Iron Brigade Review

Tower defence is one of those genres with a staunchly devout group of fans; everyone else just rolls their eyes. If you don’t enjoy the genre, stop reading – Iron Brigade will not appeal to you.

By utilising a third-person view, Iron Brigade mimics a fresh approach to the genre that we recently experienced in the excellent Orcs Must Die!, enabling ‘Trench’ operators to directly take on the assaulting enemies alongside the towers they build. 

The tower defence itself remains an unchanged template; certain enemy types are defeated using specific tower variants, while remembering each wave and where they attack from is necessary to score the highest grade.

Most interesting is the ability to change the equipment of each Trench. By limiting each mech to an absolute maximum of four towers and two weapons of varying strengths and capabilities, the real challenge comes from picking an output best suited to the mission at hand.

This means there’s a lot of trial and error in the later levels, an element that may deter those less familiar with tower defence. There is, however, the option to team up with three friends online, where co-ordinating loadouts will really help make each battle a success.

Iron Brigade might not embody that same charm that we’ve become accustomed to from developer Double Fine, but it is a refreshing take on the genre. Its alternate World War II setting is imaginative, its combat is a blast, its strategy is well-designed but, most of all, it’s damn fun. At the end of the day, isn’t that what really matters?