Iron Brigade [PC, XBOX]

Iron Brigade is part of the growing number of tower defence games where you also play as a ground troop, laying down turrets and shooting the enemy personally. It's take on the genre is that you have a giant mech called a trench which is pretty cool. The game has been out for over a year now on XBOX 360 but has just been released on PC so this review mainly focuses on the PC version.

You can choose three basic chassis types for your trench, the engineer chassis which allows you to bring more turrets to the battle, an assault chassis which lets you bring more weapons, or a standard one which is a mixture of assault and engineer. Customising your trench and character make for the funnest part of the game. I love seeing what new loot I have found, or unlocked due to the multitude of stats the game keeps.

The gameplay itself is satisfying yet a little too repetitive. Blowing away waves of tubes, as the enemies are called, is great for a bit of instant gratification and although the game tries to mix it up with different monsters and scenarios it all feels a bit, been there done that after a while. The gameplay has a very arcadey feel to it and I found it best to play in small bursts. As I mentioned before the main hook to the game is the sweet loot you get. You can also team up with three friends to play but you have to use the much despised windows live.

Graphically the game is not going to push your brand new graphics card but it does look nice. My personal favourite is the heat effects you get off your gun as you reload it. From time to time I had a minor bit of freezing where the game seemed to do nothing for a few seconds, presumably it was loading then everything would be fine again. I also experienced some clicks and stutters in the audio and when the game really heats up the audio seems to apply a strange effect. I think it is deliberate but it doesn't quite sound right. None of these issues are game-breaking and there are already patches in the works.

Overall the game is fun but not highly unique or original, however it only costs $15 and the PC version gets the DLC for free. If you like stomping about in big mechs and love collecting loot and using it to upgrade then this is the game for you 7.8/10.