I'm going to break format as a writer and let you know, right here and now, how this review is going to go down. There will be two distinct halves (not counting the categorical breakdown section at the bottom). The first half will consist of various paragraphs of fawning all over Master of Defense, with some drooling thrown in for good measure. The second half will be filled with weeping and wondering what I did to make Master of Defense leave me so soon after it came. Okay, there's your breakdown. Now take a deep breath, because I'm going to kick it off right here.

Master of Defense is a blast to play. The concept of the game is super-simple. You have these villagers, see, and these monsters, right, and they want to kill them (the villagers). So, you build big freakin' towers and have them shoot at the monsters and try to kill them. BAM! That's the game in a nutshell.

The title is actually a full-version (well, that remains to be seen, but we'll get to that in the weepy, tragic half of the review) adaptation of a series of custom Warcraft 3 maps known as... wait for it... Tower Defence (ed note: Master of Defense was released as Tower Defence and after this review was written the title was changed to Master of Defense). So, Voodoo Dimention gets knocked a few points for originality there, but the game is still a lot of fun.

The progression of gameplay is very simple. Monsters originate from Point A and walk or fly or crawl or lurch unerringly towards Point B at which point, depending on how much health they have remaining, they will kill X amount of villagers or the villagers will kill them. The gamer's goal is, by managing limited gold resources and experience points collected throughout the level, to lay down an iron-clad defense. Gold is used to purchase upgrades for towers or new units and experience points are used to either level up tower attributes, magic types, gold earned or villager hardiness.

There's a sizable bestiary of creepies in the game, but they all behave more or less the same, the only differences being hit points, appearance and speed of movement. Available to the gamer are four tower types (ground attack only, air attack only, a mixture, and an ice tower to freeze enemies), a fire trap to lay on the road and, after the third level, a balloon to hover over the action, dropping bombs on the enemies. This sparsity of units is made up by the fact that with each level up of the unit the appearance of it changes until it's hard not to nod approvingly and think that you really ARE one bad mother for making them.

Simple as the action in the game is, it's breezy fun to lay down units and scramble to beef them up or add new ones to fill the holes in your defense. A sliding bar to control the game speed helps slow the action down while setting up and helps speed things along in between waves of enemies (some levels have you facing down as many as 35 independent waves of enemies). However, after reloading a saved game the speed settings will be reset, so take note.

So far in this review, Master of Defense is coasting along. It looks great, it plays well and it's really easy to pick up. But now, alas, the other shoe must drop as I'm tired of building dramatic tension. Master of Defense is short. I finished a full run-through of the game in just over three hours, and that's with the speed slider pushed as slow as it can go the entire time. When I was finished, all I was met with were credits. A bit of a letdown.

And the credits don't even end on their own; they loop continuously until clicked upon. When I did that, it gave me the chance to upload the score the game had given me to the web leaderboard, a nifty feature, but after I tried to go back from my browser to the game, the program decided to stop working entirely (this is to say nothing of the fact that my score didn't seem to actually be uploaded). The game has a survival mode that scores can be posted on as well, but it's just one endless environment that plays like the rest of the game. If dealing with 35 waves of enemies is a long time to sit, sitting through 100+ waves to get on-line is, well, a really long time. It is worth noting that after completing the game once, a new Hard Mode is unlocked to test the gamer's mettle.

The save-game feature is pretty lame as well, as long as I'm complaining. Effectively, all you can do is save your current game and continue it later. Heaven forbid two people want to play two separate games at once, because they cannot.

Master of Defense, why have you forsaken me? The title had me exhilarated and eager for more and then it dumped me on my front porch without so much as a kiss goodnight or a promise to call me. I wanted to love it and to brag to my friends about it, but it just didn't treat me well enough.

Graphics:
Master of Defense looks awesome. There are tons of monsters and the tower upgrade graphics are pretty sweet. Toss in some tasty magical effects and all in all the game looks really good. I was very, very close to giving the graphics a "—" vote, though, because the game cannot run in windowed mode. Oh, there's an option for it, but it more or less crippled a machine that should be able to eat Master of Defense alive.

Sound:
The main menu music for Master of Defense is cool. It's a drum-heavy medieval kind of somber dirge, but that's really about it. The creatures only make noise to signal the next wave of monsters is coming and the villagers only make screamy noises when they're getting killed. The sound that's there isn't bad, but there's just not much that's making noise.

Gameplay:
The game is blissfully easy to play. Point...Click. Done! The real skill comes in strategy and placement of units. What's the best place to lay that tower? What's the best combination of fields of fire to lay waste to an oncoming onslaught?

Value:
I found Master of Defense to be pretty short. Six levels is an improvement over the original five, but on anything other than the lowest speed setting, things fly by. The added difficulty levels are a nice addition and add instant replay value. What's most important to note though is that VooDoo Dimention released an update to the gameplay with tons of new features included in it, including that additional stage and the two extra difficulty levels. Some of what they fixed were gripes I had in early drafts of this review. Any developer that doesn't abandon a project once it's released deserves some bonus points, so I'm boosting the Value rating from a "minus" here. Expect more updates and more features to be added to the game, if this initial trend continues.

Concept:
Master of Defense might be a relative rarity as a standalone title, but it did simply adapt its idea from a mod set for another title. It does it well and makes the title its own (there's virtually no resemblance to Warcraft at all), but this isn't an original idea from Voodoo Dimention.

Fun:
The game is very fun. There are a bunch of different ways to experiment with in taking down the bad guys. The experience system makes the simple interface a little deeper in a very accessible manner and everything is fun to look at. I have very little bad to say about what I actually got to play.

Overall:
I'm giving this a "TRY" with intent to purchase. At $20 it's difficult to recommend this title outright to gamers because I'd like to see a little more meat to the initial run through of the game. Anyone who loves trying to make it to the high score board, by all means, pick this title up immediately. You will not be disappointed. The truncated nature of the game makes it possible to replay the whole thing over and over to get a high score. Anyone who doesn't really care about their high score, though, could be disappointed by the game's length. The ride is short, but it certainly is fun.