The Sycamore, one of several enemy types in Q-Games' PixelJunk Monsters for PS3

This generation it seems that publishers and developers are determined to make real-time strategy games a success on consoles. The past two years have already seen such games as Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-Earth II and Command & Conquer 3, both from Electronic Arts' Los Angeles studio, while next year is expected to bring with it both Halo Wars, from Ensemble Studios and Microsoft, and Tom Clancy's EndWar, from Ubisoft. And as any one of these developers will tell you, the challenge of successfully bringing an RTS game to consoles is largely one of interface. There's something about using an analog stick to move a cursor around that's vaguely but noticeably unsatisfying; almost no matter how good a job the developer does with the controls, it always manages to feel both slow and perceptibly imprecise, as though it's slightly out of your control

Q-Games' PixelJunk Monsters (see here for screenshots), for which we were granted an exclusive hands-on preview, gets around this problem in a couple of ways. First, its design inspiration is drawn primarily not from games like Command & Conquer or Warcraft, but rather from the RTS-lite browser-based games like Flash Element TD and Desktop Tower Defense, which are themselves stripped-down, simplified versions of the tower defense modes in "proper" RTS titles. Second, like its forebears, PixelJunk Monsters fits on a single screen, so players can take in the entire battlefield at once without being disoriented by having to scroll around a larger field of combat. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, players make their way around the battlefield not with a cursor, but with a forest defender who serves as their on-screen avatar, its short legs pumping furiously as it scrambles from one part of the screen to the next. It's a subtly elegant choice that both solves the nagging control issues and projects the player into the game world, like the third-person games with which consoles have long been identified.

There are two main variants of tower defense games: those where the battlefield is bare and the units you lay down create obstacles and mazes that enemy troops must navigate to progress from one end of the screen to the other, and those where the battlefield is already a maze and you can only lay down your units on the "walls" of the maze. PixelJunk Monsters is the latter, where individual trees serve as points on the map where you can build the towers that will defend your base by shooting down each wave of enemies that seek to destroy the creatures you're sworn to protect. Once all of your creatures are dead, the game is over. When you take out the enemies, they leave behind gold coins, which you use to purchase additional towers, or gems, which you can use to upgrade existing towers or unlock special tower types for attacks using fire, electricity, ice and more. And as you complete one map by surviving all of its waves of enemies, new battlefields become accessible on the world map, each with its own layout and challenges.

As veterans of the browser-based tower defense games (damn you, MTV, for selecting Desktop Tower Defense as your Game of the Year; as a forthcoming issue of Edge will reveal, it was already one of Level Up's top two candidates for 2007's best) we felt right at home with PixelJunk Monsters. Like twin-stick shooters, another genre that has broken out among short session titles, there are more than enough similarities among the various releases that it feels like riding a bike. Even so, it's completely accessible to newbies, as it only makes use of the left analog stick, the x button and the circle button. And don't let the game's whimsical design, muted color palette or soothingly organic electronica score fool you: once you get past the first couple of battlefields, you'll have to stay on your toes in order to win.

If there's a criticism that we'd make, it's that we aren't sure whether the game's art direction will appeal to the presumably hardcore audience which makes up the PS3's current ownership. This may seem like a strange nit to pick, but even though we're at this point very familiar with the game, every time we return to it, PixelJunk Monsters' audiovisual design keeps lulling us into believing that it's a kiddie game that won't pose enough of a challenge. The next thing we know, we're halfway into an enemy assault and fighting for our lives, because make no mistake, this game is by no means a pushover. So while Sony's marketing department may have a challenge on its hands in order to convince people to download it when it debuts in January 2008--memo to Foster City: demos for all PSN titles can only be considered a Very Good Thing--those that do will find themselves in possession of a game that has all of the elements necessary to engage a wide range of gamers for a long time.