Fortified melds, mostly successfully, a handful of genres in a way that I haven’t quite seen before. Third person shooting action combined with tower defense and co-op strategy set against an intentionally campy 1950s sci-fi world. Set a year after Martians first began to invade earth, the fate of humanity rests on the shoulders of four characters — the Rocket Scientist, the Captain, the Spaceman, and the Agent. Each of these four are their own character and have their own unique abilities that drive their strategic use in the ongoing battle against waves of Martians that plays out across twelve levels.
At this point I’ve yet to complete Fortified as I’ve been playing solo almost exclusively. The lack of splitscreen support and local co-op play is a glaring miss on a title such as this in which co-op is all but required to succeed after a certain point, at least for me. The balance of frustration vs fun got out of whack for me around the fifth or sixth level when trying to frantically manage and protect multiple bases (and specifically their rocket or rockets within) against tougher waves of enemies. Had I been able to partner up with someone local in splitscreen, or heck, even LAN play, that would have not only made defeating the Martians a reality, but it would have been a lot more fun. The game requires communication and strategy, but with only online co-op supported, I haven’t had much luck finding a Friend to play with, nor the time to play with randoms. You can jump into public co-op or setup invite-only co-op, by the way. That said, it’s safe to assume that most gamers are more online-game ready than myself as I rarely go online — but note that you’re going to want to team-up with at least someone else to make Fortified viable over the long term. Like any good co-op experience, the ‘trouble’ with Fortified is almost erased when playing with a friend or friends because co-op experiences inherently do that.
Ok, so that long-winded intro over, let’s talk gameplay. So the premise is about as straight-forward as I’ve established, but the execution of your earth defense is fortunately much more complicated and interesting. You’ll need to chose your character and decide how you want to play. Different characters wield different weapons, be it the high-damage grenade launcher of the scientist or the freeze gun of the spaceman to the classic shotgun and machinegun of the captain, or even the sniper deployments the agent can offer. Additional firepower is unlocked through completing missions and earning XP, and you can replay missions to earn additional XP, too. Weapons can be upfitted in the Armory with Modifiers that allow extra punch like adding incendiary shells to the shotgun for example. Being able to re-spec these at a later time is a welcomed option if you find your initial upgrade path wasn’t panning out. Also from the menu, you can view stats on each character, including their level, time played, weapon and structure kills, and campaign completetion percentage on the game’s three difficuly settings (Normal/Hard/Insane). On the flipside of the battle, I wanted to mention that I like the variety of enemies as they range from the numerous, annoying little buggers to flying saucers and massively tall robots and bosses. The variety is great and Fortified makes good use of vertical space by including tall and flying foes.
Tooling up your character (or characters hopefully if playing co-op) is key, but placing your defense structures during prep time in between waves is vital as well. You’ll expend money to do this, dropping various emplacements that are intended to slow the onslaught down so you can run about managing other strategy. Characters have their own defense structures too which I thought was cool, like the Spaceman can place wall-mounted, horizontally-aiming freezers that freeze the martians and temporarily make them one-shot kills. Curiously, there seems to be a limit to the number of such aids that you can drop down even if you have the money to purchase more. I couldn’t see an explanation for this but I suppose it’s just a way to force the player to manage the battle in other ways as opposed to stockpiling automated defenses. I can see the reasoning for that, but to have such a limit without a clear explanation seems really kind of capricious and a bit under-handed.
Similarly, yet much more understandably, each character’s overpowered special abilities are built on a cooldown timer that one can visibly see by looking at how full a meter is. Once full, you can unleash a massive offensive ability — while being invulnerable — that varies between the characters, but after it’s over, the gauge resets. This isn’t unlike most other superpowers in other games, but it’s that seemingly arbitrary and ‘invisible’ limit on the number of defense structures that’s irksome. By the way, the Spaceman’s Cryodome ability, in which he creates a large bubble that freezes anything nearby, is pretty awesome (as are the other characters’ abilities, but his is my favorite).
Switching gears to the presentation, I like that Fortified adopted that campy, B-movie-esque 1950s sci-fi look, sound, and feel. The atmosphere generated within is neat, even if not technically marveling, but it’s fitting for the type of game Fortified is. Loved teh comicbook style cutscenes, too.
Ultimately, Fortified gets more right than it does wrong, but it bears warning that it’s best experienced in co-op with friends. It’s unfortunate and likely not patchable that you cannot play Fortified in splitscreen or on the same LAN, but if you can round up at least one buddy or up to three to play with, Fortified offers a fun martian-ass-kicking time.
