I finally beat PixelJunk Monsters

Yesterday I finally beat PixelJunk Monsters. It wasn’t easy, let me tell ya. Completing seven levels perfectly, a requirement to advance to the final stages, was particularly difficult.

If I ever deserved a trophy, it would be for beating this game.

Amazingly, I actually just learned that trophies are coming next week. As is typical, the developers weren’t able to add retroactive trophies. Fortunately, they aren’t going to make me replay these hard levels perfectly all over again – to get the trophies a series of unique tasks, like “beat this level without leveling up any towers” will be given. It’s a great compromise, likely to make playing it worthwhile and interesting.

Overall, the art and overall “feel” of the game are truly fantastic. My criticism, aside from the punishing demands for perfection, is that the waves of enemies seemed to require such a precise plan that it didn’t feel like I was strategizing on the fly. For example, you might suddenly be required to have unlocked a particular tower type in wave 14 and be unable to do so. I ended up playing each new level with the idea that I was just performing reconnaissance; I’d expect to lose and do better with what I’d learned. This felt more like memorization than strategy, but despite this aspect, I still had a blast with the game. I may even get the expansion.