Eternal Red
There is a door. They come through that door: vile, twisted abominations, their demented forms the stuff that monsters have nightmares about. Hordes of the disfigured beasts pour through in endless waves. And that's all perfectly fine, for as hideous as these things are, they can't hurt me. They are more than welcome to share this cold, desolate place with me, free to roam beneath the ever-present pale moon. That's not the problem.
No, it's the second door, and these nightmares' unceasing attempts to get through it that I have a problem with. That just won't do.
Eternal Red is, by its own admission, a cross between a platform arena style shooter and a real-time strategic defense game. No story, no dialogue, just you and the seemingly non-stop litany of enemies appearing from one door that try to make it to the second.
To prevent this, as the game's cross-genre would imply, you must utilize a combination of personal weapons and floor traps to cut your foes down before too many of them make it to the second door. With each slain creature and each successfully survived wave you earn more money, allowing you to build traps, buy weapons, or upgrade existing equipment. You'll be doing quite a bit of all of it, too, as it doesn't take long for your traps and weapons to grow into obsolescence.
Every ten waves you will come up against a boss. These bosses are larger and slower than the typical enemy, but they come with a ton of hit points and reduce your door's counter by a significant amount if they manage to make it through.
Analysis: Eternal Red sucks you in. To give you an idea on just how engrossing of an experience this game can be, when I first sat down to play it, my intent was to do so only for five minutes to get a feel for what the game was trying to do and how well it did it. An hour later I had to force myself away from the game so I could make it to work on time, wait for my coworker to leave, and start playing all over again.
While I'm not the world's biggest fan of either strategic defense games or platform shooters, Eternal Red just seems to work so well that it quickly becomes a difficult game to put down. Instantly it grabs you with its simple yet dark and foreboding artistry: everything save the moon in the backdrop is done in black shapes outlined with red, and these wonderfully morose visuals are backed up with a macabre kind of techno soundtrack that manages to combine the oppressive mood of the setting with the intensity of the action.
And that action is quite awesome. The game starts off suitably slow, giving you time to acclimate yourself to the decently ergonomic interface and smooth controls. Soon enough, things can ramp up to a frenzied pace as you dash back and forth to make sure your floor traps are adequate to take out the ground troops while dispatching flying enemies with bullets leaping from the muzzle of your gun.
As with many hybridized games, perhaps the greatest risk Eternal Red runs is falling short in the eyes of fans of the parent genres from which it was inspired. Strategic defense fans will likely be disappointed with the rather poor selection of available traps and upgrades, while fans of platform shooters may think that there aren't enough guns available, or the fact that the main character doesn't take damage may feel a little too much like cheating. The game is also woefully lacking in a reward system, even though the sheer variety of bad guys will keep you interested for some time. And while the lack of story allows you to focus on the gameplay, I don't think a sequel can be made without having at least a cursory explanation as to what's going on.
Eternal Red may lack the depth of either of its parent genres, it manages to find a pretty solid balance between the two, making it a brilliant little diversion to pass the time with.
Here is a word of warning: sentry guns are your friend. I didn't realize at first that they were even upgradeable, and unfortunately, as soon as I discovered that, out came the flying creatures. The ones who are impervious to acid and spikes. Aargh!
While I agree that Sentry guns are great, I have seen at least spikes do some damage to flying creatures because of how they bob up and down as they fly along. :D
I didn't realize that there even was sentry guns until well after the first flying one.
I'm at level 37 now, I have the shotgun, 2 spikes, 1 acid, 2 machine gun sentries, 1 acid sentry, and 1 grenade sentry.
This game is fun.
Once your top floor is completely fitted with 10/10/10-upgraded machinegun sentries, it becomes very simple. This is more like Tower Defense for people, who don't want to think much - but just witness mindless slaughter.
That being said, I sorta like it.
stage 60. still no end.
have 5+ 10/10/10 weapons and trying to get to the end with speed hack.
The game "ends" at level 70. You can continue to play, but there's no more bosses and it lags up a lot around level 90 when there's a million enemies and bullets flying around.
Shotgun is easily the best weapon if you can click fast enough.
I got to level 70, with four machine guns and one grenade launcher all maxed out. My first floor time was a slow tile, maxed out. Not even the level 70 boss could get past that. Most creatures were wiped out as soon as they appeared!
Then I got the option to start on a new map or continue fighting
I was bored of the game by then, so I'm going to see how long it takes to lose.
Wow, love the idea of combining shooter with TD. The only thing I feel is missing is, when you upgrade, a visible change in the weapons/grounds. But that's getting kind of nitpicky.
Good game, currently on lvl34 with top level of machine gun and nade turrets. decided acid is useless. spikes on floor.
any idea what the cashgun does?
Meh. Towering Forever tried to combine them too, and honestly they just seem more tedious to me than either a defense or a platformer game. Possibly it's because I associate the platformer bit with exploring large maps, running and jumping around rather than shooting at basically the same place and the same enemies over and over.
Nicely made for what it is, though.
This game froze after level 25. . . Twice.
I was playing on hardcore on the first stage both times.
Not exactly a walkthrough, but helpful.
Ok, the first map, which is the three floored with sentries and panels (not sure that it makes a difference what map it is), has about 74 levels till you beat the game.
The cash gun is like the machine gun turret, but it gives you money when it hits a monster, depending on the amount of upgrades to damage. 10 upgrades = 10 dollars per hit.
And a slow panel as the first panel with an acid sentry above and a machine gun behind it will decimate the monsters.
The final thing is: the sooner you kill an enemy (measured by distance, not time, hence the slow panel in the front), the more cash you get.
Alright, I thought this was a blast. Hah, get it, Blast?
Anyways, I played until... now. I am tired of shooting things myself, and I am just letting the creatures trickle their way through everything and taking away my "lives". I am sitting on level 105, $350,000+ in current cash, and just over 3000 kills. Does anyone know if this game ever like, ENDS ends? And does anything hurt the flyers besides guns?
This game is too easy and there isn't a lot of variety, but I like it anyway.
This combines two genres that lose accessibility and friendliness with each layer of complexity, so it's kind of nice to see a game combining the two use a degree of simplicity in each one.
The simplicity might be taking it too far, but games are supposed to be FUN, and the infuriatingly difficult TD games, while challenging and offering depth of gameplay, sometimes seem to be more challenging than fun.
Eternal Red presents us with most of the advantages we wish we had in those games. You don't have to deal with a lot of tedious tower-matching, you don't have to prepare for a bazillion different special abilities in each wave of creeps, money starts coming in quick so you don't have to micromanage funds just to scrape enough together to hold off the next wave, and you can actually point and click on the creeps instead of just wringing your hands while the creeps who get past your defenses get away.
This of course makes it too easy, but maybe it's better that way.
I've just told you all the things it's NOT, but you know what it IS? It's pure mass-murdering FUN. An epic "Slaughterfest '08" wrapped up in a truly awesome artistic style, a pleasing visual aesthetic and gunning down creeps by the buckets.
Don't get me wrong, I love complex, intricate, puzzle-like defense games, and intelligent tactical platform shooters. But I like games like this to unwind in between them.
there is a bug in the game that freezes gameplay. The flying enemies can somehow get stuck on the other side of the wall. you cant kill them and the enemy waves will no longer advance while its alive so your game is frozen. I've restarted but it happens every time.
I'm well annoyed. I was on level 90 something and then I accidentally clicked on one of those ads at the bottom of the game window, and it made me lose it all!
p.s. The game is wicked - simplicity+tons of money= FUN
Map with no Sentry
So, how do you beat this? It's all about the gun baby! You're going to have to be one shooting little weird guy. I started out with the shotgun right out of the gate, and one spike trap and didn't even put a slow pad down until around level 5.
Keep the gun upgraded and let the floor traps follow behind. Way behind at first. If you can't kill the flying guys with your gun by the time they appear you are done for.
Even with this, do not expect to make level 70 with all your "lives" in tact. The best I've done is down 20 lives and that's on casual.
Seems tough, but it's the best challenge this game offers imo.
with the shotty maxed out and a full row of sentries you are unbeatable
It's wicked fun even if i only started, it's like killing!!!! I have a shotgun, one machine gun, and spikes and i still goin' on.... oh yeah, + handgun, lol
I haven't been able to get the game to work in weeks. First it wouldn't load. Now it loads but when I click "Play" nothing happens. All the other buttons work (like settings, instructions, etc.). Is anyone else having this problem?
I found this game very addictive, I only wanted to play for about 10 minutes then 2 hrs pass and I'm sitting there scream DIE!
I found that having your top row all slowdow maxed. My sentrys on top row were 1 machine gun 1 grenade and 3 cash guns all maxed.
Can anyone help me? I can't seem to be able to upgrade after the first one, all that appears is the gun cursor and all it does is shoot when I try to upgrade a panel or gun. I'm afraid I'm not going to make it through the game with only a level 1 machine gun sentry and a level 1 shotty.
HELP!
i have noticed that in some situations, like when you are being overwhelmed with creatures, that increasing range on your sentry guns can be a pain, here is why:
when sentry guns are shooting an enemy, they will not focus on another enemy unless they die or go out of its range, and that means that if you have maxed out range in your sentry guns, then no damage will be given to the next creature untill the first creature dies or walks out of range via dropping to the next floor.
and also you should NEVER put slow down panels right next to each other, doing that will render duration for the first panel useless and a waste, putting them a space or two apart will give you places to put spikes or acid in while the creature suffers the duration effect from the slow down panel.
i hope this helps everyone :)
i have noticed that in some situations, like when you are being overwhelmed with creatures, that increasing range on your sentry guns can be a pain, here is why:
when sentry guns are shooting an enemy, they will not focus on another enemy unless they die or go out of its range, and that means that if you have maxed out range in your sentry guns, then no damage will be given to the second creature untill the first creature dies or walks out of range via dropping to next floor.
and also you should NEVER put slow down panels right next to each other, doing that will render duration for the first panel useless and a waste, putting them a space or two apart will give you places to put spikes or acid in while the creature suffers the duration effect from the slow down panel.
i hope this helps everyone :)
by using these two tips above, i have successfully completed (lv1, casual) all 70 levels with all lives intact
im at lvl 130 i have 6 machine gun sentries,
3 grenade sentries, 4 acid sentries, 3 cash sentries (what s better about them?), machine gun, shotgun, handgun, and a pattern of slow, acid, then spike floors all maxed out with over 1.5 mil cash. >:P
Slow Traps with 10 duration keep the enemy moving at what ever slow speed you have for the next entire floor panel to follow. Acid works the same way, 10 duration means the enemy will suffer poison damage for the entire next floor panel. So putting 2 slow or 2 acid in a row is a bad idea. Spikes continue to confuse me, which does more damage; spikes or acid?
Next is the guns:
Money gun pays you $1 per point of damage in it per bullet that hits the enemy. So 10 points in Money Gun damage means every bullet to hit an enemy will pay you $10. This money however only goes toward your spending cash and not your score. The ONLY time the Cash Gun helps your score is if it shoots a BIG (or BOSS) type creature.
The acid gun continues to confuse me, does the acid gun do initial damage, or does it simply act just like a acid floor panel by starting a ticking damage over time?
Grenades are extremely effective in doing area of effect damage to ground units, however, i have not been able to figure out if they hurt fliers.
Pretty easy up to a point. If you don't buy anything else, you can fully upgrade a shotgun by level 30-35. I played twice and both times not a single creature got past even the first floor that way. Although the first time I played the reason I didn't buy anything else was because I had no idea you could, but it worked
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