Fortified is a strategy shooter about defending the Earth from an alien invasion! This game reminds me of an old tower defense. The main difference is that besides the structures that you put up, you also defend earth using one of 4 characters in third person. Right away this game has a really weird feel to it. Much like tower defense games the aliens come in waves and you must kill all of them before the next wave. However, most of the time, it does not seem like your structures are doing what they need to do. Most of the time you are doing most of the killing yourself. Early on this is fine but later in the game when you have more than one objective to defend this may become impossible.

One of the main flaws in this game is that the characters do not seem to be equal in ability. Some have structures that do little damage to the aliens, others allow you to not even kill any aliens in a wave. With the Agent, it was not easy to even get past level 3. Most of the aliens made it past my structures and I had to kill them myself. It was not an easy task. While on the other hand when I played as the Spaceman, I did not even have to kill any aliens in the third level. This does not make any sense in design to me. Granted I may have been missing something. I did play this game for a few hours and thought I had the strategy of the game down pat.

What is fun about Fortified is the plethora of weapons and structures that you get to use. There are a few generic weapons like the rocket launcher, rifle, and shotgun. However most characters have their own personal weapons and structures. Because some of the aliens are ground units and some are air units (again like a normal tower defense), you are forced to mix and match structures and weapons to best defend against the oncoming wave. You very quickly unlock points, which can be used to get new weapons or structures of your choice. You can also upgrade your weapons or structures as you see fit. I found myself having no idea what to upgrade. I looked more like a kid in a candy store than someone who was strategically picking out what structures would best help next.

Another thing that is fun in this game is that you have super powers! Who doesn’t want to feel like a superhero every now and then? The Spaceman can fly around the map and fire his gun with no cost to ammo. The captain can encourage everyone to fight harder. This does add an extra element to the game, but if I am honest, it does not really add that much.

The online feature of Fortified would be fun to play with your friends. Unfortunately, I did not have any friends who owned this game or wanted to buy it. There is also a feature that allows you to play online with strangers, but alas, nobody online wanted to play with me. There does not seem to be a big enough audience for this game for that feature to work. If could be fun to kill aliens as a team but the game is not big enough for this to be a key selling point.

Overall, Fortified has a great concept and looks like a ton of fun, but it very quickly gets boring. The first time I sat down to play this game I got bored after 20 minutes. If I had a group of people playing with me it may have been more fun. But with the way the game is now, there are a lot of games in a genre similar to this that I believe are a lot more fun. This is by no means a terrible game, but it also is not a great one. The mediocre gameplay and cartoon graphics are nothing to jump at.