Sanctum Collection review

1 / 3

Sanctum is a hybrid FPS shooter and tower defence game set in a sci-fi world. Your goal is simple: prevent alien forces from reaching and destroying the energy core at the centre of the facility you’re defending.

It was released as a download game originally, with additional downloadable content (DLC) coming out afterwards; this version includes the original game, plus the soundtrack and all the DLC levels and add-ons that have been release for the title, which provide extra maps and weapons.

What sets Sanctum apart from other tower defence games, is that as well as setting up blocks and weapons to direct and destroy the invading alien hoards, you too become part of the action once the onslaught begins, using a variety of weapons to snipe, freeze and blow up your chitinous foes.

Unlike most other tower defence games, Sanctum lets you take over first-person.

This combination of action and defensive strategy immediately invites comparisons to the brilliant Orcs Must Die. The two games do have a fair in common, although Sanctum’s strategic elements are more closely related to a traditional tower defence game.

You start the game in construction mode, placing blocks which the aliens will have to go around. Like the rest of the game, this takes place from a first-person perspective, which means that it can take a bit of getting used to. Fortunately, there’s a map overview screen which allows you to view your defences from a top-down perspective. The game’s controls for placing defences, consulting information on your enemies and fighting in real time seemed complex at first, but they become second nature in no time.

Once you’ve built some blocks, you can upgrade them with a massive variety of weapons or structures, such as teleportation towers. You have a limited number of resource points to spend, although each wave which you successfully survive earns. Blocks are cheap, as are the starting weapon upgrades, but you’ll need to keep investing in your defences as you face wave after wave of increasingly powerful foes. You’ll also have use your precious resource points to upgrade your own weapons, which include a sniper rifle, a canon that freezes enemies in their tracks and a Gatling gun with a built-in grenade launcher.

Using blocks to slow down the enemy makes them easier to kill.

Like every tower defence title ever, the key to victory lies in creating a long and winding route that forces your enemies to spend as much time getting to core as possible, allowing your towers to inflict the maximum possible damage on your foes.

Sometimes, though, the towers aren’t enough. The aliens have a variety of special traits – some can only be harmed by a sniper shot a specific and tiny weak spot, while others become almost impossible to kill as they gather speed and must be slowed down by building complex mazes. Once the attack wave begins, you’ll need your teleport towers to dart around the map, becoming a weapon in your own right as you fight alongside your automated defences.

There’s also a co-operative multiplayer mode that allows you to team up with up to three friends to take down the invading force together. This allows even more tactical combat as each of you can adopt responsibility for a different role or section of the map.

Sanctum isn’t as much immediate fun as Orcs Must Die and its Unreal Engine-powered graphics don’t look as good, but it has the compellingly addictive quality that every good tower defence game needs. This kept us playing and going back to saved checkpoints even when the aliens breached our defences time and time again until we’d worked out the strategic moves and upgrades required to defeat the next wave.

The checkpoint based save system and ease of returning to the game also give it a low-commitment casual appeal and make it a better way of killing half an hour than trying to immerse yourself in the latest plot-heavy action RPG. If you’ve already downloaded the original, there’s not enough here to warrant buying it, but if you’re new to Sanctum, Collection gives you absolutely everything in one well-priced package.