The bees are back… bigger, badder, better! Time to churn out some honey and fight the evil hornets and zombees. Yes, you read that right – zombie bees. And no, we are not making this stuff up.
BeeFense is the best Defense
In 2017, ByteRockers’ Games developed the game BeeFense, a tactical tower-defense game about bees and other insects. It was pretty well received back in the day, and the devs decided to beemaster the game for all modern platforms (and it’s out now). The art style reminded me a lot of Conkers Bad Fur Day, sadly the gameplay was nothing like Conker, but that’s like comparing apples and oranges… So let’s move on!
In the beemastered version, it’s time again to protect your beehive fortress against the hornet menace. After all, the best offense is a good BeeFense! Command your bees to get beesy building your defenses. Have them collect Honeydew – the most precious resource in the world – to improve and customize your fortifications. Unfortunately, the mad Hornet Queen Hornetta is more than just aggressive – she’s genetically modified and will stop at nothing to achieve her nefarious goals!
Bee-Strategy
The survival of the bee colony depends on your strategy. In this remastered version of the successful mobile game, the bees now have to deal with more than just the waspish Hornet Queen and her army – they’ll also encounter the evil General Hornus and his menacing minions in six brand new levels. Accompany the bees on their journey to the Land of the Glowworms, and help them defend their territory against the General’s troops. As a master of light and darkness, you can expand your complement of weapons to beat back the evil invaders by adding glow ammo and other valuable skills.
Like in most tower defense games, the main goal is building towers, collecting resources, and upgrading your defenses to keep the enemies at bay. Buildings range from standard Gatling guns to bombardment, etc., nothing new – but with a bee-like twist. The first few levels offer some tutorial-esque setting, but the difficulty quickly ramps up after completing them. What surprised me is that the original was developed for mobile phones – yet the touch version of the game functions like crap. Upgrading towers often took me five or six tries before hitting the ‘bubble’ on the right spot. In a few cases, it even led to losing the level, which resulted in restarting and restarting.. (you get the picture). Controls with the Joy-Cons or Pro Controller aren’t that much better since they felt a bit clunky and complicated, which really tanked my fun I had with the game.
Bee-Clusion
But, not to bitch about every little detail, BeeFense – BeeMastered features fully remastered graphics that still maintain all the charm of the original mobile game. It shows all the models and textures in full HD and with entirely new lighting, which gives it that Conker feel I was talking about earlier. The new animation makes all the characters and their world appear even more lifelike to top it all off. It’s just a shame that the controls are what they are.. Otherwise I would have scored the game higher than my current percentage!
