AFTERPAD

Review: Asterix: Total Retaliation

When you think of the type of iOS game you want to be updated for MFi controller support, the tower defense genre probably ranks pretty low on your wish list. Arguably, TD games play better on touch screens than they ever have on any other medium in the past. With that on the table up-front, Asterix: Total Retaliation does a very good job at implementing physical gamepad support.

As a game, Asterix doesn’t stray far from the Plants vs Zombies mold. In fact, it’s probably pretty safe to call this one a PvZ clone. Enemies march from the right side of a multi-lane grid to the left side, and your goal is to drop defensive units down to the field in order to fight off the attackers. Along the way, you’ll collect resources, earn new defensive units, and unlock different stage patterns.


To fans of tower defense games, this will look very familiar

Asterix tweaks up the formula a bit by having some of it’s defensive unites be single-use – you can only have one of each on the field at a time. These units can be moved for a small price, but that means the lane they were covering is less guarded. That makes for a slightly tweaked strategy from PvZ – not every lane can be covered at one time by the best units, so careful management of your strongest defenders is important.

The other notable change is the emphasis on single-use “hero” abilities. These abilities are powerful single-use spells. These spells can be extremely powerful, but they don’t place a unit on the field – they can save you at the moment, but they don’t increase your defenses for the next wave.

Ultimately, these changes don’t do much to differentiate Asterix from its obvious inspiration. This game isn’t going to win any prizes for originality, but for people who want to play a version of Plants vs Zombies using a hardware controller, this will suffice. It may not be original, but it’s fun, polished, and includes great controller support.