Though nowadays, Q Games' PixelJunk titles are well-known as a quality set of quirky little indie games, it wasn't until their second game, PixelJunk Monsters, that they became more of a household name. Today we're going to check out its latest port, PixelJunk Monsters Ultimate HD for the Vita.
Ultimate HD contains the original PixelJunk Monsters, as well as all of the additional content provided by its DLC and the subsequent PSP port. You control the adorable TikiMan, a forest-dwelling dude who's got to look out for his tribe. Waves of spiders, trolls and other bad creatures wind their way through the forest to attack his tribe, and you need to help TikiMan build towers to stop them.
When towers take out enemies (or you walk near random trees), you'll earn coins, which you can use to build more towers. Sometimes, a crystal will drop, which lets you either unlock more advanced towers for use, or instantly upgrading an existing tower to a more efficient version. That's great and all, but the real charm of this game lies in the fact that TikiMan can upgrade his towers through the power of dance. It's horribly inefficient, but there's something so stupidly whimsical about his magic dance, that sometimes I'd nearly fail a level because I was watching TikiMan do his thing.
While the majority of the levels utilize the standard fixed-path gameplay, there are a few twists on the formula. Sometimes you'll be restricted in the amount of funds you can spend over the course of a level, other times there will be no set path and enemies will beset you from all sides in random, windy paths. These do wonders for variety, and help keep the solo play from feeling too much like a slog.
There's no way around this. PixelJunk Monsters can be quite difficult, sometimes frustratingly so. The amount of setup time you're granted between waves of enemies practically requires you to have advance knowledge of the level, which means you'll probably be restarting a few of the levels many times in order to get a solid foundation that can carry you through to the end.
If you're lucky enough to stay safe though an entire level, you'll earn a rainbow, which helps you unlock new levels to play. Though you don't need to 100% the entire game to make progress, the difficulty spikes can make earning a rainbow seem impossible.
Monsters supports two player co-op through both ad-hoc and online connections. Ad hoc connections are a breeze, as the game simply searches for a partner. However, connecting with a friend online is needlessly complicated. Rather than utilize your PSN friends list to make a connection, PJM requires you to create or join a chat room, which up to seven other players may join. People who join your room can then be added to your in-game friend list, which will let you know if people are online, and you can join whatever room they're in. Unfortunately, there's no quick way to just invite a friend to your game without first joining a room.
Once you've connected, the player hosting the match chooses a level to play - all levels are unlocked regardless of your progress in the campaign, which is nice. Of course, this means that progress gained in co-op doesn't translate to anything for your solo play. Both players take control of their own TikiMan, with their own pool of money to draw from. Coins picked up by a player go into their specific reserve, which means someone can definitely end up being a money hog and screw their partner out of being very useful.
Upgrade crystals go into a shared pool, which mitigates this problem slightly, though I found that some people are too gung-ho about upgrading individual towers so unlocking the second tier of structures would be hard. If you're going to play online, you'll definitely want to provide some sort of voice chat to help strategize, as the TikiSpeak wheel is not very useful (and mid-battle it's almost pointless to attempt to use).
Having another player around certainly helps alleviate some of the more devious difficulty spikes, but to me, the only real benefit to be drawn from the co-op is the ability to combine your dancing skills to upgrade towers faster. Otherwise, it was mostly an exercise in preventing my partner from coin hoarding, and slogging through the same levels from the campaign. If co-op progress could be ported to single player, I might be singing a different tune. At the very least I'd at least have more rainbows.
If you're already a fan of PixelJunk Monsters and can't get enough, this is an easy buy. For the rest of us, it's hard to ignore that this is simply a port of a game some of us have already played through twice. Still, it remains a solid, quirky tower defense game, and who hasn't had enough of those yet?
The Co-Optimus review of PixelJunk Monsters Ultimate HD is based on the Playstation Vita version of the game. Codes for review were supplied by the publisher.