Savage Moon – the Hera Campaign PSP Review

b Iain Alexander

The recent explosion of tower defence games has been nothing short of remarkable, and although the themes of these game have varied enormously the concept remains the same. Bad guys appear from point X and try to get to point Y with your job being to try and stop them by placing weapons in the form of defence towers. A lot of these games are quite laid back, cartoony and bright but sometimes you just want something a bit more dark and moody. Enter Savage Moon – the Hera Campaign on the PSP, the portable version of the highly successful PS3 game.

Savage Moon is, as the name suggests, based around capturing a series of moons by defeating the oncoming hoards of crawling and flying nasties called Insectocytes. The range of weapons is a fairly standard affair, starting at basic machine guns and anti-air guns with further more powerful weapons unlocked as you capture further moons until you’ve captured all 20 on offer. You also have blocking towers available which can redirect ground-based creatures to give you more opportunity to get them within range of your towers. Things start simple enough, but as you’d expect later moons offer a much greater challenge. MUCH greater. Play the game on the normal setting and you’ll be losing moons left, right and centre which is a bit of a problem when you realise that losing a moon also loses any weapons you unlocked by capturing it in the first place. Most people will be far more suited to the easy setting, which at least gives you a fighting chance to get to the end without collapsing through stress.

Between rounds you’re presented with a resource management section, where you decide how many towers and how much money to take into a level. Taking more resources onto a moon gives you more options, but also gives you more to lose if things go a bit wrong. It gives you something to think about but is in essence just a jumped up level selection screen. Controls are nice and simple, with pretty much everything done with the X button, D-pad and analogue nub with L and R zooming in and out. Graphically it looks pretty good (although a little bland at times), with dark and bleak moons giving the suitable feeling of emptiness and loneliness, and the sound is as brutal as you’d hope. The soundtrack adds to the depressive nature of the game and as you move through the game you can unlock extra tracks which add even more drama and feeling. There’s also a good range of gunfire, explosions, squelches and splats which, coupled with the music help to engross you in the action and makes an hour fly by without you realising.

And that’s the beauty of Savage Moon. Just like its PS3 bigger brother it’s a solid and engrossing game which, despite being insanely hard in places (nearly enough to put you off), will keep you occupied for quite some time and give you a good amount of enjoyment in the process. For £6.29 it’s a steal, and if you love it that much you can even pick up free Savage Moon PSP themes on the PSN store. Bargain.