The Internet is pretty shrewd and audacious in that it has created a cottage industry of engaging free Flash games hopping over to the iPhone and iPod Touch, adding touch-screen capabilities, and then having the gall to charge you for it.
Bloons Tower Defense is a game in which you strategically place dart-throwing monkeys, rocket launchers, and beacons with the goal of popping balloons that flood a track. As usual, it’s the straightforward presentation that makes Bloons so gripping. Play it on the train, and you’ll probably miss your stop. Play at it home, and you’ll probably miss dinner.
The controls can be a tiny bit finicky at times, but it isn’t a big issue since you spend most of your time watching how your contraptions handle the current onslaught of balloons. You can, on the fly, insert a spiny, exploding pineapple or tacks if you spot a crack in your defense. But that kind of strategy is usually done between turns, not during them.
The more balloons you pop, the more towers and upgrades you can buy. Bloons offers two branches of upgrades for every tower — the super monkey can be made even more powerful by upgrading his range to cover just about the entire screen, and more deadly by converting his assault of darts into a burst of plasma bolts. Now that we know monkeys can throw far more than their feces, watch the complaining about the smell the next time you’re at the monkey house at the zoo.
