Holy Invasion of Privacy, Badman!

Badman looks like a simple game on the surface but dig deep enough and you'll find an incredibly deep and complex strategy game albeit one that's sometimes as unwieldy as the ridiculous title. The retro vibe, quirky humor and addictive gameplay shine but the steep learning curve will only appeal to the most dedicated gamer.

Damn You Heroes!

Badman's objective is fairly straight-forward: you're given an underground cavern that you can excavate with a magic pickaxe. Doing so creates an army of pixelated uglies that slowly grow and evolve as you carve out your subeterranen dungeon. Heroes come into your caves in an attempt to capture your helpless Overlord; it's your job to defeat them before they can drag him into the light.

It sounds simple on paper -- what's so hard about digging up dirt, right? -- but Badman requires an insane amount of strategy. You can go crazy with the pickaxe and just dig a bunch of caves but only by taking into account soil types and excavating in strategic shapes will you survive the heroic onslaught.

Dungeon Master

Visually, Badman looks a lot like a mutated cousin of the arcade classic Dig Dug. The PSP's screen can sometimes get in the way but it's easy to identify that individual soil blocks. The game takes a food pyramid approach: at the bottom are low-level baddies like Slimemosses. As they move around your dungeon, they fertilize the soil and act as food for large minions, which in turn feed other minions all the way up the chain. You have to carefully build your dungeon to maximize your creatures' functions or your Overlord doesn't stand a chance against the sixty-six different types of heroes who'll raid your dungeon.

You're also graded at the end of every round; playing through the first time I constantly scored C's and D's and this is Badman's biggest weakness: the initial difficulty is so steep that it will turn off everyone but the most dedicated and patient gamer. Unless you're some sort of strategy game savant, you will have experience your fair share of failure in the early going, enough so that most gamers will quit in frustration.

Holy Invasion of Privacy, Badman!
Holy Invasion of Privacy, Badman!