Downtown Defender Bridges the Gap Between Casual and Serious Gaming

The gamer’s dilemma has always been between the quality of dedicated gaming vs. the convenience of casual flash based games. You can play Gears of War if you have the game (80$) the console (300$) and a TV (500$ for a good one) or you can play limitless flash games on limitless sites -for free- if you  happen to have a computer. But whichever way you go there will be a tradeoff: quality vs. ease of access.

Downtown Defender is a new game, just publicly launched, that bridges that divide; it is browsr based, but features true 3D graphics and it tackles one of the most popular online genres; Tower Defense. On its Website Downtown Defender is described as the following:

“The objective of Downtown Defender is to fight off a flood of giant monsters as they storm downtown San Francisco before they eat all the people fleeing to the Ferry Terminal Building. To accomplish this, you will command a UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter with a payload of heavily armed gun turrets. You must drop these turrets at strategic locations throughout downtown to inflict maximum damage on the monsters. Every monster you kill will give you more soldiers so that you can build larger and more deadly turrets. To win the game, you must detain the monsters long enough so that the civilians can board the ferry and escape.”

Downtown Defender is the first game launched by plaYce a TechCrunch50 start-up and takes advantage of the plaYce player, a proprietary browser plugin that allows a full 3D gaming experience all within the Web browser. Later in the year they will be launching more games set in Hong-Kong and Manhattan and other cities around the world. The platform will soon be open to developers to construct their own games in whichever cities they like, imagine pod-racing in Hong Kong or team combat in Sydney.The possibilities of full 3D gaming online are endless.

Here is a look at Downtown Defender:

[Image Credit: XKCD]