Review: Dillon's Rolling Western (eShop Download)

Sonic meets Tower-defence in this action packed download title!

You play as Dillon, an armadillo who is also a budding ranger. Along with your sidekick, a squirrel which is widely referred to as a mouse, you go along from town to town stopping the invading rock monsters (Grocks) from eating your scruffle livestock (Scrogs). Sounds easy, right? Wrong.

The game has two main story lines. During the day your job is to gather up scruffles to increase the  number of the village's Scrogs, equip gun towers with weapons and build defence gates out of ore which you can find in the mines. There are also a number of ancient ruins in the villages which allows you to find treasures like a piece of heart (three of these pieces equals one more for Dillon) and special gems. You can sell these for extra cash in the village, or give them to others as part of quests you can do at the diner at the end of a day.

The really action picks up at nighttime though, when the Grocks come out to play. You have to roll along the ground into these foul creatures to defeat them. Succeed and the village is saved. Fail and it's not only bye-bye for the Scrogs, it's bye-bye for you! Equipping towers with guns is helpful and as you move onto later levels this really is the difference between life and death.

Fortunately the Grocks only invade one village three days in a row, and at the end you are rewarded with more money for items that Dillon can use, or to help out in the next village.

The gameplay in Dillon's Rolling Western is quite good. It's quite simple once you get going, and when new items are added it isn't confusing to adjust (generally just another button to press) but you need to get your timing right. There are some really tight battles with Bossgrocks (which leave you repeatedly ramming into it about 30+ times). Despite the intensity it is still fun to play if you aren't vunerable to ragequit at the smallest possible thing.

I can't really complain about value or graphics at all really. For $15 it is about more than half the price of the cheapest retail game, and will give you a good couple of hours of rolling across the desert. The graphics are absolutely fine, and suit the game quite well.

I really hope we get to see more like this in the future. This has certainly been my favourite eShop game so far, no questions asked.