Creature Defense uses the familiar top-down perspective that we've seen in other tower defense games, with the option to zoom in on the action as you're playing. The twist to this particular game is the introduction of a card collection dynamic that simulates some of the collectible trading card games that have also occupied a huge amount of the collective gaming psyche in recent years. Whether Creature Defense truly combines the best of both worlds remains to be seen, but they certainly got the presentation right from a visual standpoint. Each card you collect as you progress through the game includes an elaborate illustration showing the creature it summons, plus that card's vital stats. During battle, things get more interesting as you watch the creatures come to life and battle to protect their turf. The music against which all this action is set left a lot to be desired. It tended to always feel more or less frenetic than we thought was appropriate, given the action at any given moment. Sound effects are limited to whooshing and smashing of weapons, initially fun since you associate the sounds with destruction of your enemies, but they wear thin over time. In addition to more subtlety in the audio department, we wanted to see more variety in terms of the creatures you can collect. Sure, with any tower defense there are a limited number of unique units one can manage at any one time, but there's only a limited number of theme-and-variation cards offered here. The stress instead is placed on elemental variations, such as the ability to collect the same Slime creature across its respective blue, red, gold, and dark elements. There are some differences in the stats on each variation, but the main reason for having these seemed to be that each offers a unique design.

Tower defense is a cool genre, with some recent success in both the PC, online, and console worlds. Bringing the genre to a portable system is great, but Creature Defense unfortunately lacks the qualities required to make it a best-of-breed contender. The basics are all here, but presented in an awkward and poorly thought out package. Creature Defense takes place in a fantasy world where you'll need to master specific territory by clearing a sequence of stages. Each stage contains unique maps that challenge you in terms of how to position your forces to defeat the enemy, and the enemy challenge ramps up significantly between each stage. The card angle is different than others that involve building large decks and playing through as strategically as possible based on the luck of the draw. In Creature Defense, you'll only have a handful of cards each time you play, selected from a larger deck. You can then place multiple units on the field, according to each unit's cost and the number of points you've amassed from taking out enemies.

In classic defense strategies, the goal is to take out the enemy units as efficiently as possible through everything but twitch reflexes. Placing your units correctly, upgrading them strategically, and using the weaknesses of your enemies against them is how you'll win. You won't win often, but that's a balance issue within Creature Defense, not a feature of tower defense titles in general. There is a shop mode aside from the levels you're attempting to conquer, where you can leverage won gold to purchase available cards and add them to your deck. This would have been a great game to leverage wireless trading or multiplayer, but nothing like that can be found here. All but one level is locked as you begin the game, so you'll be chipping away slowly to open more territory. New cards appear even before you unlock new areas, the notion being that you can earn strong enough creatures to overcome your enemy. The replay value isn't all that high, but there's plenty of replay required to earn necessary points for advancement. The first few times we didn't mind, but eventually this cycle is too heavy on grinding and too light on new content.

There's truth to the notion that all tower defense games involve some level of trial-and-error gameplay. More than just strategy or action, Creature Defense is a sort of puzzle game that challenges you to summon exactly the right configuration of creatures, given the particular terrain and enemy opposition. Like most good games, there are several ways to succeed, but certain types of strategies work better than others. Each board remains your playground for some time, the pros being that you'll learn that board's nuances quite well. The cons of this approach include boredom and frustration if you can't move past a specific level. Rather than spend much time educating you on the best uses for each unit, Creature Defense plops you right into the action and lets you sink or swim. Sinking is unlikely in the first level, but almost impossible to avoid in the second. Each level is made up of about 40 "waves" of enemies bearing down on you, in groups or alone, depending on how dangerous the enemy. We found that almost no combination of the "basic" units granted to you initially were adequate for a win, forcing you to replay the level many times in order to build up the points required to buy stronger creature cards and eventually overpower stronger enemies. We've played our fair share of tower defense titles, and we'd wager that novice players would be completely lost and frustrated too early into the experience. Finding a balance between adding new units and upgrading existing units is especially difficult, and there are few hints along the way as to how you can leverage each unit's special abilities.

The best thing Creature Defense has going for it is in this department. Control is simple, efficient, and intuitive. Our only real gripe was the way the camera defaults to a close-up, when this is probably the least effective mode; changing it around is as simple as a single button-press, so no big deal really. The highlights are that one button initiates placement of a new creature, while another initiates the upgrade feature. When upgrading, a handy pop-up appears to let you know which attributes will be modified, and by how much. There are other pop-ups during play to show you what is coming at you in the next wave, presumably so you can take the appropriate action in terms of placement or upgrades. Some upgrades have corresponding effects on the battlefield, whether to buff your surrounding units, or to damage the enemy creatures. Placement, and selection of which unit to upgrade, is controlled through the directional buttons or the analog stick.

There's a steep learning curve here, especially for players new to this genre. We found the grinding tedious and wanted more variety early on in the game, but there's no question that Creature Defense has the basics of tower defense down to a science. We also longed for more units and more distinction between the units, or just tutorial missions to explain the best use of each creature. The production values are solid, the gameplay is classic tower defense, but the qualities needed to make Creature Defense a sleeper hit just aren't here. Then again, for the low price, there's some entertainment to be had here.