level.

This is a very challenging game and paradon has made a good choice to make it so that the first person to win the game wins three platinum awards. It is based on a test of reaction and memory which means you have to play a lot of levels over and over again which causes lots of frustration. What else was challenging was that paradon used all sorts of enemies attacking at all sorts of speeds. The faster they are, the more challenger they are. So you know the game is challenging, but you don't know anything about if it's repetitive yet, unless you've played the game. Even though the game style is the same in each level, it actually doesn't become repetitive. Paradon managed to make it so that you couldn't really have any idea at all what's going to spawn next, and there are no patterns at all, so it's all going to matter on your reactions really. Another thing that didn't make it repetitive is that there's a different background colour and music for each level. Since there is no story, it's a good idea to have different background colour and music for each level.

You might not count these as enemies, but the only ones in the game are the enemies attacking the rectangle. Since the game has an idea that nobody's used before, I can't really expect it to have a range of enemies doing different things. Paradon has placed too many enemies in for most levels though. Especially when there's all sorts going at different speeds, it gets too confusing. If there's too many enemies then it can sort of ruin the game. What I liked about what paradon did with the enemies is that he made it so that the enemies are a good amount of space away from each other. The reason I like that is that if they were too close together then it would start to cause even more confusion for the player. Paradon also made it so the enemies are a reasonable length away from the rectangle. I think that there is far too little lives that the player has at the start of each level. The first level only has two lives in it - that goes to show how little health there is in. It just makes the game too hard. Since there were enemies coming from spawners in this game, I'd of thought maybe lives coming from spawners would be a good idea.

There isn't really any puzzle in this game. I suppose that you could count reacting and remembering as puzzles, but it's not really anything special. Reacting and remembering is challenging in this game like I've already mentioned. I think that some of the reacting would actually be impossible to stop for example you might be trying to stop a rectangle from one side of the rectangle while a really speedy one comes from the other side. I noticed that quite a bit in this game. The puzzles can be improved.

Last of all is the action. If you think that this isn't an action packed game, then you probably don't know the definition of action is. The whole game you have to be very focused so the enemies don't touch the rectangle. The time limit seemed to be quite a lot of time for 30 seconds, which starts to make the game a bit boring. Now I didn't complete the game, but assuming that each level had a time limit of 30 seconds, if you played the whole game without losing any of the levels at all, that would mean you'd of been doing the same sort of thing in the game for a whole four and a half minutes, plus the fact that each level takes about ten attempts to beat makes it even more boring.

Ratings (Out of five):

Overall, this game deserves a 3/5

Is it feature worthy?

The big question though is "Is this game feature worthy?" In my opinion, no, it isn't. Like I've already mentioned in the review, the placements and puzzle aren't so good. If the placements gets any lower than a 3/5, then I'd say that there's no chance that the game would be feature worthy. Every good game has got to have good placements. I'm not saying that I'm requesting this game to be unfeatured, I just don't think it's worthy.

This has been a Miracle Review!