Trenched (Iron Brigade) Review

Trenched hits Xbox LIVE Arcade this week from Double Fine and we’ve had some solid time to play with it and see what it’s all about. Tower defense + shooter; add in some Starship Troopers-like enemies and you’ve got quite a fun experience.

UPDATE: Trenched is now known as Iron Brigade due to name issues in parts of Europe.

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Originally announced during GDC 2011, Trenched is a game with a surprisingly addictive nature. The game is set in an alternate timeline that takes place shortly after World War I where radio waves known as the “Broadcast” begins to take over the world. WWI vets, Frank Woodruff and Vladamir Farnsworth survive the first attack of the “Broadcast” and they acquire high intelligence and knowledge of the advanced technology used by their enemies. However, both men don’t see eye to eye and Frank soon finds that he is attempting to stop Vlad from taking over the world using “Monovisions”. Referred to as “Tubes” in the game, the Monovisions are creatures that Vlad has created in wake of the corruption of his mind.

The central hub is set on a battleship which you can briefly explore the top deck. From here you can customize your trench, commonly known as a mech by many, find players for online multiplayer games and select missions to play. The campaign is made up for 15 missions across three different areas – Europe, Africa, and The Pacific. You can play them either solo or with up to three other players on Xbox LIVE.

The multiplayer is a ton of fun and it’s definitely the primary focus and the method through which you should play Trenched. Each player can customize their trench, view others on the ship, and of course correspond with each other in the battle. Working together opens possibilities to cover all angles and customize each trench to have all weapon types in a single game. Three players can focus on offense where one can play defensively for the team. The difficulty is scaled and you’ll fight more enemies with more players – so make sure you’re prepared!

The level of customization in Trenched is extremely detailed as you can choose from various chassis’ and leg setups for your trench. Different chassis’ can support different types of weapons such as machine guns, artillery, broadcasters and more. In addition to your trench-equipped weapons you can also equip color/type-specific emplacements that can be placed anywhere on the battlefield.  It depends on the chassis for what types of emplacements you can use as well, but everything evens out in the end. You just have to decide whether you want to go with high defensive armor or a little lower defense but have more offensive towers.

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Between missions you can either purchase new weaponry and upgrades in the shop or if you prefer to save your money early on, you’ll find ‘Loot Box’ items from taking down the larger Monovisions in the missions.

The missions themselves are pretty straightforward, and while there’s not a lot of variation in the scenery, each level is laid out in a fashion that forces you to think carefully about where you place your towers and where you cover with your trench. Some levels feature more than one target for the enemy to take down, and you’ll have to make every attempt to stop attacks on each one. You may find yourself re-visiting a level with a newly customized trench once you know what to expect, but you can minimize this by watching the recommended items in the customization menu before each mission.

A mere ten seconds or less is all you’ll have after killing one wave of enemies and seeing the next one coming to destroy your base. Using this time you can pick up “Scrap” from the destroyed Monovisions and use this to build new emplacements.  At a price, you can upgrade your weapon emplacements to a max of level 3, which allow them to become more powerful and have greater range. Support emplacements such as repair towers cost a little more and can’t be upgraded but you can find more advanced version in loot boxes from later missions, or earn them as unlocks from completing the campaign missions.

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As I mentioned earlier there’s not exactly a ton of variety in the levels, but you really learn to love the style and focus more on the level layout rather than its appearance. You’ll have missions that take place in shallow water areas with a few grassy hills, while the majority takes place in brownish rocky areas with multiple pathways for enemies to travel. Combine the darker color scheme along with the fiery red explosions and purplish glow of the monovisions and Trenched truly is a beautiful game.

The voice acting is done quite well and features some comical dialogue – the same of which can be said for the item descriptions in the game. Vlad and Frank banter back and forth during missions and in the cutscenes telling the story – and you’ll hear random lines of dialogue in-game as well. With the in-game dialogue, you’ll notice it repeating the same lines rather frequently so a few more lines would have been a welcome addition. The music is sort of an afterthought and I didn’t really find it all that noticeable as I was always too focused on the mission at hand – you should be too.

Despite some extreme technical issues late last week with the game, it appears to be running fine. A few friends and I had some issues with extremely choppy framerates and dropping players in multiplayer. After speaking with Double Fine representatives, I installed the game to a USB drive and deleted the HDD version. Upon testing numerous missions in both single player and online multiplayer, the game appears to run fine. This could be caused due to a fragmented hard drive due to the mass amount of content, but it does seem avoidable with this simple fix.

While the campaign lasted only 4-6 hours, I’ll keep playing just to earn the Gold Medals and finish up the achievements. Trenched really is a ton of fun and it is likely my favorite title from Double Fine to date. It’s an easy game to add DLC into so we can hopefully expect that in coming months which can extend the experience further. Great visuals, comical characters and writing, and an addictive 3^rd person shooter experience make Trenched a personal favorite of mine on XBLA.