Before I picked up my GamePad, I'd never heard of Cubemen 2. By looking at some screenshots and video, I was able to deduce that it was some sort of minimalist take on tower defense; as I sat down to play the game, however, I realized that such a label would really demean what Cubemen 2 was all about.

Cubemen 2 is a tower defense game, no doubt. This may cause you to groan because, let's face it: Tower Defense as a genre is played out. Still, it's worth remembering that tower defense is a sub-genre of real-time strategy, and this is a genre sorely underrepresented on consoles. Cubemen 2 does a wonderful job of reminding us where Tower Defense came from by offering us countless variations on the formula. There's standard defense mode, where you protect your base from enemies. In addition, there is rescue mode, which requires players to trot around the arena fending off foes while innocent bystanders make their way into your base. Aside from those two solo modes, there are four or five multiplayer modes which are playable online with or without AI.

The most impressive part about Cubemen 2, really, is how incredibly robust the experience is. For a game that seems to pride itself on being minimalist, the game offers dozens upon dozens of ways to customize the experience. There are the aforementioned gameplay modes, the online multiplayer, the thousands upon thousands of user-created downloadable maps, the ability to create your own map on the GamePad, about 20 level skins, and 20 player skins, and finally two complete campaigns. For a $7.99 eShop game, this might be the most content I've ever seen.

I've really only dipped my toe in, and so far the only real downside I can find is that the game is only playable on the GamePad with a stylus. No effort was made to adapt this for console-style controls beyond mapping camera control to the sticks and shoulder buttons, which works pretty well. This makes the game literally feel like it was designed for an iPad, which to be fair, it was.

We'll have a full review next week, but if you were on the fence about picking up this eShop title, I would say that if you're at all a fan of real-time strategy or tower defense, you could do much worse than Cubemen 2.