Defense Grid 2 has a free demo

Defense Grid 2 earned a very respectable score of 83 in our review, and now has a chapter's worth of free demo on Steam, and is currently half-price to boot. It's a game about building towers in space to stop an aggressive force that can only attack attack in single-file down narrow convoluted pathways. But they have a weakness! Oh wait, it's that.

What they lack in imagination they make up for in numbers and variety. There are big ones, little ones, flying ones. You can place some AOE attack towers to slow them down, sniper towers to target bosses. You know the drill. It's tower defense, as it always was and always will be, but good tower defense, with shiny lasers and a difficulty curve that gently romances the part of the human brain that enjoys ordering and upgrading things to maximum efficiency.

Part of the UK team, Tom was with PC Gamer at the very beginning of the website's launch—first as a news writer, and then as online editor until his departure in 2020. His specialties are strategy games, action RPGs, hack ‘n slash games, digital card games… basically anything that he can fit on a hard drive. His final boss form is Deckard Cain.