Fieldrunners for iPad review

Fieldrunners, like a lot of iPad games, was a massive success on the iPhone. But how does SubAtomic Studios’ tower defence game do on the iPad?

Well, from the get-go the first thing you’ll notice about Fieldrunners on the iPad is that the graphics and animation are lot better than they are on the iPhone – obviously.

Graphics aside, though, Fieldrunners is pretty much the same on the iPad as it was on the iPhone – and this isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

Obviously, there are differences. For starters, playing Fieldrunners on the iPad is a much more enjoyable experience than on the iPhone as it’s more detailed and you can see more of what’s going on and where you need to place your towers.

Fieldrunners on the iPad looks, feels and plays better than it did on the iPhone.

For those unfamiliar with Fieldrunners, or tower defence games, for that matter, the genre can be explained thus: Protect your base from waves of enemies by building strategically placed defence towers.

Fieldrunners takes place over five maps – GrassLands, CrossRoads, DryLands, SkyWay and FrostBite – and has three game modes: Classic, Extended and Endless.

Once you’ve decided on which mode you’d like to go with you can play Fieldrunners on either Easy, Medium or Hard. We started on Hard, but quickly moved down to Easy after getting destroyed within a few minutes – new users take note.

There is a variety of armoured towers to choose from on Fieldrunners, ranging from cheap ($5) machinegun turrets, which are essential when you first begin to box your enemies in, to $120 Mortor Towers that essentially drop Nukes.

There’s also Goo Towers, Ice Towers, Missile Towers, Laser Towers, Flame Throwers and the trusty Tesla Tower. Basically, there’s enough artillery to keep you interested and your enemies full of holes.

Once cool aspect of Fieldrunners is the ability to pause and speed up the game play, which grants you the opportunity to pause for thought, as well as speed up the game if you feel its moving along a bit slowly.

There's a variety of enemies on display in Fieldrunners, from soldiers to helicopters to bikes to giants and zeppelins. Some are easy, others are hard and some are, well, basically, invincible - but these ones are few and far between thankfully.

If you’re not a fan of this type of game – and this reviewer isn’t really – then you might find it gets a bit tedious after awhile as there is no variation in the game play, which is essentially this: box in the enemy so they're exposed as much as possible and shoot at them to bits. Simple.

That said, Fieldrunners is a lot of fun and is a perfect way of wasting half an hour of your life.

It’s difficult enough to annoy you into wanting to beat it and has that all-important playability factor, which, ensures that you’ll be playing it for a good long while - even if it's just five minutes here and there.

However, like red wine and Guinness, tower defence games are an acquired taste and not everyone’s cup of tea.

However, we really liked Fieldrunners – so it’s probably worth a look, especially if you fancy something a little different.

Fieldrunners for iPad info

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Platform: iPad

Category: Games & Entertainment

Price: $7.99

Publisher: SubAtomic Studios

Website/Demo: SubAtomic Studios