Rush for Glory Review

Nothing is more infuriating than watching your well planned defences fall under the weight of an underestimated siege in a tower defence game. You think you’re doing a superb job, you even risk sending the next wave earlier as so far, nothing has come close to toppling your mighty forward defences. Then panic sets in as you realise the next wave hosts a batch of air-based units you’ve yet to prepare yourself for, spending all your money maxing out your machine guns to obliterate the incoming ground troops, leaving your civilians at the mercy of your foe. This is a pain I’ve felt for many years, and you’d have thought I’d have learnt by now. Alas, once again, I’ve fell victim to my own naivety.

Rush for Glory encompasses all the familiar traits you’ve experienced in past tower defence games. Your ultimate goal is to plan your defences well enough to provide sufficient cover so your entire civilian population survives all of the enemy waves, all the while planning where to place your defences to match the severity and the variety of the incoming units. Enemies will spawn from one or two pre-set entrance points on the map and work their way across to the other side, with your towers being placed either side of the routes your enemies take. Enemies don’t just walk along getting shot however; some units can attack and destroy your towers, and some can even heal other enemies around them.

Luckily for you though, you’re kitted out with five distinct towers, each serving their purpose in providing a suitable defence dependent on the enemies you’re currently facing. If you’re accustomed to the genre you’ll be familiar with the towers you’re dealing with, from your run of the mill machine guns to your slowing and splash damage towers, their all here. You can upgrade your towers by building up enough gold in your pot, but the corresponding tower must have earned enough experience first before it can be upgraded.

Along the campaign you unlock several beneficial abilities, all of which require a donation from your gold pot and need to be recharged once used, but in the latter half of the game you’ll find yourself using these abilities more and more, especially the healing ability which instantly repairs all your damaged towers. You’re also kitted with things like traps and bombardments that can provide a decent last line of defence if it comes to it.

If you do particularly well in a mission you’ll also earn gold stars which you can use to upgrade your towers and increase your likelihood of success. A nice touch is that the stars aren’t one use, so if you change your mind about giving one tower an ability, you can go back and use that star on another tower.

The game does a lot right in terms of sticking to the genres tried and tested roots, but it also falls back in areas that other tower defence games have surpassed in. One notable annoyance was that you’re limited as to where you can place your towers and you have to leave a large gap in between each placement. It makes it hard to get a decent amount of towers down, especially in later levels where the gaps for your placements become small and don’t have enough space for more than one or two units. I’m not sure if this was done purposefully by the developers to force players to make use of the entire map, but it’s frustrating and obstructive nonetheless and you lose your freedom to pick and choose where you want the majority of your units to sit.

Aesthetically the towers look fine, and the maps are actually quite pleasant and varied, but the bulk of the enemy units are essentially blurry Space Marines from the Warhammer 40K universe. The rest are a mixed bag of generic tanks, airborne jets and mech walkers that do the job without being particularly exciting. You can however get a close up of the action from the view of one of your towers, which is a nice touch and can make the experience more engaging and exciting, even if the novelty wears off relatively quickly.

If you want a good tower defence game to casually whittle away the hours, then you could do a lot worse than Rush for Glory. That being said, with only 10 campaign levels, no multiplayer and no real reason to revisit, you have many other options in the tower defence genre that are at a much better standard and provide a lengthier experience for your money. Rush for Glory is by no means a bad game, but it’s nothing you haven’t seen or invested time in before.

REVIEW CODE: A complimentary PC code was provided to Brash Games for this review. Please send all review code enquiries to editor@brashgames.co.uk.