Sugar, spice and everything nice, these were the ingredients used to create the perfect little girl, but the developers at Radiangames added a few extra ingredients to the concoction, mainly some really fun Metroid style gameplay elements. Thus The Powerpuff Girls Defenders of Townsville was born and released on Steam and there is a lot to love in this little old school inspired side scrolling action game.
The gameplay consists of a very familiar Metroid/Castlevania, or Metroidvania style of play. Defenders of Townsville is based on the recent Powerpuff reboot, which I haven’t seen, and really utilizes the new art style to bring the girls to life. We start with a meeting with ever-present baddie, Mojo-Jojo who manages to activate his super weapon and erase the part of the girls memories that allows them to use their powers.
It’s always strange to me the way games involving superheroes try to find ways from keeping us from using the powers that we bought the game to use in the first place. Fortunately Defenders of Townsville only really uses this plot point as a way to quickly introduce the player to the various powers and abilities for each of the girls in a semi-tutorial sort of manner. It won’t be long (probably less than 30 minutes) before you manage to unlock all the standard attacks that the game has to offer.
Just like in Metroid you are going to be doing a great deal of exploring and backtracking during your playthrough. The majority of the game in fact is spent seeing much of the same areas over and over again. The world you have to explore isn’t nearly as big or varied as in Metroid and you will have only four distinct areas to explore. For a game that has you using your powers of flight non-stop, you sure do spend a great deal of time stuck underground.
You have the standard upgrades that you can collect by exploring a number of the worlds stages, but none are really necessary to complete the game. I spent about four hours total from beginning to end with a bulk of that tracking down each stage and collecting every powerup. Doing this made me nearly invincible and negated any challenge the game may have presented even during the final boss encounter.
Some obstacles can only be passed/destroyed by using the special abilities that each girl possesses; Bubbles can freeze and destroy laser barriers, Buttercup can use sonic blasts to destroy objects on the other side of walls and Blossom can use her fire blast to destroy ice blocks. As these barriers occur almost immediately during the game you will come back to them once each girl is rescued opening up new areas.
Enemies are family friendly robots that take a handful of forms but all essentially act the same way, shooting laser blasts, and can all be killed with your standard attack. The game itself only boasts four boss characters which are all variations on the same basic design which leaves each battle feeling a tad bit repetitive.
The graphics and hand-drawn look of the game is the real highlight here. I am very aware of the original look and style of the Powerpuff Girls as the original show came about during my more youthful days and was quite popular. I know a number of people who have complained about the new updated look, but I for one think it’s one of the best parts of the entire reboot. The girls have a sharp, clean and modern look and have almost been designed to work exceptionally well in the format of a video game like this. I will say that if you enjoyed how South Park The Stick of Truth matched the look of the show then you are going to like how it has been handled here.
The sound can be a little hit or miss at times. Thankfully we aren’t inundated with a repetitive rehashing of the Powerpuff Girls theme over and over again. The theme is there during play, but it’s remixed well into a much larger range of game music so that when it does pop up from time to time you get to enjoy it. The sound effects, especially the girl’s voice work, will get old, fast. The have the standard grunts for punching and attacking, but also have a few, a very few, recorded saying that will quickly drive you crazy after the hundredth time you hear them.
Another thing to note is that when you complete the game you will have access to a New Game + mode that rearranges all the stages and has the girls searching for keys to get to the final boss. It’s a nice feature to be sure, but once you have beat the game once, I collected almost every achievement and earned a 97% completion, you won’t really have a need to do it all over again. Another nice feature is the ability choose between the new look and the classic Powerpuff Girls design. Fans of the original series will really like this, but I felt like the old look came off as much less impressive and felt, well, old.
Powerpuff Girls Defenders of Townsville is a short game, it can be completed in less than two hours if you blast through in a hurry. There isn’t a great deal of replayability and the enemies feel utterly generic. So, you can assume that I hated the game, well, you would be sort of wrong. I actually had a real blast playing thanks in par to the Metroid style the game emulates, even if it lasted a single sitting, and felt satisfied pretty when my adventure came to an end. You can pick up Defenders of Townsville on sale via Steam for $6.39 and for that price you can do far worse.
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