For years Double Fine has been known for clever games with cute little kids in them.  Then they made Trenched, the manliest game you will ever play.  This little XBLA title is Tim Schaefer's take on the tower defense genre, and being a fan of his work, I was excited to sit down with the game and try it out for myself -- despite my inappropriate choice of gender.  

Being the poor little gamer that I am (I spent all my money on travel to E3 and starting up a little website you might have heard of) I wasn't able to plunk down the money for Trenched.  Instead I did what any broke person in my shoes would do -- I played the demo.  The demo for Trenched gives you a nice little slice of what you can expect from the full title, including character selection, Trench upgrading, and several small combat stages.  It's an appetizer, if you will, meant to tease and tempt, and as such it does a good job.

Trenched itself is fairly easy to get a grasp of.  You have all your basic tower defense mechanics.  Waves of enemies?  Check.  Guns of some form?  Check.  Methods of dealing with specialized attackers?  Check and check.  In addition to the basics you might see in any tower defense title, Trenched also adds in a little bit of shooter action.  You manually go around and pound enemies, cleaning up what your towers left behind.

All the combat in the game is fairly standard for the genre, however that is where the similarities end.  This is Double Fine, after all, and so the standard is wrapped in a world design so outlandish it's breathtaking.  The premise of the game is simple: A war between television-based lifeforms and humans.  The irony of playing a game where you fight the destructive nature of television while playing a game on a television is not lost on me, and neither is the humor that pervades all aspects of Trenched.  The testosterone of this game is so over the top I didn't have time to feel offended.  It was just so very, male.  

For those who love the tower defense genre, this is definitely a game you will enjoy.  There is little in the way of innovation in the game design, but that also means the gameplay is solid and the mechanics follow a tried and true format.  Wrap "solid" in an extra heavy Double Fine coating, and it becomes, in a word, awesome.  Pick up Trenched on the Xbox Live Arcade for 1200 Microsoft points ($15.00).