Sanctum 2 Review

       You know you're about to review a good game when you get ready to start writing and instead you just start playing the game for a half hour. That's what just happened to me when I fired up Sanctum 2 to let it run in case I needed to reference it during the writing of this review.

       Sanctum 2 is an FPS tower-defense game. It's a pretty even match of both genres. In each level, you construct, upgrade, and configure an array of towers. Then, you face a wave of enemies. You whip out a gun and run around shooting enemies. Between the towers and your own firepower, you must defend a giant sphere called a core in the level. If your core survives the wave, you get more resources to build and upgrade your towers, and then you face the next wave. If you die, you re-spawn. You only lose if your core gets taken out.

       Sanctum 2's story is told in a really ingenious way. You are given no back story at all. You are thrown right into the thick of the action and you'll have to catch up with what is going on as you go. The story is told through beautiful comic book style panels that appear between levels. The story is ingenious because you basically pick it up through context and reading conversations in the comics. You aren't directly told anything, but you soon get a grasp on the basic situation, and by the end, you feel like you really know the characters and the story just as well as if it had been to to you explicitly. I haven't really seen a game pull this kind of story off in this way before. It really adds to the drama of the action to not know exactly what is going on at first. You feel like you are being dragged along for the wild ride; sort of like a movie that starts in the middle of an action scene and explains the situation later. Unfortunately exactly what happens at the end is a little unclear (although it is clearly really cool), but up until that point the story and its method of delivery is just great. Now, given what I just told you, I obviously can't tell you anything about the story.

       So, when you fire up Sanctum 2 and load up a level, you must first choose a character. There are four to choose from. Each character is defined by their main weapon, which no one else can use, and a few unique abilities. Without getting into the nitty gritty details, there is Skye, who has an assault rifle and can double jump. Then there's Sweet, who has a rocket launcher and has better maneuverability while jumping. SiMO is a robot with a sniper rifle who does extra damage if he hits enemies in their weak spot, and Haigen has a shotgun and does more damage if he is close to the enemy. Once you pick a character, you pick a secondary weapon for them. Then you pick what towers you want to take into the level with you, and then you take perks for the character. So there are a lot of choices to make to trick out how you want to play. You gain experience for playing, and when you level up, you unlock new secondary weapons, towers, perks, and tower and perk slots that let you take more of those things with you into battle. There are quite a few weapons and towers to earn, and many perks, and taking different stuff drastically changes your performance in the level. I found a few favorite perks and stuck with them (such as the one that heals the core after each round), and rotated my other perks based on what was needed for the level and character (there is one that make you re-spawn instantly instead of having to wait 10 seconds, one that damages all enemies around you, one that makes enemies explode when they die, and many others). I found tower combinations that I liked to use early on, but was able to experiment enough that I would change my line up from time to time. I tried to rotate which characters I used. My most used was Haigen, whose shotgun, which can charge up and fire extremely strong blasts, is devastating and extremely useful, but I also had a good run sniping enemies as SiMO for a few levels. And while I was less successful playing as Skye and Sweet, I still used them for a couple of levels and enjoyed playing as them a lot. Helping you pick your favorites in all these categories are numbers that pop out of enemies when you damage them, RPG style. I love this. Just like in Soldner-X, this addition really adds a lot to the gameplay and feel. It's like it's asking you to experiment and try new things.

       Once you are in the level, you select a tower to build with the d-pad. You then aim the reticle where you want to build using classic FPS controls; left stick to move the character, right stick to aim the cross hair. The level is divided into a grid with each tower taking up a square. You hold R2 for a second to build the tower. R1 recycles it, giving you back the resources you used up to build it. This lets you change up your build between rounds and experiment. Holding R2 while aiming at a tower allows you to upgrade it. You start with a general cannon tower, but soon start to earn more exotic ones, such as a gatling gun, a mine dispenser, and a tower that boosts other towers' attack power (plus there are 8 others, but I don't want to spoil them!). Besides these offensive towers, you also have tower bases, which act as blockades. Usually you have enough of these that you can build a maze that the enemies have to run through in order to get to the core. You can never close off a section of the maze completely; there must always be a way for the enemies to get through, but besides that rule your imagination is the limit. Designing these mazes is really fun, and the controls make it easy to do quickly. Two tools aid you in the design process. The first is the mini-map on the side of the screen, which can be blown up to nearly full screen size instantly by holding R1. The other is a line that flies through the air at regular intervals showing you the route the enemies will take to get to the core. This line updates in real-time as you build and is visible both in the level and on the mini-map. Building towers in the first person view might sound a bit cumbersome, but it actually works really smoothly. And the design part of it is really deep. You'll get some great “Aha!” moments as you design mazes that double back on themselves to let a tower get a second crack at the enemy, or create a shape that routes multiple enemy forces through the same kill zone of towers. The line that shows you the enemy route is an ingenious idea.

       You start the round when you are ready by pressing select, although some rounds start automatically after a timer ticks down, which puts the pressure on you to build quickly. The shooting controls are pretty standard. R2 is fire and R1 is alternate fire. All weapons have really cool alternate fire modes. For example, the shotgun's alternate mode charges up its power, the rocket launcher locks on to enemies if you hold alt fire, and the SMG secondary weapon shoots poison darts! L2 is the aim button, which slows your movement to a crawl but zooms in down the sights of your weapon allowing for better accuracy. Square is reload, X is jump, triangle is switch weapon, and clicking R3 makes you run. Some enemy types like to attack you if they get the chance while others will totally ignore you and make a bee-line for the core. Sanctum 2 really feels different in the shooting department because your weapons don't have all that many shots in their magazines. Ammo is unlimited, but you'll have to reload a lot, and you only have 2 weapons. Reloading is a little lengthier affair than in most games, but your guns can reload themselves while you are firing your other gun (I think this is because they are all energy weapons and are technically cooling down, not reloading). The only way to continually lay down fire is to constantly switch between your two weapons. You must always be sure to empty your clip to cause an automatic reload or to press the reload button before switching weapons. Otherwise you will be switching over to a weapon with only a few shots left and be stranded without the ability to shoot for a few precious seconds. This forces you to play really well and always manage your weapons correctly and to make sure your tower design is tight, as you can't rely on being able to save the day totally on your own.

       And that's the real beauty of Sanctum 2. It is balanced to a T. You need to personally play well and shoot straight, but you also need to design a clever maze and set up your towers in just the right configurations. If you fail at either, you probably won't be able to defend your core through enough rounds to clear the level. It truly is tower defense and first-person shooting at the same time. Both are equally important. The difficulty is keyed right into this formula too. Many of the levels took me several lengthy tries, but the game is so engaging and there are so many methods and combinations to experiment with, I would often play these levels over and over again in a row without getting bored.

The level design is also pretty brilliant. The levels are very varied. They seemingly take you through every type of situation you could imagine, from defending a single core from a single attack point to defending multiple cores from multiple angles. There are wide open arenas for you to build in and tight spaces where every tower placement drastically alters the enemies' movement pattern. There are cores that are in the middle of the level and must be protected from all sides and cores that need to be almost fully protected by towers while you personally guard another core yourself. You will build mazes that funnel enemies into big killzones for your towers and mazes that just lead the enemies on a circuitous route to buy you some time. Some levels don't even let you build a maze at all, making you place towers with a totally different philosophy. Most make you think about how you are going to take out both mobs of little enemies and attacks by titanic armored beasts given the current terrain. There are 16 levels, and they are all really well-designed and fun. They even have secret areas you can explore, which usually contain mines you can bring back to the main part of the level and plant. And the last level... your jaw might drop when you see how that is set up. Brilliant.

       Visually, this is a really unique and interesting world. The player characters are all wearing this futuristic white armor with mostly rounded edges. Thy all have one normal hand and one gigantic robotic hand that holds their heavy weapons. SiMO has a holographic screen for a face that makes silly images and also displays information readouts that the other characters read like a computer screen. The weapons all look really great too. Even familiar weapons look exotic and different, and the guns have lots of weird moving parts and interesting visual features on them. The towers are incredibly sleek and clean, like they are medical equipment or something. The enemies are amazing too. They have a beautiful purple and black color scheme with one bright red eye-like slit in the middle. This design carries over to flying enemies with fluttering tentacles, giant four-legged beasts, massive boss monsters (which are the only enemies that can destroy your towers, I should mention), and other strange monstrosities, like a four-legged enemy called a Soaker that carries a gigantic red, pulsating bulb on top of it, and small kamikaze enemies that look like they just crawled out of on of those underwater caves that are out in the middle of nowhere. The enemies are grotesque, bizarre, and beautiful and very unique. My reaction to the human, mechanical, and creature designs was that I want action figures or model kits of them, and I can think of no higher praise. The landscapes of the levels and the art in the comic strips lives up to this same very high standard.

       If you want to mess around with the game's basic formula, there are some interesting ways to do so. You can switch to survival mode, which makes waves of enemies continue to come past the levels' normal ten or so rounds. The level goes until you loose the core in this mode. More interesting to me however, are the feats of strength. These are settings you can add to a level that make it more difficult and give you an experience bonus. There are five of these, and they do things like make enemies faster or stronger or harder to kill. After beating the game, I wanted to try and beat it with all five enabled, as the trophy list beckons you to do. After awhile, it became clear to me that even when using the ingenious strategies I found on this youtube channel (which I recommend only using after you beat the game with your own strategies!) I am not quite good enough to beat most of the levels this way. I decided to beat the game with 3 feats of strength active. I beat most of the game this way, but had to turn it down to 2 feats of strength for a few of the tougher levels, and even down to 1 for the craziness that is the final level (especially because the strategy used on the youtube channel for this level has been patched so that it doesn't work now! I had to improvise my own strategy based on the idea in the video). The feats of strength are basically a customizable hard mode that you can tailor to your needs while increasing your XP gain, which is awesome. It's a great way to do a hard mode that more games should consider.

        The music side of Sanctum 2 is solid. There are a few calm beautiful tunes that play during the building phase and on the title screen, but the music that chimes in during the attack phase is epic – movie score type stuff that gets the adrenaline flowing. The song that plays during the build phase of the final level is a standout. It's like a slowed down chill remix of an early Daft Punk song or something. The calm tune on the title screen is also great as you stare into the distant landscape featured there.

       I want to take a minute and congratulate Sanctum 2's developers for their handling of texture pop. The level loads up in the background while you pick your character and loadout. So when you drop into the level, it is fully loaded! Amazing! I think it's pretty obvious that you need to do something like this if you are using Unreal engine, but most games totally ignore this concept and just have the textures pop in as you go, which looks incredibly stupid and kills any immersion they might have going on. Come on AAA games! You couldn't figure this out!

       Sanctum 2 occasionally has some frame rate drop when the action gets really, really out of control. There are two levels where this might happen and even when the problem shows up, it's not that bad, and the game runs smoothly otherwise.

       You can play up to four player co-op, and I can see how it is really designed for co-op play in many ways as the different characters are pretty varied and are much better at certain things than the others. The also levels feature situations that would allow for coordinated attacks and such. From what I hear the difficulty scales up as you add more players too. I still felt like I got a great, perfectly balanced experience playing solo though. Unfortunately I don't have the ability to test out the mulitplayer at this time.

       I am really jealous that the Steam version of this game has a lot of DLC with new levels, enemies, weapons, towers, perks, and even a new character. Even the 360 version got some of those things too. From what I read, the PS3 version of this game was a flop (which is insane as this is such, such, such a great game) and there are no plans to bring the DLC over. Sadness.

       Sanctum 2 is a nearly perfect game. If it had just stuck the landing on the ending and lost the framerate problem, it would probably be there. It is unique and executed almost perfectly. It's balance reminds me of the superb difficulty tuning of the Wipeout games. It's amazing that it does something so different and does it so well. The next article I write for the blog will be the 2^nd Annual Game of My Year Awards, and Sanctum 2 is a big contender. It is so close to a perfect score. It's deep, yet fun to play. It requires planning and strategy but also twitchy shooting skills. Its character, creature, and mechanical design are among the best in gaming. It's addictive and varried and difficult. It's a great game, tier 2.