Double Fine certainly knows how to make games; they’ve demonstrated this with titles like Brutal Legend, Stacking, and most recently, Iron Brigade. Iron Brigade is an excellent game, as you can tell by our review. Iron Brigade’s Rise of the Martian Bear picks up right after Iron Brigade ends. After being defeated, Vladimir Woodruff moves to the last place the broadcast can flourish – mars. After building a colony of tubes to launch yet another broadcast on the earth, after which it becomes your job to fight them off.
Martian Bear starts off with you defending the U.S.S McKinley space-battleship as it prepares to blast off. After successfully defending the ship you’ll then have to defend it after its crash landing on mars. This mission introduces the first new enemy whose only want is to destroy every turret you’ve placed. These first two levels are the easiest of the five In the DLC pack, as after these the games difficulty quadruples. The third mission has you defending three large pieces of cannon that broke during the crash landing. This mission introduces another new enemy, this one is a small version of the blitzers, charging at you and exploding upon death or when within radius of you.
The third mission is when you really start dropping the f-bombs and throwing controllers. Your task is to defend the cannon that you’ve just put together. After ten waves it will shoot the gate in front of you down and you’ll then have to defend it for another fifteen waves without any health regeneration. This had me ripping hair out all night and more than a few “mother fu**ing god d**nit piece of sh*t”’s were flying around. On four player co-op with highly skilled players each try took easily more than an hour and many tries ended on the last level, last wave, with two or three enemies left. The third and fourth levels are equally as difficult, and the story is very fulfilling.
Along with five extra story missions, Rise of the Martian Bear adds five new ranks bringing the cap to 15, as well as a great deal of new loot for you to gather.
When all is said and done Rise of the Martian Bear is an excellent purchase for a mere 400 Microsoft Points ($5 USD) and will give you more than enough time for your money, while still kicking your ass and spitting in your face.. If you’ve beaten Iron Brigade, definitely pick this DLC up, otherwise wait until you’ve finished the game as it isn’t available until then.
