While the Xbox “Summer of Arcade” hasn’t officially started, if you own an Xbox right now, most of the gaming you get done this summer is definitely going to come from what seems like an endless stream of delightful games popping up on XBLA. Kicking off this great lineup is Trenched, the latest from Double Fine, or as most others call it, that Tim Schafer company. The downloadable format has served Double Fine well in the past, as their quirky, offbeat gamey sensibilities of their concepts and aesthetics are often best served in small portions. That being said, Trenched may be the most conventional game under the Double Fine banner. At its core, it’s basically a third-person, wave-based shooter with tower defense elements thrown into the mix.
Not being the biggest tower defense fan in the world, I was a little worried to hear this. The cynic in me thought that Double Fine was making a game that would just be easy to make money off of in a day and age where people just seem to eat up tower defense clones. I was happy Trenched sunk its claws into me, though admittedly not until about three missions in. The real fun of the game really doesn’t come from the shooting or turret emplacements (though both of those elements work well), but from customizing your “trenches;” their name for mechs (the joke being that, if hiding in a trench leaves you safe, why not have it walk?). Different frames, legs, weapons and paintjobs can be added as you see fit for each mission, and you can get these by leveling up, using some hard earned money, or better yet, the named and color-coded loot that enemies randomly drop. Every bit of loot as a bit of that Double Fine charm, too, making them feel a bit more special. Equipping a sniper rifle called the “baby nasty” kind of makes me giddy.
Of course, it wouldn’t really be a Double Fine game without some kind of batshit story. It’s a bit more subdued here, but still neat in a comic-booky way. The two main characters, Frank Woodrof and Vladamir Fonsworth, recieve some sort of alien broadcast while working with radios in WW1. While this fries the brains of those around them, it gives our two rivals super intelligence. Frank goes on to make the titular trenches, while Vlad decided to make television, and the evil alien things that come with it., starting a “tube” invasion. While it probably has the least amount of story ever found in a Double Fine game, there’s still some charm here and there, and it doesn’t make the game any less fun to play. In fact, it could be argued that not being bound to a very specific atmosphere or story gives the game more freedom to just be a fun game, without having to worry about adhering to any type of guideline.
Trenched puts a heavy emphasis on co-op, as many tower defense games do these days. It’s pretty interesting to see how differently the missions play out when there are multiple people laying down different turrets with their own customized trenches. While the game makes it easy to hook up with other players, it doesn’t do a very good job of locking them in. Anyone in a four player party can go up and change what mission is about to be played before it starts, and it only takes one person to keep changing it to make things a pain. Multiplayer is also bogged down with some framerate issues, but if you get a group together, it’s still a lot of fun to try to work together and think up different strategies.
Trenched is brief, but it’s a hell of a lot of fun, and achievement junkies and completionists will get some legs out of it through its multiplayer aspect and finding hot loot. It may not be the most inspired Double Fine game of all time, but sometimes just being fun goes a long way.