Instantly, with a name like Gross and the art style of choice, you’d think the tower defense FPS title would intend to shock and horrify you with disgusting metaphors based around poo. A bit like The Binding of Isacc but with an almost voxel-style art and zombies. Sadly, instead, you get what you’ve seen a few times over with an almost Roblox-like simplicity to it and a story that is told you to in one of the worst ways possible.

Everyone has seen a Star Wars film. If you have not read the scrolling text, it gives you all exposition to tell you that what is happening is important to someone. In a film scrolling text is fine because you can ignore it and still understand the plot. In a game, enormous blocks of text pre-empting a level don’t work.

What is worse is when you have something like dyslexia and the almost typing/reveal effect on the text goes a little quicker than you’re able to give dry exposition. Eventually, that paragraph that you got bored of reading is gone. Either reveal the text and let me scroll after the fact or let me hit continue on each paragraph at a time.

You know how it all goes: Money was of value, the zombies came, and now the money has no value. You must defend yourself with guns and barricades in each level bought with money because tower defense games use it to limit you. Though I’ve moved on to the gameplay, I’m not quite moving away from the complaint train yet. Fixed now, the field of view in the pre-release build was very narrow and beyond that, it was previously unchangeable in-game. This meant after the initial 20 minutes of play, I indeed felt gross and like I needed to vomit everywhere.

I really wanted to like Gross a lot more than I did. Breaking out of the Cheyenne mountain complex and adventuring in Walter White’s lab with someone that just shows up outside the bunker with a lovely dog, you are tasked with mowing down zombies by the thousands. Functionally this works and allows you to jump straight into the action once the two pages of exposition are done and you’ve maximized the FOV so you aren’t constantly sick. Nonetheless, there are problems to highlight.

The UI is too large and busy in some places to focus on any one thing, and the purpose of some elements of it isn’t really explained. One example is the waves system, a small number next to your level score that is easily unnoticeable if you are focused on just getting through the levels. There is also the issue of how large the map is during the planning phase between waves, which takes up a large portion of the screen cluttering an already busy mess that could be easily fixed with just a quick change. These issues (many of which are small) possibly stand out because I’m not usually a big fan of Tower-Defense titles.

Many of them often focus less on the player and make the strategy of your tower placement far too important, leaving you to stand about doing nothing. Gross, on the other hand, tries to step away from that with a greater focus on you as a player stepping in and changing the tide of battle. It is reasonably visceral, with a good crunch to the shotgun clearing the heads off of several zombies at a time. At least there is something enjoyable on that front. Though for those looking for a Tower Defense that even non-fans will enjoy, Gross doesn’t change that much about the genre.

At the start of each wave, the ambling horde will stroll along into your barricades, and then by the mid-point of each wave, you have to attack every front at once. Doing research, I found out exactly what Chris Stauffer (the Irish-based Swiss developer) wanted from Gross, noting that similar games often impede either the first-person or Tower-Defense element when combining the genres. Though they are still a little bullet spongy, as my countless headshots will attest, the zombies and their AI are probably the biggest and most noticeable difference.

The problem is that despite all that is supposed to change and make the genres melt together better in the pot than they ever have before, to a non-Tower-Defense fanatic, very little has been revolutionized. By that mid-point of each wave I still feel as if I’m being overwhelmed to amp up the difficulty in a somewhat artificial way. I particularly dislike that for the first wave on every level, Gross demands that you build the latest tool, which by the point of barbed wire, nitrogen, and an ATM just gets on my nerves. That isn’t even getting into the “story.”

For the last 16 years, we’ve seen zombie settings more and more to the point where some kids are more accustomed to wandering out into the apocalypse than their closest park. I don’t need so much writing in a zombie Tower-Defense game to tell me “shoot the drones to make this level more difficult.” This is the same problem I have with the likes of Days Gone: I know what you are, all I need in terms of setup is “shoot that thing, protect that other thing.” Take your story down to being simplistic and it will be more effective than trying to complicate it with pretension.

Ultimately, Gross is a good Tower-Defense and FPS game (now that it has an FOV slider) but misses the goal of changing the genre for the better. What is there satisfies on a gameplay level but bores on the story level, and could have been refined to a point where I’m neither standing around waiting for the next wave nor yawning at the exposition. Maybe the global scoreboard is enough for some enjoying a Tower-Defense game, imagining they are facing off against others for the truly meaningless prize of being number 1. Being someone that enjoys well-designed cathartic gameplay over all of that, something is missing for me.

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Gross

$17.99

6

Score

6.0/10

Pros

• Solid gunplay that has some catharsis to it.
• I like the money hoover attachment, that's a good addition.

Cons

• Such a long story, too bad I can't read it.
• UI that gets in the way sometimes.