Tower Defense

The $0.99 Tower Defense game Goal Defense is available for free for a limited time in celebration of the upcoming Olympic Games in London. Goal Defense is a simple hex-based Tower Defense game for the iPhone and iPad. It features 40 challenging levels, fun animations and plenty of upgrades and bonuses.

In Goal Defense you must train a team of random athletes to defend the Golden Bowl trophy from waves of muscle-bound jocks. The game follows most of the basic Tower Defense staples, but its fun cartoonish play separates it from other boring TD rehashes. The game is simple to play, just drag your players onto the field to stop the oncoming waves of enimies from getting to the trophy. You can upgrade and sell your players by tapping them, and use click and drag bonus weapons to save your butt when a jock slips by your defense. The controls may be simple, but the game does get increasingly difficult and trickier as you advance. For example, on level six small vans begin dropping off players closer to the target making it more difficult to build a solid defense.

Fantasy Defense HD is a classic Tower Defense game with RPG like elements and an anime art style. You must use a combination of loyal fighters and skilled mages to defend your kingdom from various waves of enemies. What separates this game from most Tower Defense games is the ability to buy items and upgrade your towers between levels. There are also various items like gems and treasure chests that you can bust open for bonuses during gameplay.

I gave the game a quick whirl and the first few levels are terribly easy, however, there is a lot to learn. Perhaps the game is structured that way to give you time to figure out how to use the many abilities and upgrades before it gets harder. Fantasy Defense HD has 5 different environments with 10 levels each, adding up to 50 different boards to play. There are also different game modes like "Infinity Mode" adding even more playability. The Record Board keeps track of your high scores, but doesn't offer any achievements.

After a long wait for the disappointing Last Stand 3, I've been desperately trying to find a fun and addictive new free zombie game. I originally dismissed Zombie Lane as a lame Facebook app that forces you to spend money to play, but it has grown on me over the last week (especially after the Christmas update which added new missions and stuff to buy). The only problem is Zombie Lane is not the best time passer. It's a great game to have on your phone for random bits of procrastination, but having to wait five minutes to perform one task can get kind of tedious.

Infected is more of the fast paced kind of game I've been looking for. It's a fun twist on the tower defense genre where you use police officers as torrents to defend citizens from zombies. The app can even access your Facebook friends turning them into the helpless victims. Like any tower defense game you can upgrade your torrents, buy better armed police agents, and use random weapons to bomb zombie hordes. The game has a good mix of free upgrades and features an online multi-player mode.