Crystal Defenders

Would people play Pong if it came out for the first time now?

There's an unwritten rule within gaming that, as a genre matures, so the complexity of the games it produces ramps up.

Though Atari's most basic of sports sims might not be able to compete with the likes of Virtua Tennis or Top Spin when it comes to delivering 7,000 different strokes or accurately replicating the ridiculous number of hairs on Federer's arms in pure HD, it's still arguably as playable as any of the tennis titles that have come in the last four decades.

Back to basics

By the same token, Crystal Defenders – the fruitful result of a partnership between two giants, Square Enix and Namco, no strangers to setting trends themselves – feels like it could have been lifted out of a bygone age. This is tower defence stripped back to its most basic level, and it's all the better for it.

Rather than letting your foe decide their own route to goal, instead the waves of attack thread their way down set paths – the traditional setup.

Using any credit you've amassed, it's then your job to place combatants to take them down as they swan by – Soldiers, Mages, Archers all on offer, and all lethal against particular enemies.

The aim is simply to survive as many waves as you can, with each foe that does break through sapping the store of crystals you're charged with protecting.

As well as summoning Carbuncle, who obliterates the enemy's collective defence once a run, it's also possible to place crystals that up the speed, range, and power of troops nearby.

But, even with their addition, Crystal Defenders remains a simple affair. There's no attempt made to bed play down in any heavy plot or decorate it with a sense of mythos - each map of the 12 on offer almost exists as a standalone game.

In a sense, it's almost like a test. A precursor for any other tower defence games you may go on to play.

Crystal Defenders essentially lines up a shopping list of beasties and throws them at you one by one. Survive wave after wave, and all you'll have to show for it is a whopping great score. But, then again, isn't that what games used to be about?