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This is the meeting point of Sheldon Chase's earlier Earth vs The Flying Saucers and his later Woman Warrior series. It has the same Defender-inspired design as Earth (made all the more overt by the game's title), but transplanted onto the same tilted grid that would later form the desert in Woman Warrior and the Outer Limits. Although in its basic mechanics Desert Defender actually plays less like its namesake than Earth -- movement is limited to the tilted plane; you're constantly moving right and can only slow down or speed up -- thematically it's right on target. As you zoom around, blasting giant ants and crystalline monoliths, you will come across the odd survivor, asking for help. Collect the survivors and drop them off at way stations. Although there are plenty of mechanisms and intriguing details, there is no actual object to Desert Defender, as the game consists entirely of a single level with no way out. Perhaps the idea is just to rack up as high a score as possible before game over, which is fair enough. The natural assumption is that rescuing enough hostages will open a gateway to the next mission, and it's a little disappointing that this doesn't happen. As neat as the desert landscape is, with all its surreal furniture, one can only do so many laps before asking for more. |
