The Blogtastic Blogfest That Is Getmeoutofthis.net!

Double Fine is the Double BEST! Or something. I dunno, I love Tim Schafer and his crew, and I love to give them money! I say this, having never actually gotten around to buying and playing Stacking. Oops! But I did get Trenched, because after I watched this badass quicklook, who could say no? Of course, I beat the game weeks ago, when it came out, but one of the benefits of keeping a list of possible blog topics now is that I can remember games like Trenched that slipped through the blogging cracks when I first played them. So I’ll talk about it now! There’s no law against it.

Trenched is basically a hybrid of third person shooter and tower defense, with a little mech game customization thrown in. It’s much more shooter than tower defense, though. (Sanctum, which I also need to write about someday, is basically the opposite, more tower defense than shooter, for example.) It’s exactly as awesome as it sounds. The Double Fine humor is in there, but this is really a game that carries itself much more on the actual gameplay than the writing, a refreshing change for Double Fine, and does it really well.

Your Mobile Trench has “emplacements,” which are basically towers. Different Trenches can equip different combinations of these, but they’re mostly your standard Tower Defense fare. Machine guns, mine layers, things that slow down enemies, and so on. There are things like little healing posts that heal your Trench as well, in case you personally get damaged. Those end up being really important actually. Other than that, your Trench can equip many different guns. Machine guns, sniper rifles, rocket launchers, you name it, you can equip it. They take up a certain number of slots on your machine, so all guns can’t go on all Trenches. You have to pick a class, basically. If you want more guns, you take less towers with you. More towers? Weaker guns. It’s not a surprising balance, but it works.

Once in a game, you have to defend a point from waves of dudes. They look badass and are color-coded so you know what they do. Like most Tower Defense games, they come down set lanes, so you can set up your defenses. The difference is, of course, that you can shoot them, and your guns are at least as effective as the towers themselves.
The game really shines with a full party. It’s just more fun with four people running around. The game is also really nice about the difficulty. It’s set such that if you party with randoms who are actually trying, but not coordinating, you will probably just BARELY win, but if you work together, bring in weapons that compliment each other, and so on, you can knock it out of the park. It’s well-built like that. I had fun playing with randoms and friends alike.

The game is a little short, and is in incredible need of an “endless mode” or something of that nature to let you go all out and test your meddle against the game, but if you have friends to play with, Trenched is an amazingly good time. I would bring a friend, though. I only played by myself like twice, and then I’m like, “Eh,” and started pulling in random dudes if nobody was online, and enjoyed it more that way. Still, it is another high-quality Double Fine product. I really had fun.